Southern Baptist Conservatives Win Again

The inerrancy struggle continues.

For over 20 years the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) has been embroiled in a doctrinal fight. Conservatives call the problem “creeping liberalism” in agencies supported by the denomination’s Cooperative Program, and moderates call it a “naked grab for power by conservatives.” The launching of Bold Mission Thrust, a program in which the nation’s largest non-Catholic denomination proposes to witness to everybody in the world by the year 2000, has not cooled the struggle.

At last year’s business session in Los Angeles, the conservatives won the presidency (by a 60–40 percent margin) for the third year in a row. This is vital because the top elected officer appoints the Committee on Committees, which names the Committee on Boards, which nominates a slate of about 130 new trustees to replace those rotating off agency boards and institutions (including seven seminaries) each year. Given enough time and success, the conservatives believe they can stop the liberalism and restore doctrinal integrity—principally, belief in biblical inerrancy—to the institutions.

But in Los Angeles, the moderates—who hold loyalty to Cooperative Program agencies (now budgeted for $106 million) in first importance—succeeded in derailing several conservative nominees to boards, and they tried, without success, to weaken the power of the presidency. With the conservative drive slowed, the Los Angeles meeting ended in a spirit of conciliation under the leadership of the reelected president, Bailey Smith.

However, storm flags were again flying long before some 20,000 “messengers” registered in New Orleans for the recent June 15–17 meeting in the Superdome. Giving among Southern Baptists last year was up 12 percent ($2.8 billion), but membership was only 1.3 percent higher (13,789,580), and baptisms were down by 5.6 percent (405,608) from the previous year. Most alarming was stagnant growth in much of the Old South, with Georgia reporting 144 churches no longer on SBC rolls. Moderates saw evidence that the controversy was sapping spiritual power. Conservatives said they were baptizing more people than ever; it was the moderates with their compromising and weak theology who were treading water or declining.

Shortly before the New Orleans convention, conservative past president Adrian Rogers set moderates on edge with the statement that “Southern Baptists have made a golden calf” of the Cooperative Program, which is financed by contributions from churches. “It is almost easier to be against the Virgin Birth than the program.” Rogers said it was both “illogical” and “immoral” to ask a man to support with his money and his influence … things that are theologically repugnant to him.” Leading moderates and agency heads quickly jumped to the defense. Some came to New Orleans wearing lapel tags declaring “Save the Cooperative Program.”

The biggest preconvention furor was caused by leaks to the press. Bailey Smith’s convention sermon was apparently purloined by a moderate sympathizer from Baptist Press, which routinely prints advance copies of convention speeches for the convenience of trusted media.

Smith warned in the printed speech that the SBC could not “escape” the “mediocrity” of other slumping mainline denominations unless there was a revival and a return to biblical certainties and inerrancy.

The speech stirred the ire of moderates before it was ever delivered. When Smith said “it is inexcusable for Southern Baptists to pray for the opening of a brewery,” they saw an allusion to Southeastern Seminary’s Randall Lolley, who gave such a prayer in 1970 when he was a pastor. Lolley had issued a statement of regret shortly thereafter, but the story had been kept alive for over a decade. Smith also said, “It is inexcusable that any Southern Baptist would social drink and have no shame about it.”

Even more attention centered on who would be nominated for president. Convention moderates announced that one of their principal candidates would be Duke McCall, retired president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky, and president of the Baptist World Alliance. Conservative hopes were pinned on Ed Young of Houston, president of the SBC Pastor’s Conference (PC), or Jimmy Draper, pastor of First Church, Euless, Texas, a Fort Worth suburb. There were whispers that Adrian Rogers might consent to run again, and an attempt was even made to snare Billy Graham as a consensus choice. Draper was the only conservative candidate nominated.

Both sides worked hard to get out the vote. Conservatives anticipated having four to six thousand hard-core supporters in New Orleans. For the first time, moderates circulated “fact sheets” on candidates and issues. Kentucky moderate Stephen Shoemaker warned against “making biblical inerrancy the supreme test of our fellowship.… Creeds divide; missions unite,” he said. James C. Strickland, Jr., and T. L. McSwain tipped moderates on when important votes would probably come up.

When the convention opened, Bailey Smith stuck to his controversial printed speech. Statements on inerrancy drew rip-roaring applause from the stands. For example: “We have a great denomination because we have a great loyalty to this Book; if we lose this loyalty, we will cease to be a great denomination.… We all ought to believe the Bible is truthful, infallible, and inerrant.” Not until he said, “We need the Cooperative Program …” did he draw an “amen” from the reserved tables before the platform, where most denominational editors and agency heads had sat glumly through the speech.

The evening before the vote, McCall had walked into the press room to face a small crowd of curious reporters. Asked about his nomination, he said he “welcomed an opportunity to depoliticize the presidency.” When someone mentioned a “fundamentalist tide” flowing against the moderates, McCall asked rhetorically, “Is there a fundamentalist tide or is the fundamentalist tide being created? I don’t think the convention has moved so drastically, except there is a large organized group who plan to do something.”

The next day, Draper took 46 percent (8,081) of the vote to McCall’s 34 percent (6,124), with two other candidates splitting the rest. Draper and McCall received about that same number of votes in the run-off, giving Draper the election by a percentage majority.

Draper, smiling but not gloating, faced reporters the next morning. “I don’t know all the answers,” he said. “What you see is what you get.”

“I’m a conservative, but am not part of any orchestration,” he insisted.

“I will appoint people [on committees] who are loyal Southern Baptists. They don’t have to use the word ‘inerrancy’ … but I wouldn’t appoint somebody who denied a portion of Scripture.”

On seminaries: “I can accept a man who says, ‘I believe Adam and Eve are allegorical, but here’s what others believe.’ But I wouldn’t want a new one like him [appointed to the faculty]. The problem has been that the conservative position [on the Bible] has been ridiculed by some of our teachers.”

On the school prayer amendment, endorsed by President Reagan: “That’s the quickest way to solve the problem. Let the local level decide.” He preferred “a period of silent prayer where each student can do what he chooses. I don’t favor a set prayer by the state,” Draper said.

On teaching creationism in schools: “Teach science, not speculation. There’s more science in creationism than evolution.”

On whether God hears prayers by Jews: “I believe God is aware of all prayers of all people. I don’t believe God hears prayers for salvation except they go through Jesus Christ.” (Bailey Smith unleashed a furor in 1980 when he declared that God does not hear the prayers of Jews.)

In the seven years that Draper has pastored his Euless church, membership has grown from 2,000 to 6,000 and Sunday school attendance has grown from 950 to 2,100. Already this year Draper has baptized 500 new believers. The church has 10 assistant pastors. Draper’s father and grandfather were also ministers, and Draper started preaching in Texas churches at age 17.

The longest and sharpest debate in New Orleans came over church and state resolutions. Conservatives agreed to tabling of a resolution for support of Israel after mission leaders noted that this would put the SBC mission effort to Arabs in peril. But the conservatives fought off skillful and repeated parliamentary attempts to kill or stall unprecedented resolutions calling for constitutional amendments for voluntary prayer in schools, to prohibit abortion (except to save the mother’s life) and infanticide, and for the teaching of scientific creationism in public schools. All of these passed.

The trio of church and state resolutions were bitterly opposed by James Dunn of the Baptist Joint Committee on Public Affairs. One resolution even called for the convention to “deplore and repudiate … intemperate remarks” that Dunn had made several days before in accusing President Reagan of “practicing despicable demagoguery” in proposing a school prayer amendment to the Constitution. This resolution was tabled. After the defeat, Dunn said the votes would “diminish my credibility” in lobbying on Capitol Hill.”

Dunn said the Joint Committee was supported by nine Baptist bodies, with Southern Baptists providing an “overwhelming percentage” of funding.

A reporter noted to Dunn that he had sat near the table reserved for SBC agency heads and observed they had voted by a ten-to-one margin with Dunn and against the majority of messengers on the church and state matters.

“Agency heads, without exception, are extremely well-educated,” Dunn said. “They are not susceptible to sloganizing, bumper sticker answers, and emotionalism.”

Inerrantist Paige Patterson, president of the Criswell Center of Biblical Studies in Dallas, overheard Dunn’s remarks.

He said, “This voting by agency heads against the will of the majority is exactly what all this [protesting] by conservatives has been about.… The inadequacy, slowness, even reluctance, with which convention agencies have treated the expressions of the will and concern of the people are the occasions for this whole situation. Total peace can only come when the agencies become sensitive to the majority.”

Next year the Southern Baptists will meet in Pittsburgh—a city closer to moderate strongholds in Virginia, Maryland, North Carolina, Louisville, and Nashville. Conservatives, whose strength is west of the Mississippi and in the Deep South Delta states, will have further to come. But conservative leaders vow they will be there when the struggle for control and change of the SBC continues. And moderates, who seem to be better organized than ever, will be there also.

JAMES HEFLEY in New Orleans

Christians In Egypt Are Still Oppressed

Any idea of a gradual return to normalcy in Egypt under President Hosni Mubarak has received a rude jolt. The authorities recently closed down El Hoda, the (Coptic) Evangelical Church’s monthly magazine that has been published for 70 years. A close look at those imprisoned since last summer also provides Christians with less reason for optimism than secular news accounts might indicate.

Last September Egypt’s late President Anwar Sadat arrested about 1,500 political and religious extremists under emergency regulations. Following Sadat’s assassination one month later, hundreds more were arrested.

Many persons have since been released, but 10 months later, hundreds more are still in detention centers. Some, without any court proceedings, have been transferred to more permanent prisons.

Most of the prisoners are Muslim extremists, but a significant number of Christians have also been detained. Some of these were politically indiscreet and, according to some Egyptian churchmen, simply “got what was to be expected.” But others were imprisoned only for acts of faithful witness. Most of these have now been released (some as recently as May 3), but at least two have not:

• Zakariah Botros, 47, a Coptic Orthodox priest. Father Zakariah became known to thousands during the 1970s as he ministered at an Orthodox church in the Cairo suburb of Heliopolis. At the height of his ministry, he was holding two evening Bible studies a week, with more than 5,000 people attending each. He is thought to have baptized more than 100 converts from Islam.

• Fadel Ishaq, 55, a Coptic Orthodox layman and government school inspector, was known for his village ministry in the Fayoum Oasis area. Each weekend Brother Fadel would cycle from village to village for evangelism. Friends and colleagues insist he engaged in no political activities and that he therefore remains in detention solely for religious activity.

Other laymen (not all of them known by name) in prison for nonpolitical, Christian activity include a contractor from Minya, imprisoned for evangelism, and a doctor from the Suhag region. Although not very active evangelistically, the doctor financially supported others who were.

A different case is that of a Muslim convert, Daniel (formally Mohamed). Last December Daniel witnessed to a taxi driver. The driver, it turned out, was a plainclothes policeman who reported him, after which he “disappeared.” A recently released prisoner reports meeting him in a prison washroom in February. But where he is now or when he will be released is unknown.

Scores of other Christians (using the word in its religious and political sense) are in prison, too, including at least one bishop and five other priests. But each of these could perhaps be accused of some political trespass.

One positive result from the prolonged detention for some of the Christians has been an increase in ecumenical understanding. Orthodox bishops and evangelical laymen, who before last September scarcely had a kind word for each other, found themselves crowded together in large communal detention rooms. Month after month they had only each other for friendship and fellowship. A new appreciation for each other’s church traditions resulted, and many became fast friends.

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