Southern Baptist Convention Conservative Resurgence - Background

Background

The famed Southern Baptist unity in the past has been more functional than theological. Southern Baptists have banded together to cooperate in ministry, in missions, evangelism, and in Christian education. So long as they emphasize functional ministry, the "rope of sand," as one historian called it, holds; when they switch from function to doctrine, unity is threatened.

— Baptist historian, H. Leon McBeth

The unity of the SBC since its founding in 1845 has been basically 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 seventeenth 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 strict doctrinal uniformity. 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 Southern Baptist Convention.