Western Kentucky University TopSCHOLAR® Masters Theses & Specialist Projects Graduate School Spring 2017 The outheS rn Baptist Convention “Crisis” in Context: Southern Baptist Conservatism and the Rise of the Religious Right Austin R. Biggs Western Kentucky University, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: http://digitalcommons.wku.edu/theses Part of the Christianity Commons, Cultural History Commons, History of Religion Commons, and the New Religious Movements Commons Recommended Citation Biggs, Austin R., "The outheS rn Baptist Convention “Crisis” in Context: Southern Baptist Conservatism and the Rise of the Religious Right" (2017). Masters Theses & Specialist Projects. Paper 1967. http://digitalcommons.wku.edu/theses/1967 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by TopSCHOLAR®. It has been accepted for inclusion in Masters Theses & Specialist Projects by an authorized administrator of TopSCHOLAR®. For more information, please contact [email protected]. THE SOUTHERN BAPTIST CONVENTION “CRISIS” IN CONTEXT: SOUTHERN BAPTIST CONSERVATISM AND THE RISE OF THE RELIGIOUS RIGHT A Thesis Presented to The Faculty of the Department of History Western Kentucky University Bowling Green, Kentucky In Partial Fulfillment Of the Requirements for the Degree Master of Arts By Austin R. Biggs May 2017 THE SOUTHERN BAPTIST CONVENTION “CRISIS” IN CONTEXT: SOUTHERN BAPTIST CONSERVATISM AND THE RISE OF THE RELIGIOUS RIGHT Dean, Graduate School Date ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS There are several people who, without their assistance and support, this project would not have been possible. I would first like to thank my thesis committee. I would like to thank my committee chair, Dr. Tamara Van Dyken. It was in her History of Religion in America course that I stumbled across this topic and she has provided me with vital guidance and support from the very beginning. I would also like to thank the two readers on my committee, Dr. Carol Crowe-Carraco and Dr. Patricia Minter. Their revisions, in addition to various conversations on the direction of my research and writing, enabled me to turn the mass of facts and ideas swirling around in my head into a coherent final work. I would also be remiss if I did not thank Kaylie Durham for agreeing to the massive undertaking of proofreading my work. Without her help, my thesis would not only lack polish, but, at times, would prove difficult to decipher. Additionally, I would like to thank those that assisted me in my research. I would like to thank Janet Haynes for her help in coordinating my research trips. My archival research would have been impossible without the aid of the friendly staffs of the Southern Baptist Historical Library and Archives and Southern Baptist Theological Seminary Library and Archives. At the SBHLA, I would to thank Bill Sumners and Dr. Taffey Hall. Although my trips lacked any regularity, each time I visited they provided me with indispensable help and guidance. Over the course of the last year, they pointed me to many sources, primary and secondary, that would form the foundations of this thesis. At Southern Seminary, I would like to thank Adam Winters. During my trip to the archives at Southern, he provided me with tremendous support. In addition to providing me with iii materials over and above what I request of him, discussions with him about the project and how Southern fit into the narrative proved quite helpful. Finally, I would like to thank those who were not directly involved with the project, but provided me with the support I needed to carry it out. I am thankful for the efforts of my Director of Graduate Studies, Dr. Marko Dumancic, in assuring that I was on track with the project and for preparing me for my defense. I am grateful for the support of my fellow graduate assistants: Shelley Spalding, Sean Jacobson, and Kyle Coates. Their commiseration, discussion, and encouragement helped carry me through the trials and tribulations of this project. I am also indebted to my family and friends for innumerous instances of material support, encouragement, and, at times, much needed distraction. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract……………………………………………………………………….vi Chapter One- Introduction……………………………………………………..1 Chapter Two- Converging Narratives: The Southern Baptist Convention and Modern American Conservatism……………………………………………..18 Chapter Three- A Collision of Worldviews: The Southern Baptist Convention “In Crisis”………………………………………………………………………...58 Chapter Four- Conserving the Family: How “Family Values” Reshaped the Southern Baptist Convention…………………………………………………85 Chapter Five- The Southern Baptist Convention as the Religious Right: Uncertainty Ahead?........................................................................................113 Bibliography………………………………………………………………...126 v THE SOUTHERN BAPTIST CONVENTION “CRISIS” IN CONTEXT: SOUTHERN BAPTIST CONSERVATIVES AND THE RISE OF THE RELIGIOUS RIGHT Austin Biggs May 2017 132 Pages Directed by: Tamara Van Dyken, Patricia Minter, and Carol Crowe-Carraco Department of History Western Kentucky University From the late 1970s through the early 1990s, a minority conservative faction took over the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC). This project seeks to answer the questions of how a fringe minority within the nation’s largest Protestant denomination could undertake such a feat and why they chose to do so. The framework through which this work analyzes these questions is one of competing worldviews that emerged within the SBC in response to decades of societal shifts and denominational transformations in the post-World War II era. To place the events of the Southern Baptist “crisis” within this framework, this study seeks to refute the prevailing notion put forth in earlier works that the takeover was an in-house event, driven purely by doctrinal disputes between conservative Southern Baptists and SBC leadership. Illustrating the differences between rhetoric and action on both sides of this intra-denominational conflict, this work seeks to provide perspective to the narrative of the Southern Baptist “crisis” by asserting that the worldviews guiding the opposing factions diverged not only on doctrine, but culture and politics as well. Placing the events of the “crisis” within the context of broader worldviews, this project highlights and examines the intertwined nature of religion, culture, and politics in modern American society. vi CHAPTER ONE Introduction 1 In the world from which they came, the distinction [between religion and politics] in fact was a false one: as custodians of their culture, evangelicals were expected to govern with a Christian conscience and vote in accordance with core Christian values. Now, in a society like California’s, derailed, in their minds, by progressive thinking, the need for an engaged Christian Citizenry seemed all the more urgent. – Darren Dochuk, From Bible Belt to Sunbelt (2011) The story of the Southern Baptist ‘Crisis’, alternately referred to as a controversy, takeover, or resurgence depending on the allegiances of the person that you are talking to, is one that is little known in today’s Southern Baptist Convention (SBC). The struggle that consumed the Southern Baptist Convention through the entire decade of the 1980s no longer pervades the collective memory of its members. Over three decades have now passed and with it new generations of Southern Baptists have come of age without having the slightest clue as to what went on in those days. Being in my early twenties as I write this, I belong to these younger generations. Although I have family members who work at Lifeway (the denomination’s book store and publishing arm) and attended a rural Southern Baptist church regularly into my college years, it was not until graduate school that I stumbled across the event in my reading. That such a major event in the history of the denomination could occur within the lifetime of people that I knew and yet never be discussed perplexed me. I began to ask questions such as: Why had no one ever mentioned this controversy even in passing? What was the denomination like before this ‘conservative take over’? How has their victory changed the denomination? Why did these ‘conservatives’ feel the need to take over? To answer these questions, I did what any graduate student would do: I wrote a research paper on it for my class. Through that project I was able to answer many of my questions, but some still evaded me. Although the event seemed to have fallen out the 2 collective memory of Southern Baptists, those few that wrote about the controversy, despite differing in opinion on many things depending on their “side,” had two common conclusions: that the Conservatives had successfully taken over the denomination and that the struggle was one that was entirely contained within the denomination. What bothered me the most was that of the motivation behind the “conservative” movement. The answer that came up during my research was that the divide had been over doctrine. Knowing that Baptists were traditionally congregational, meaning that each individual church is seen as its own autonomous body, this explanation did not make sense. If what one church believed did not come to bear on what another one did, then why would these “conservatives” go through the trouble of organizing themselves and undertaking a ten- year plan of denominational conquest? The question of how this group of “conservatives” was able to pull off their denominational coup d’état evaded me in a similar way. It is well documented that the group utilized Paul Pressler and Paige Patterson’s plan to seize control via the political machinery of the denomination, but how they were able to carry out their plan was not adequately explained. The historiography points to the “conservatives’” packing of the conventions and utilizing parliamentary procedure (sometimes unfairly) to carry out their plan, but they do not discuss how they were able to accomplish even those things. How were they able to mobilize enough people to flood the annual conventions and where did their use of political tactics come from in a traditionally non-political denomination? My attempts to answer these questions led me to this project.