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The Southern Baptist Convention, the largest Protestant denomination in America, is holding its annual meeting June 12 - 13 in San Antonio, where it last met in 1988. In view of this, Douglas E. Baker, a writer and former Baptist pastor, wrote the "The Wall Is the Castle" for Baptist Press. Baptist Press, which is funded and operated by the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC), posted the op-ed on May 30, 2007, but removed it within 24 hours. Baptist Press told CT that the column had been temporarily removed for editorial reasons and that the column's failure to reappear was a separate decision. BP had no further comment. Christianity Today asked Baker to rework his thoughts so that a broader audience might understand his original message to Southern Baptists.

Wars are seldom easy to explain. What once seemed a just cause for engagement can soon become clouded amid scenes of carnage and death. Motives ever so slowly elide to camouflage error. One moment in time (often only one speech) is all that is required to morph a mountain of mistakes into a hill of courage.

This was once accomplished in American history by a President who knew that, after gruesome news of one particular battle reached the public, men might no longer be motivated to lose their lives killing their own countrymen. Masterfully, President Abraham Lincoln did what anyone in his position would want to do: He transcended the politics of the moment and the war's strife to call the destruction he saw that day evil—for that is what it was. Lincoln's Gettysburg Address attacked no one, but touched millions. After his address, hardened cynics mourned not only the death of thousands of men, but also the loss of the unity that caused the conflict in the first place.

When the Southern Baptist Convention returns to San Antonio in this summer of 2007 after 19 years, it will be, in some ways, like visiting Gettysburg years after the battle. Some Baptist historians point to the 1988 annual meeting as the point when the schism within the Southern Baptist Convention became most apparent. Biblical inerrancy dominated discussions among the almost 33,000 messengers.

At that convention, the revered pastor of Dallas' First Baptist Church, W.A. Criswell, stepped to the podium for his famous "skunk sermon" on "the curse of liberalism." His words, "a skunk by any other name still stinks," echo through the collective memory of the denomination. At that same podium only days later stood another Southern Baptist icon—Joel C. Gregory. He is now derided by many in SBC circles for his abrupt resignation from First Baptist Church in Dallas and for his subsequent divorce. But in 1988, Gregory was soon to occupy Criswell's position.

Preaching classes across the nation still speak of Gregory's San Antonio convention sermon, "The Castle and the Wall." He moved beyond the business of the denomination to warn that continued warlike strife could soon forever replace the convention's witness before a watching world. When allies are regarded as enemies, Gregory warned, the very fortress of Christian orthodoxy can cause those who desire to protect the Christian castle to instead use their resources to construct a wall. The same stones that build the castle can all too easily be used to erect a partition.

During this "civil war" of Southern Baptists, amid competing visions of what "being a Baptist" meant, here was a Lincolnian moment. The respite from rhetorical gunfire was only temporary, as the war had to be won by one side. Just as Gettysburg was the turning point of the War Between the States, the Southern Baptist Convention has never been the same since San Antonio.

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June (Web-only) 2007, Vol. 51