Who Are the True Baptists? The Conservative Resurgence and the Infl uence of Moderate Views of Baptist Identity1 Gregory A. Wills Gregory A. Wills is Professor of In the inerrancy controversy that shook true Baptists did not exclude their fellow Church History and Director of the the Southern Baptist Convention begin- Baptists for divergent views of what the Center for the Study of the Southern ning in 1979, Southern Baptists divided Bible taught. The denomination should Baptist Convention at The Southern over what it meant to be a Baptist. When not require seminary professors to believe Baptist Theological Seminary. He is the Southern Baptist leaders polarized amid some prescribed set of dogmas in order to author of the highly acclaimed Demo- the conservative effort to make belief in serve the denomination, for that would cratic Religion: Freedom, Authority and inerrancy a condition of denominational infringe their freedom. When conserva- Church Discipline in the Baptist South, service, their posture toward the inerrancy tives argued that seminary professors 1785-1900 (Oxford University Press, initiative derived in large measure from must be committed to scripture truth, 1997). their understanding of Baptist identity. moderates effectively asked, “What is Conservatives believed that moderates truth?” Truth, they held, was a matter had departed from the Baptist tradition of individual interpretation. To exclude and moderates felt the same way about professors for divergent interpretations conservatives. Each party in the confl ict sincerely held would be un-Baptistic. The claimed to be true Baptists and claimed true Baptist tradition, moderates said, the imprimatur of Baptist tradition. upheld individual freedom as the central Conservatives believed that the true Baptist commitment. Baptist tradition consisted in maintaining Conservatives and moderates thus New Testament faith and practice. They responded differently to the question of felt that they were responsible therefore the legitimacy of liberal professors based to exclude false teaching. Those teachers on sharply different views of what it and denominational leaders who held meant to be a Baptist. But their views of liberal doctrines departed from New Baptist identity had broader ramifi cations. Testament faith and practice. By their It undergirded their responses to other departure from the Baptist tradition they issues of controversy in the denomina- betrayed the trust of the denomination tion, from the ordination of women as and relinquished their claim to their pastors to affiliation with the Baptist position. Sincere commitment to the tradi- World Alliance. It informed their views tional Baptist understanding of scriptural of the church, of the faith, and of denomi- teaching, conservatives insisted, should nationalism. be a condition of service in positions of Conservatives held that being Baptist denominational service. meant commitment to right doctrine and Moderates held, on the contrary, that scriptural church order as the basis of 18 denominational unity, Baptist identity, pointedly, conservatives insisted that pro- and cooperative endeavors. They held fessors in Baptist colleges and seminaries that adherence to scriptural faith and should believe and teach in accordance practice was a condition of fellowship and with the views of Bible truth held by the denominational leadership. Conservatives churches. Conservatives held that many held that this was at the center of Baptist professors held liberal or neo-orthodox identity. It served as a fundamental pre- views, starting from a rejection of iner- supposition of the conservative position. rancy and culminating in such errors Moderate leaders argued on the con- as the denial of the deity of Christ, the trary that the Baptist tradition consisted rejection of his substitutionary atonement, in individual freedom. They expressed or opposition to salvation exclusively it variously as commitment to soul com- through faith in Christ. petence, religious freedom, liberty of Moderates responded in two ways. conscience, the priesthood of the believer, They first denied that there were any regenerate church membership, and no liberals teaching in the seminaries. In creed but the Bible. But at the bottom of one of the most remarkable statements each of these expressions, as moderate by a moderate leader, Roy Honeycutt, leaders explained it, was commitment to the president of The Southern Baptist the sanctity of individual freedom. This Theological Seminary, stated in his 1984 was a legacy of liberalism or modernism. convocation address that “one would be at Modernism sought to adapt Christian- a loss to discover a classical liberal among ity to Darwinism and the naturalistic Southern Baptists, whether in the pulpit historical criticism of the Bible. Since or classroom, college or seminary.” The the adaptation would require substan- professors were committed to the church tial redefi nition of traditional Christian and held the Bible in esteem, moderates beliefs, modernists argued for a view of argued, and therefore were not liberals. true Christianity that included toleration Conservative leaders found the denials of divergent interpretations of scripture. implausible. Although most professors They placed the meaning of Christianity were careful to keep their errors hidden in some non-doctrinal essence and went from view, conservatives readily identi- about adjusting traditional doctrines to fied a number of liberals in the class- the new knowledge. Modernist Baptists rooms. And many rank-and-fi le Southern developed their view of Baptist identity Baptists did not fi nd Honeycutt’s denials as part of this development. credible either. Many Baptists had sat in During the inerrancy controversy, classrooms with these professors and had moderates bristled at the conservatives’ heard the liberal teaching fi rst hand.2 premise that authentic Baptist identity Moderates argued second that even included commitment to historic Baptist if there were liberal professors, it was orthodoxy. Conservatives promoted com- un-Baptistic to deprive them of their mitment to inerrancy and the utility of positions on account of their beliefs. confessions because they believed that Roy Honeycutt explained the moderate scriptural faith and practice formed the view of true Baptist identity in the 1984 basis for denominational cooperation convocation address in which he called and the boundaries of fellowship. Most moderates to wage “holy war” against the 19 conservatives. He explained that authen- naries, many Baptists voiced objections. tic Baptists would not exclude any person Even before the Second World War many of good will. (Since conservatives wanted Southern Baptist colleges experienced to exclude sincere Baptists based on controversy over professors suspected doctrine, they were not persons of good of modernism, some of whom they dis- will.) The Baptist tradition stood on one missed after pastors and lay members conviction above all others: the individual demanded their removal. W. L. Poteat, is free. And commitment to individual president of Wake Forest College and the freedom meant “commitment to authentic most prominent liberal among Southern pluralism.” Honeycutt concluded then Baptists, overcame two efforts to oust him. that “God calls us to exclude no one, but to Others similarly survived the campaigns include everyone” committed to coopera- against them. Baylor, Furman, William tive missions. This pluralism, he claimed, Jewell, Mercer, Limestone all dismissed was the basis of Baptist identity and “has professors, as did the New Orleans Bap- characterized our denomination during tist Bible Institute (now the New Orleans its entire history.”3 Baptist Theological Seminary).5 In fact, neither progressive nor tradi- The progressive trend continued after tional Baptists had ever practiced that the war. By the 1950s most Southern kind of inclusion. In the twentieth cen- Baptists were convinced of the spread of tury progressive Southern Baptist lead- liberalism in the colleges and seminar- ers aspired to wide inclusion, but even ies and became increasingly vocal when the most progressive denominational denominational leaders responded to seminaries and colleges operated within their demands for the expulsion of liberal their own theological boundaries. They professors with denials and temporiz- did not welcome inerrantists and at times ing. In 1960 Southern Baptist Convention dismissed progressives, however reluc- president Ramsey Pollard represented tantly. And before the twentieth century the views of most Baptists when from Southern Baptists generally maintained the platform of the annual meeting he defi nite boundaries of faith and practice insisted that the denomination’s colleges in their institutions at various levels of and seminaries should purge themselves denominational life. Baptist churches of all liberal professors. Herschel Hobbs, practiced a regular church discipline who succeeded Pollard as convention that expelled unrepentant members president, felt assured that the “vast who embraced fundamental doctrinal majority” of Southern Baptists supported errors. Baptist associations similarly Pollard’s demand. Hobbs spoke for them expelled from fellowship any churches when he stated that “any man who aspires that departed from scriptural faith and to teach either in our Christian colleges practice. This traditional commitment to or seminaries should either stay within truth endured in the twentieth century the ‘pasture’ of what Southern