In the April issue of Baptists Today Bruce Gourley has a piece on 30 key moments in the last 30 years of Baptists Today.
It is an interesting piece and well done.
But not to toot my own horn I would add number 31, The October 1988 issue of Baptists Today where I had a full page article on Pressler and the Religious Right; and mentioned the rumor the Jesse Helms organization had contributed in the neighborhood of 100 thou to the fundy takeover.
I confronted Pressler about it in the newsroom in San Antonio in 1988.
A couple key points they seem to escape the emphasis of Gourley and his mentor Buddy Shurden at Mercer in their histories of the Takeover.
Pressler's family is well rooted in the right wing politics of the Houston Oil Community and its various shadows and connections to the John Birch Society and other emanences of the Far Right.
Pressler by all accounts was livid at Jimmy Allen and James Dunn role in helping Jimmy Carter in the Texas Primary of 76; and Some reports have Pressler's family at odds with Carlyle Marney when Marney was in Austin in mid 50's.
Carter hit the oil industry with a windfall profits tax in 78. Pressler was already rollin in the SBC but went full throttle from then on and packed James Dunn's board with all kind of Jesse Helms operatives and Birchers he could find.
Richard Land and now Russ Moore's careers benefitted from all this.
From Dan Williams God's Own Party, to Mark Noll at Notre Dame with a spattering of Chandler Davidson at Rice; Ellen Rosenberg of SBC in Transition; this is the key element in the SBC Takeover; but you wouldn't know it from Gourley's 30 moments in this official celebration of 30 years of Baps Today.