Southern Baptist Convention Conservative Resurgence - Assessments

Assessments

The American denominational landscape has experienced significant shifts in recent times, but one major story stands out among them all—the massive redirection of the Southern Baptist Convention. America's largest evangelical denomination, the Southern Baptist Convention was reshaped, reformed, and restructured over the last three decades, and at an incredibly high cost.

— Albert Mohler, an architect of the Conservative Resurgence

...the takeover issue was never whether Baptists believed the Bible. The issue is and has always been Creedalism and Fundamentalism. Baptists have always been basically conservative, believing the Bible to be true, trustworthy, and authoritative. There have been individuals who deviated from that mindset but they did not last long among us. They went on to other movements in the Christian family.

— Jimmy R. Allen (President, SBC, 1978-79)

Critics of the takeover faction assert that the "civil war" among Southern Baptists has been about power lust and right-wing secular politics. Dr. Russell H. Dilday, president of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary from 1978 to 1994, has analogized what he calls "the carnage of the past quarter century of denominational strife in our Baptist family" to "friendly fire" where casualties come as a result of the actions of fellow Baptists, not at the hands of the enemy. He writes that "Some of it has been accidental, " but that “some has been intentional." He characterizes the struggle as being "far more serious than a controversy, " but rather a "self-destructive, contentious, one-sided feud that at times took on combative characteristics."

Former president of the SBC Jimmy R. Allen writes that the resurgence/takeover leaders searched for a battle cry to which Baptists would respond. They found it in the fear that we were not "believing the Bible." They focused on the few who interpreted the Bible more liberally and exaggerated that fact. Allen's assessment is that "It was like hunting rabbits with howitzers. They destroyed more than they accomplished."

A spokesman for the new leadership of the SBC, Dr. Morris Chapman, claims that the root of the controversy has been about theology. He maintains that the controversy has "returned the Southern Baptist Convention to its historic commitments." Speaking as president of the "new" SBC's Executive Committee, Chapman cites as examples some of the Conservative Resurgency's claims:

• Baptist colleges and seminaries were producing more and more liberalism in writing, proclamation, and publication
• The adoption of a hermeneutic of suspicion which elevates human reason above the clear statements of the Bible
• The continued influence of many teachers and leaders who did not hold to a high view of Scripture.

While resurgence/takeover architect Paige Patterson believes the controversy has achieved its objective of returning the SBC from an alleged "leftward drift" to a more conservative stance, he admits to having some regrets. Patterson points to vocational disruption, hurt, sorrow, and disrupted friendships as evidence of the price that the controversy has exacted."Friendships and sometimes family relationships have been marred. Churches have sometimes been damaged even though local church life has proceeded for the most part above the fray and often remains largely oblivious to it. No one seriously confessing the name of Jesus can rejoice in these sorrows, " Patterson writes."I confess that I often second guess my own actions and agonize over those who have suffered on both sides, including my own family."