Beginning in 1979, the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) experienced an intense struggle for control of the organization. Its initiators called it the conservative resurgenceHefley, James C.The Truth in Crisis: The Conservative Resurgence in the Southern Baptist Convention, vol. 6. Hannibal Books, 2008. . while its detractors labeled it the fundamentalist takeover.James, Rob B. The Fundamentalist Takeover in the Southern Baptist Convention, Fourth Edition, Wilkes Publishing Co., Inc. Washington, Georgia. Available free at It was launched with the charge that the seminaries and denominational agencies were dominated by liberals. The movement was primarily aimed at reorienting the denomination away from a liberal trajectory.
It was achieved by the systematic election, beginning in 1979, of conservative individuals to lead the SBC. Theologically moderate and liberal leaders were voted out of office. Though some senior employees were fired from their jobs, most were replaced through attrition. Conversely, moderate and liberal presidents, professors, and department heads of Southern Baptist seminaries, mission groups and other convention-owned institutions were replaced with conservatives.Humphreys, Fisher.The Way We Were: How Southern Baptist Theology Has Changed and what it Means to Us All. Macon, Georgia: Smyth & Helwys, 2002.
The resurgence is said by some to be the most serious controversy ever to occur within the SBC, the largest Protestant denomination in the United States. Albert Mohler later described it as a "reformation ... achieved at an incredibly high cost."Mohler, Albert."The Southern Baptist Reformation—A First-Hand Account." A part of that cost was the departure of 1,900 churches from the convention, which broke away in 1990 to form the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, a moderate Baptist group which affirms women in ordained ministry and emphasizes the Baptist principles of the autonomy of the local church, the priesthood of all believers, and soul liberty.
Earlier 20th-century controversies Throughout the 20th century, controversy had flared up sporadically among Southern Baptists over the nature of biblical authority and how to interpret the Bible. Until 1925 the SBC did not have a specific, formal confession of faith; whenever an issue arose it had looked to two earlier and more general baptistic confessions of faith produced in the United States: the Philadelphia Confession of Faith (1742) and the New Hampshire Confession of Faith of 1833.
This would change when in the 1920s, Baptist pastor J. Frank Norris, described as "one of the most controversial and flamboyant figures in the history of fundamentalism", led a campaign upon the SBC (from which he would later depart), particularly against Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth and Baylor University in Waco, Texas. In response, the SBC adopted its first formal confession of faith, the Baptist Faith and Message.
Background The unity of the SBC had historically been functional rather than doctrinal. The founders wrote: "We have constructed for our basis no new creed; acting in this matter upon a Baptist aversion for all creeds but the Bible".
Some have tried to argue that Baptists have always avoided creeds. In fact, doctrinal statements have been a part of Baptist life at least since the 17th century. The early SBC saw no need for such a statement since most of its member churches affirmed either the New Hampshire Confession of Faith or the Philadelphia Confession. By the 1920s, with the rise of liberalism and neo-orthodoxy in other denominations, Southern Baptists saw the need to define their beliefs in a formal doctrinal statement. Thus, they adopted the 1925 Baptist Faith and Message.
By the 1970s, many conservatives in the SBC felt certain seminary professors had drifted from basic Baptist doctrines. In a formal statement, they declared their commitment to "doctrinal unity in functional diversity", placing an emphasis on biblical authority.Shurden, Walter. "The Southern Baptist Synthesis: Is It Cracking?" and "The Inerrancy Debate: A Comparative Study of Southern Baptist Controversies." Baptist History and Heritage. 16 (April 1981): 2-19. Conservatives argued that their beliefs did indeed represent a consensus among Southern Baptists. These individuals felt that while early Southern Baptists agreed on basic theological issues, by the 1970s many of these beliefs had come under attack in schools owned and operated by the SBC.Sutton, Jerry.The Baptist Reformation: The Conservative Resurgence in the Southern Baptist Convention. Broadman & Holman Publishers, 2000. .
"Genesis" controversy In July 1961, Ralph Elliott, an Old Testament scholar at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Kansas City, published a book entitled The Message of Genesis containing his interpretation of the book of Genesis. Elliott considered his book a "very moderate" volume, though this is vastly disputed.Elliott, Ralph H.The Genesis Controversy and Continuity in Southern Baptist Chaos: A Eulogy for a Great Tradition. Macon, Georgia: Mercer University Press, 1992. . Some prominent Southern Baptists, however, saw the book in a different light and took issue with Elliot's use of historical-critical methodology, his portrayal of Genesis 1-11 as mythological literature and his speculation that Melchizedek was a priest of Baal and not, as generally believed by Christians, of Yahweh.Faught, Jerry L. Jr."The Ralph Elliott Controversy: Competing Philosophies of Southern Baptist Seminary Education." Baptist History and Heritage. Summer-Fall, 1999.Patterson, Paige.Anatomy of a Reformation: The Southern Baptist Convention 1978–2004. Office of Public Relations at 2001 West Seminary, Fort Worth, Texas, 76115
The "Genesis controversy" quickly pervaded the entire SBC. In strong reaction to the controversy, the 1962 SBC meeting elected as its president Rev. K. Owen White, pastor of First Baptist Church Houston, who had written a prominent criticism of Elliott's views. This began what has become an ongoing trend for SBC presidents to be elected on the basis of their theology.McBeth, Harry L.Texas Baptists: a Sesquicentennial History. Dallas: BaptistWay Press, 1998. Dr. McBeth is a prominent Baptist theologian who has chronicled the Conservative Resurgence/Fundamentalist Takeover both here and elsewhere. Broadman Press, the publishing arm of the Baptist Sunday School Board (now LifeWay Christian Resources) in Nashville, was immediately criticized, and their other materials, including Sunday School quarterlies, became suspect. Elliott's book was withdrawn from publication, and he was later dismissed from Midwestern for insubordination.
1963 Baptist Faith and Message revision In 1963, the SBC adopted the first revision of the Baptist Faith and Message, amending it to include confessional positions more conservative than contained in the original. However, it was not without its critics: one of the architects of the conservative resurgence described it as "having been infected with neo-orthodox theology."
Broadman Bible Commentary In the 1960s, the Sunday School Board, in its most ambitious publishing project, produced the 12-volume Broadman Bible Commentary. Its first volume, covering Genesis and Exodus, came out in 1969. In addition to providing further fuel for the controversy surrounding the Creation account in Genesis, a section written by G. Henton Davies, a Welsh Baptist, questioned the reliability of the biblical episode in which God commands Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac on the grounds that such an event was morally troubling. This publication immediately stirred a new phase of the ongoing controversy. Some argued that the SBC was trying to stifle dissent. Others pointed out that since Broadman Press was owned by the SBC, its publications should not stray so far from the beliefs of most Southern Baptists.
Seminary issues Conservative Southern Baptists of this time bemoaned what they claimed was the growing presence of liberal ideology within the SBC's own seminaries. Clark H. Pinnock, who later became an advocate of open theism, taught at the New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Pinnock is said to have been much more conservative in those days, at which time he argued that liberal professors should be dismissed. He did not embrace more liberal views until later. Ironically, he was a great influence on future conservative leaders, including Paige Patterson.
In 1976, a Southern Baptist Theological Seminary (SBTS) master's degree student, Noel Wesley Hollyfield, Jr., presented survey results that revealed an inverse correlation between length of attendance at SBTS and Christian orthodoxy. While 87% of first year Master of Divinity students at SBTS reporting believing "Jesus is the Divine Son of God and I have no doubts about it," only 63% of final year graduate students made that claim, according to Hollyfield's analysis. In 1981, redacted information from Hollyfield's thesis was put into tract form and distributed by conservatives as evidence of the need for reform from apostasy within SBC agencies.
1970 meeting The 1970 SBC meeting in Denver, Colorado, under the leadership of President W. A. Criswell, was marked by hostilities. Controversy erupted over several explosive issues. At least 17 Baptist state papers questioned editorially the "unchristian," "bitter, " "vitriolic," "arrogant," and "militant" spirit and attitude of some of the messengers (delegates from SBC congregations to the annual meeting). The messengers refused to hear an explanation about the Broadman Bible Commentary from the head of the Sunday School Board. Messengers actually "hooted and hollered at" Herschel H. Hobbs, the respected elder statesman and former president of the SBC, when he urged restraint.
1971 meeting At the 1971 annual meeting in St. Louis, almost two years before Roe v. Wade was decided, the messengers passed the SBC's first resolution on the topic of abortion. The resolution was by no means conservative: in addition to supporting abortion in cases of rape or incest—a position supported by some conservatives—it also supported it in such cases as "clear evidence of severe fetal deformity, and carefully ascertained evidence of the likelihood of damage to the emotional, mental, and physical health of the mother".
The messengers at the 1974 meeting in Dallas (the year after Roe was decided) reaffirmed the 1971 resolution, saying that it "dealt responsibly from a Christian perspective with complexities of abortion problems in contemporary society" while also in the same resolution saying that the SBC "historically held a high view of the sanctity of human life".
Conservative strategy In the early 1970s, SBC employee William Powell developed a rather simple strategy to take control of the SBC: elect the SBC president for ten consecutive years. Under the SBC bylaws, the president had sole authority to appoint the entirety of the Committee on Committees (known during most of the controversy as the Committee on Boards); the appointments did not require approval of the messengers at an annual meeting. This committee, in turn, nominated the members of the Committee on Nominations to be approved by the Messengers at the next annual meeting (i.e. one year after the president is elected and he appoints the Committee on Committees), which in turn nominated appointees for vacant positions to be approved by the messengers at the subsequent annual meeting (i.e., two years from the initial Committee on Committees appointments, and one year after the Committee on Nominations makes its recommendations).