Sorry to be slow Ed getting back to your question about the SBC Takeover. I had a full schedule this weekend.
I was in High School in 1979 and a member of Kirkwood Baptist Church in the St. Louis area. For me the Takeover was part of the continued saga of being a progressive SBC congregation. Kirkwood had already been under criticism in the St. Louis Association for ordaining women deacons. And I began to hear information about the takeover from our pastor Dr. John H. Hewett.
I attended Missouri Baptist College (now University) from 1982-1986 and there was already pressure on the faculty from the Takeover crowd. I had a professor's contract not renewed because "he was perceived as not being conservative enough." Yep, "perceived."
I started at SBTS in 1986 and was in the last year or so of Roy Honeycutts time there. I saw the pressure and tactics being used by the Takeover crowd while there. I transferred to MBTS in 1987 to marry a young lady from Kansas City. I was at MBTS when I attended the SBC meeting in Las Vegas and I saw the microphones cut off on moderate speakers, I saw fundy messengers vote their children's ballots, and I saw the antics of Adrian Rogers who acted more like a king than a pastor during those sessions.
I was at MBTS when Paige Patterson came to preach at our chapel after he had been encouraging students to record and report on professor's theologies. I attended one of the early organizing meetings of the CBF in Indianapolis when a fundy reporting was reading our name tags and writing down our names so he could "report" us for our rebellious behavior. I double checked to make sure he could spell "Bonney" correctly.
I left the SBC in 1991 overcome with the politics, hypocrisy, and lack of Christian behavior I'd seen out of Baptist fundamentalist leaders in the last decade deciding I wanted nothing further to do with such a religous system.
I had my ordination recognized by the ABC/USA and found the denomination to be much more what I expected out of a Christian organization than what I'd experienced as a young person in the SBC.
I think that is a good place to stop as it summarizes my SBC journey. Why I'm no longer a Baptist is a whole other story.