Molly Worthen on SBC Takeover, Francis Schaeffer, etc

[Stephen Fox]

http://www.salon.com/2013/11/02/how_the ... ern_times/

[Sandy]

[David Flick]

[William Thornton]

I will be glad to read the book, Stephen, if it makes it to my liberry. I'm not seeing much of anything new from the exerpt.

Conservative Southern Baptists organized and promoted their candidates, and won every election for decades. Old news.

[Ed Pettibone]

[William Thornton]

Yeah, I read the exerpt and the mention of the early iteration of MABTS.

[Sandy]

[Haruo]

[Sandy]

She doesn't particularly self-identify as an "ivory tower intellectual." However, she does use the term in describing how the conservatives perceived and described the educational elite in the SBC, and in her writing, perhaps subconsciously, or perhaps as a subtle suggestion, she doesn't take very long to establish her affinity and identity with that perspective. I believe she is identified, perhaps from her own self-description, as a religion expert and writer, and whenever "Christianity" is generically moved into the category of "religion," it is usually in an academic setting. She has a degree from Yale, which, IMHO, is an academic ivory tower if there ever was one.

She used the term "Calvinist" and "Reformed" interchangeably, it appears. I don't disagree with her point that, among Baptists, the influence of Calvinism in the nineteenth century, combined with earlier Anabaptist influences, produced preaching and teaching which rested on belief that the scriptures were inerrant and infallible, and were intended to be interpreted literally according to their historical context unless there was a context clue to indicate otherwise. And my perspective on that was heavily influenced by Dr. William Estep at Southwestern Seminary, a professor hired before the conservatives controlled the trustee board there. He actually connected Baptist acceptance of inerrancy to the influences of Menno Simons on John Smyth and Thomas Helwys.

[Stephen Fox]

And swallows a camel with his own faux intellectual rhetoric.

Look from the folksy Will Campbell to Chandler Davidson at Rice, the goose has been cooked. A Bircher Presller and a demagogue WA Criswell pulled one over on the people in the pew and then Karl Rove came along with Richard Land to polish it up.

Take a look at FBC Spartanburg, if you want to see a takeover Jewel; and it is nothing to be proud of.

[Stephen Fox]

or have a short memory as Mark Noll's review a couple years ago of Dochuk and Williams came to similar conclusion of Worthen, for all their convictions, the fundamentalism than Falwell took to the Birch Society with the Complicity of Billy Graham lacked "discernment." That is a mild conclusion for the Know Nothing party that swept up and eviscerated the SBC.

Noll's review is easily googled in the New Republic.

[William Thornton]

Try to be coherent, Stephen.

[Sandy]

I'm just waiting for him to offer a direct response, instead of returning to his recurring name drops and themes. He generated an interesting discussion with an excerpt from a slightly different perspective than we've seen in other re-hashes of the SBC controversy, and I've offered a couple of observations. Then there's a critical response from Stephen, but not even a hint of a reference to anything I said, just a replay of an old tape dropping old names, and another irrelevant and unconnected slam at Billy Graham and FBC Spartanburg. Look who he got in this scatter shot--Mark Noll, Richard Land, W.A. Criswell, the John Birch society and Paul Pressler, Will Campbell, Chandler Davidson, Billy Graham and of course FBC Spartanburg.

Have you called their receptionist again this week, Stephen?

[Stephen Fox]

Talked to receptionist Debbie this morn and Keith, an associate pastor earlier in the week. Debbie laughed when I quoted WA Criswell's "Chiggero" remark to the 56 joint session of the S.C. legislature. See History site on this board as I examine further the legacies of Billy Graham and WA Criswell.

Sandy and Wiliam would do much better with my posts if they would the requisite reading!

[Stephen Fox]

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/arc ... ts/282114/

[Dave Roberts]

For those of us who lived through the whole thing, another book isn't going to change much about my perceptions. After all, I was there.

[Tim Bonney]

[David Flick]

[Ed Pettibone]

[David Flick]

[Ed Pettibone]

[Tim Bonney]

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.

[Stephen Fox]

This is one of the most valuable books it appears recently to take fresh eyes, to take a ten year distance on the takeover. Apparently it emphasizes the Takeover as foundational for Karl Rove's agenda that has given a spark to the Tea PArty.

All the anecdotes, the personal testimonies are getting a little dated, but there are new insights, new ways to put the takeover in a bigger light and I think Worthen's book is gonna be quite valuable for that reason and worth consideration in full on its own merits.

I am now reading a book on cotton plantations and slavery in the 1840s in the Mississippi River Valley. Not the first book to be written on slavery and the antebellum cotton economy. But it is one of the most fascinating books I have read in the last 20 years. Maybe on the heels Of the movie 12 yrs a slave I have ears to hear, or new ears.

I just wish Flick and Thornton and Pettibone were open to some enlightenment on occasion. Too often they come across as not having any more to be gained just like the tobacco farmer in East N.C. who carried his Sunday School quarterly in his back left cheek overall pocket all week folded up!

[Sandy]

Did you take a close look at the excerpt you posted, Stephen? There are some things in there that go against the grain of what you have contended about what you refer to as the SBC "Takeover."

1. She points out that moderates were "loathe" to admit that, prior to 1979, the denomination concentrated power in the hands of a few leaders that did indeed take a "hierarchical" approach to denominational leadership, or at least, attempted to.
2. She makes a strong case for belief in "inerrancy" being more than just a recent phenomenon in Baptist life by linking it to the influence of reformed theology which was pervasive among Baptists prior to the 20th century. That flies in the face of the assertions of some that it's a relatively new teaching among Baptists.
3. She never uses the term "takeover," and in fact, provides a narrative of what occurred as a "groundswell of support" among laypeople, once they mobilized people for the cause. If you have two competing groups within the same organization, and one of them gets their people to the place where their votes create a change of leadership, it is not a takeover. Period.

[David Flick]