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The Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) was born in 1845 when 293 delegates-frustrated with regulations passed by Northern abolitionists preventing slave owners from becoming missionaries-met in Augusta, Georgia, and adopted a plan for "eliciting, combining and directing the energies of the whole denomination in one sacred effort, for the propagation of the gospel."

Does this "sacred effort" continue today? This month marks the one-hundred-fiftieth anniversary of the SBC's founding-an ideal time to consider the theological foundations of America's largest Protestant denomination and how they can be made to serve the church in the next era.

The framers of the SBC developed an orthodox Baptist consensus that was able to withstand, despite some stumbling, the crises of slavery, the Civil War, Reconstruction, and denominational schism. (For a survey of the SBC's progress in race relations, see "Black Southern Baptists," in this issue.)

More recently the SBC has been preoccupied with battles over the control of the denomination. This painful struggle needs to be understood in context: After a hundred years of orthodox consensus, denominational pragmatism became the infallible dogma of Southern Baptist life in the three decades following World War II. At the same time, Baptist bureaucrats and denominational elites gradually led the SBC toward alignment with mainline Protestant concerns. For example, as amazing as it now seems, the SBC Christian Life Commission was once an ardent supporter of the Religious Coalition for Abortion Rights. Without a conservative resurgence, Southern Baptists would doubtless have followed many of the mainline denominations in the path of spiritual decline and theological erosion.

The conservative victory in the SBC will prove hollow, however, unless it is accompanied by spiritual and theological renewal. What are the benchmarks for shaping Baptist theological identity for such a time as this? Looking at five classic principles drawn from the Baptist heritage is one place to start. Together they form a cluster of convictions that have guided Southern Baptists through storms of the past.

ORTHODOX CONVICTIONS

In 1994, the SBC unanimously adopted a resolution acknowledging that "Southern Baptists have historically confessed with all true Christians everywhere belief in the triune God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, the full deity and perfect humanity of Jesus Christ, his Virgin Birth, his sinless life, his substitutionary atonement for sins, his resurrection from the dead, his exaltation to the right hand of God, and his triumphal return; and we recognize that born again believers in the Lord Jesus Christ may be found in all Christian denominations."

Baptists are orthodox Christians who stand in continuity with the dogmatic consensus of the early church on matters such as the scope of Holy Scripture, the doctrine of God, and the person and work of Jesus Christ. Leon McBeth correctly observes that Baptists have "often used confessions not to proclaim 'Baptist distinctives' but instead to show how similar Baptists were to other orthodox Christians." Thus the "Orthodox Confession" of 1678 incorporated the Apostles', Nicene, and Athanasian creeds, declaring that all three "ought thoroughly to be received and believed. For we believe that they may be proved, by most undoubted authority of Holy Scripture and are necessary to be understood of all Christians." Reflecting this same impulse, the Baptists who gathered in London for the inaugural meeting of the Baptist World Alliance in 1905 recited in unison the Apostles' Creed.

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May 15 1995, Vol. 39, No. 6