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Advancing Progressive Orthodoxy: William Owen Carver And ADVANCING PROGRESSIVE ORTHODOXY: WILLIAM OWEN CARVER AND THE RECONCILIATION OF PROGRESS AND SOUTHERN BAPTIST TRADITION Except where reference is made to the work of others, the work described in this dissertation is my own or was done in collaboration with my advisory committee. This dissertation does not include proprietary or classified information. Mark R. Wilson Certificate of Approval: David Edwin Harrell, Jr. J. Wayne Flynt, Chair Daniel F. Breeden Eminent Distinguished University Professor Scholar in the Humanities History History Charles A. Israel Stephen 1. McFarland Associate Professor Dean History Graduate School ADVANCING PROGRESSIVE ORTHODOXY: WILLIAM OWEN CARVER AND THE RECONCILIATION OF PROGRESS AND SOUTHERN BAPTIST TRADITION Mark R. Wilson A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of Auburn University in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy AubUfIl, Alabama December 16,2005 ADVANCING PROGRESSIVE ORTHODOXY: WILLIAM OWEN CARVER AND THE RECONCILIATION OF PROGRESS AND SOUTHERN BAPTIST TRADITION Mark R. Wilson Permission is granted to Auburn University to make copies of this dissertation at its discretion, upon request of individuals or institutions and at their expense. The author reserves all publication rights. Mark R. Wilson Date of Graduation 111 DISSERTATION ABSTRACT ADVANCING PROGRESSIVE ORTHODOXY: WILLIAM OWEN CARVER AND THE RECONCILIATION OF PROGRESS AND SOUTHERN BAPTIST TRADITION Mark R. Wilson Doctor of Philosophy, December 16, 2005 (M. Div., McAfee School of Theology, Mercer University, 2000) (B. A., University of Mobile, 1997) 260 Typed Pages Directed by Wayne Flynt One of the most important debates among scholars of southern religion concerns the reaction of white southern evangelical Protestantism to the modernizing influences that prevailed outside the region from the end of the nineteenth century to well into the twentieth century. William Owen Carver (1868-1954), longtime professor of Missions and Comparative Religion at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky, lived his professional life between two worlds: the conservatism of southern denominationalism and the liberalism of mainstream Protestant thought and practice. Carver responded with guarded optimism to important theological issues such as ecumenism, liberalism, evolution, and the social gospel, and he challenged Southern IV Baptists to incorporate the best of modern thought into Southern Baptist theology. Carver endured several major controversies throughout his career, but he always managed to silence his critics. His career shows how challenging the reconciliation of progress and Southern Baptist tradition can be. v ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Several important libraries and archivists deserve high praise for making materials available for my research: Elizabeth Wells and the staff at Samford University's Special Collections in Birmingham, Alabama; Fred Anderson and Darlene Slater Herod at the Virginia Baptist Historical Society at the University of Richmond, Virginia; Edie Jeter at the International Mission Board Archives of the Southern Baptist Convention in Richmond, Virginia; the staff at Yale Divinity School Library Special Collections in New Haven, Connecticut; and the staff at Duke University Special Collections in Durham, North Carolina. I owe special thanks to the staff of the Southern Baptist Historical Library and Archives (SBHLA) in Nashville, Tennessee, the home ofthe William Owen Carver Collection. Bill Sumners, Taffey Hall, Kathy Sylvest, and Jean Forbis made every research trip a fruitful and enjoyable experience. Research grants from the Southern Baptist Historical Library and Archives, the Alabama Baptist Historical Commission, and the Auburn University History Department eased the financial burden of research. Auburn University's History Department is a wonderful place to pursue a graduate degree, and I am thankful for the faculty, staff, and students who made my graduate years enjoyable. Committee members David Edwin Harrell, Jr., Charles Israel, and Richard Penaskovic provided excellent guidance and critique. My major professor, Wayne Flynt, proved his extraordinary reputation as scholar and mentor true. To be one VI of his last graduate students is an honor. The community of friends I gained while working on this dissertation are too numerous to mention individually, but a few spent extra hours listening to me obsess over the project. Scott Billingsley, leffFrederick, 10hn Hardin, Lynn McWhorter, and Steve Murray could not have been better partners for the graduate school experience. The single most important reason this dissertation exists is my family. My parents, Robert and Paulette Wilson, and my sister, Angie Luddeke, have been a source of encouragement. My wife, Kellie, has endured these long years with grace and compassion, and I could not have completed the project without her. She deserves the cap and gown. Our two young children, Benjamin and Elizabeth, are full of smiles and laughter, and I thank them for simply existing. May they always see their dreams come true. Vll Style manual used The Chicago Manual of Style, 15thed. Computer software used Microsoft Word 2000 V1l1 TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION... ... ... ... 1 CHAPTER ONE: FROM TENNESSEE TO THE TWENTIETH CENTURY 10 CHAPTER TWO: THE CHALLENGE OF OUTSIDERS ... ... ..50 CHAPTER THREE: INTELLECTUAL CHALLENGES: EVOLUTION AND THEOLOGICAL LIBERALISM 102 CHAPTER FOUR: THE CHALLENGING SOCIAL VISION OF CHRISTIANITY ..152 CHAPTER FIVE: A MEMBER OF THE "UNWASHED THRONG" 193 CONCLUSION 235 BIBLIOGRAPHY .240 IX INTRODUCTION A few weeks after the United States launched its campaign to remove Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq in 2003, the American news media investigated a “second invasion” of American missionaries armed with food, clothing, medical supplies, and the Christian gospel. To understand the theological and political ramifications of missionary presence in a war-torn Muslim country, reporters turned to a prominent Southern Baptist leader, R. Albert Mohler Jr., president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky (SBTS), the flagship seminary of the nation’s largest Protestant denomination. Time magazine’s Broward Liston asked Mohler, the “reigning intellectual of the evangelical movement in the U.S.,” to explain how Christian missionaries viewed the assignment that critics called a destabilizing force for the country. Mohler suggested that media fears were overblown. He reminded Liston that evangelical missionaries offered humanitarian aid as well as the message of salvation; the media should not be surprised that Christians feel obligated to share their beliefs. “The Christian has to look at Iraq and see persons desperately in need of the gospel,” he said. “Compelled by the love and 1 command of Christ, the Christian will seek to take that gospel in loving and sensitive, but very direct, ways to the people of Iraq.”1 Terry Gross of National Public Radio (NPR) interviewed Mohler on the popular program “Fresh Air” a few weeks later. Gross raised the concern that Christian evangelism might make the war in Iraq a conflict between two religions rather than an American-led effort to remove a dictator. Mohler argued that the Christian opportunity to evangelize was evidence of religious freedom, a key to any effective democracy. He assured Gross that he did not believe in conversion by force or legislation and articulated the Christian claim that ultimate salvation rests in Christianity.2 In the second half of the program Gross interviewed Charles Kimball, a Baptist professor of religion at the Wake Forest University Divinity School in Wake Forest, North Carolina. Kimball, author of a recent book titled When Religion Becomes Evil, feared that Iraqis would view proselytizing as Christian imperialism and discouraged efforts other than humanitarian aid. Obviously intrigued that Kimball and Mohler shared the same alma mater (SBTS) and denominational heritage but disagreed on the evangelical claim that Christianity holds the only way to salvation, Gross asked Kimball about his personal journey away 1 Broward Liston, “Interview: Missionary Work in Iraq,” Time, April 15, 2003, http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,443800,00.html. 2 Albert Mohler, interview by Terry Gross, Fresh Air, NPR, May 5, 2003, http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1250236. 2 from conservative Christianity.3 Mohler and Kimball presented an interesting contrast for viewers. CNN hosted a debate between the two Baptists to illustrate that “the Christian world was divided” over missionary efforts in Iraq.4 The American media fascination with Southern Baptists grew at the end of the twentieth century when theologically and politically conservative denominational leaders made the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) a prominent platform for the “culture wars” debate. The denominational boycott of the Walt Disney Company to protest the company’s alleged support of homosexuality brought national attention in 1996, for example, and, in 2000 Larry King held a roundtable discussion on women pastors the day Southern Baptists formalized a doctrinal statement forbidding the practice.5 When Wally Amos Criswell, the famous pastor of the huge First Baptist Church of Dallas, Texas, died in 2002, NPR’s Robert Seigel interviewed the director of the Criswell Foundation and aired a portion of Criswell’s 1988 vitriolic sermon against liberalism to the annual 3 Charles Kimball, interview by Terry Gross,
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