Baptist Battles: Social Change and Religious Conflict in the Southern Baptist Convention
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The Fragmentation of the Southern Baptist Convention Baptist Battles: Social Change and Religious Conflict in the Southern Baptist Convention |
God's Last and Only Hope: The Fragmentation of the Southern Baptist Convention
By Bill J. Leonard
Grand Rapids, Eerdmans, 1990. 187 Pp. $13.95.
Baptist Battles: Social Change and Religious Conflict in the Southern Baptist Convention
By Nancy Tatom Ammerman
New Brunswick, Rutgers University Press, 1990. 388 pp. $37.00 ($14.00 pb).
Conversation in the South, it has been said, no matter the subject, always ends up in anecdotes, myths, and politics. And when one talks
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about politics, one is talking about power. Though these two recently published books are, as the subtitles indicate, analyses of the current controversy in the Southern Baptist Convention, they are really stories about myths, politics, and power.
Leonard, a church history professor at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky, regards the present Southern Baptist conflict as simply one more example of the internecine struggles and divisions that have characterized American Protestantism for generations. Yet, the intensity and duration of this latest Baptist dispute is different, he contends-somewhat euphemistically, I would say-in that it has left the denomination emotionally spent, questioning its reason for being, and bewildered about its future. If this is the net result, the strife could prove to be salutary in view of the fact that Southern Baptists too long have nourished the idea that they are God's anointed to save the world, a myth often articulated and sardonically repeated in the title Leonard has chosen for his book.
Less philosophical and somewhat less sanguine about the Southern Baptist Convention, Nancy Ammerman, an associate professor of the sociology of religion at Emory University's Candler School of Theology, sees the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) as allied with the new conservative majority in the United States, but the rigid fundamentalists who now control the SBC represent the extreme right wing of the conservative movement. Their interests go far beyond religion. For they have an entire political, economic, and social agenda, and their use of theology has been a tactical maneuver designed to gain followers in order to achieve much more comprehensive goals. The majority of Southern Baptists, according to Ammerman, are less than comfortable with the fundamentalists' agenda, and they disagree with their theology. But, for the sake of unity, they willingly go along guided, not by historic Baptist principles-Southern Baptists began shedding many of these, according to Leonard, shortly before the Civil War-but by political expediency and the longing for institutional and organizational survival.
In contrast to J. E. Barnhart, The Southern Baptist Holy War (Texas Monthly Press, 1986), and Ellen Rosenberg, The Southern Baptists: A Subculture in Transition (University of Tennessee Press, 1989), Ammerman and Leonard are insiders, moderates in sympathy, but scrupulously objective and evenhanded. Not only do they know and understand the history and complexities of the denomination and its extensive bureaucracy, they also grasp and interpret for the reader the nuances of events that outsiders fail to understand or miss altogether. And though both Ammerman and Leonard are dealing with the same historical phenomenon, namely, the bitter and prolonged struggle for control of the SBC, their approaches are strikingly different.
Ammerman is more matter-of-fact and chronological in approach, and her analysis is primarily sociological, supported by an impressive array of statistical data, illustrations, and tables. Also, she includes
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more than thirty pages of notes, an extensive bibliography, and a fairly complete index. Leonard's treatment is a captivating historical narrative in which he weaves a cultural, theological, organizational pattern before discussing the abrupt change and subsequent developments in the Convention after 1979.
Both authors agree that the SBC is deeply, and possibly hopelessly, divided, and that the current controversy, like those earlier, is theological. Yet, whereas in the past theological diversity was successfully muted by skillful denominational leaders who constantly stressed the God-given mission of Southern Baptists and the necessity to stay together-thereby enabling the leaders to sell the constituents a modus vivendi-this kind of strategy no longer works. It no longer works because the fundamentalists, who now control the Convention and its entire bureaucratic apparatus, given their uncompromising ideology, were prepared to divide the Convention if that was the only way they could gain control of it.
Leonard attributes the fundamentalists' success to their early recognition that the old denominational coalition was breaking down and was therefore vulnerable to a well-organized and generously funded coup d'etat. He may well be correct in this assessment, but it seems to be that the fundamentalists triumphed because they willfully and repeatedly misrepresented the truth, continually warned theologically naive and culturally isolated Southern Baptists of the ominous threat of liberalism, and skillfully put seminary professors and administrators on the defensive with the shibboleth of "biblical inerrancy." That the old coalition had broken down is now evident, but the success of the fundamentalists can be attributed to their persistent and effective undermining of the confidence of grassroots Southern Baptists in their leaders and institutions as well as to the fact that they caught the crest of the conservative wave that broke over this country in the 1980s. Moreover, by threatening to divide the Southern Baptist Convention, fundamentalists were able to exploit the one factor that has confirmed the Southern Baptist sense of identity and destiny, namely, their immense size, power, and wealth. Leonard rightly regards many of the entrenched bureaucrats as also partially responsible for the takeover because they ignored the threat until they were powerless to do anything about it.
According to Ammerman-and the data provide support her contention-the majority of Southern Baptists are theologically conservative, but they are not fundamentalists, and the glue that has held them together has not been doctrine or even geography, though the latter was crucial until the 1950s. Southern Baptists have remained together because of their common sense of destiny. Thus, for a people whose single most important value, if they are to achieve their divinely appointed purpose, is size, anything, even a fundamentalist takeover of their institutions and the imposition of a creed, in this case an indisputably fundamentalist creed, is preferable to schism. For schism
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would mean a loss of numbers, money, and power, and it would contravene the underlying myth that has been perpetuated for generations, namely, that Southern Baptists are God's last and only hope for the world.
Neither Ammerman nor Leonard believes the future of Southern Baptists is determined, but both suggest that it is fairly clear. The solidarity that has long characterized Southern Baptists is fractured, and splintering is already occurring. Individuals and congregations are leaving the SBC, but their numbers are and likely will be relatively small and insignificant. Most of the moderates will grouse about what is happening, and some will reassess and threaten to cut off their financial support of SBC programs and institutions. But the vast majority, as Leonard says, simply cannot bring themselves to give up the Convention's financial plan, "the Cooperative Program," much less leave the Convention. These are not options for them because as Southern Baptists they are so sustained by the myth of being God's chosen people and are so much a part of the organization known as the Southern Baptist Convention, that despite any personal or collective agony over what has happened, they will adapt to any change, accept any injustice, and sacrifice any individual or group of individuals if by so doing the Convention stays intact and they can remain a part of the only church they have ever known.
Neither Leonard nor Ammerman is pleased with the prospects ahead, but they are honest and accurate in describing what has transpired, and they are forthright about what they see in the future.
ALAN NEELY
Princeton Theological Seminary
Princeton, New Jersey