This is the Southern Baptist Apocalypse
Unless you're involved in Texas Republican politics, or in denominational politics in the Southern Baptist Convention starting around 1979, the name Paul Pressler might not mean anything to you. He's one of those southern "Good ole boys", an attorney who works to get his fingers in every pie, so to speak, the guy who can't ever win elected office, but manages to make his way into appointed, and self-appointed positions of authority for his own benefit.
Pressler, along with Paige Patterson, who was President of Criswell College, a Bible and preacher training school belonging to the First Baptist Church of Dallas, where W. A. Criswell was pastor at the time, are known for figuring out how to use the Southern Baptist Convention's officer election process, and the committee appointment powers that went with the office of President, to turn the leadership of the denomination over to fundamentalists, a movement known as the "Conservative Resurgence" in the Southern Baptist Convention.
Convinced that liberals were in control of the six theological seminaries where ministers were trained, and working to make the theology of the denomination much more liberal, along the lines of denominations like the Episcopal Church and the Disciples of Christ, Pressler and Patterson worked to use their influence, and the relationships they built to well known media preachers and mega-church pastors to get enough messengers to conventions where officers were elected. By getting a series of denominational presidents elected who were committed to appointing only conservatives to the committee that nominated and appointed the trustees who ran the denomination's institutions, including the seminaries and mission boards, they could ensure conservative control.
The turn toward more conservative theology had underlying motives. It was also to align the convention politically with the far right. Paul Pressler was also a big time Republican operative in Texas, sitting on the bench as a district judge and then as a justice on the 14th district court of appeals in Texas, both positions requiring appointment by the Republican politicians in the state. Pressler also served as President of the Council for National Policy, a networking group for proponents of Christian nationalism that started during the Reagan administration. He, along with Richard Land, the first executive director of the Southern Baptist Convention's Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, were instrumental in pushing right wing politics into the Southern Baptist Convention, and aligning the denomination with the Republican party.
That's who Paul Pressler is, the subject of the article linked above from the Texas Tribune.
As it turns out, both of the "architects" of the Southern Baptist conservative resurgence have had their reputations tarnished by sexual abuse scandals. Pressler, as referenced in the Tribune article, has been accused of six different incidents involving males from the churches where he served as a volunteer youth minister, or employees of his law firm (see the Texas Tribune story here). Patterson, as President of two of the denomination's theological seminaries, Southeastern in Wake Forest, North Carolina, and Southwestern in Ft. Worth, Texas, failed to properly handle sexual abuse cases committed by male students against female students, basically letting the perpetrators off the hook and telling the female victims to forgive and forget.
These are not "drag queens," or transgendered persons, gays or lesbians from the political left. These are leaders directly involved in orchestrating the marriage between far right wing Republican politics and conservative, fundamentalist Evangelicalism. What they claimed to be doing was restoring the Southern Baptist Convention to its historic, conservative roots. What they were really doing was using the denomination to advance a right wing political agenda and to feather their own nests. And they determined that it was better to use political power to achieve their goals, rather than having faith in the spiritual power of God. Their own worldliness got the better of them.
The denomination itself is paying quite a price for its sins. The sexual abuse scandal, which an investigation by the Houston Chronicle and San Antonio Express-News uncovered, keeps coming to the surface, growing and getting bigger as time goes by. Each of the last three years, just prior to the annual convention meeting, the statistical report from the convention has shown a 400,000 decrease in overall church membership.
Things are not always as they seem. Moral failure doesn't appear to be the exclusive domain of the far left, does it?
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