"Smoking Gun Evidence" Surfaces in Lawsuit Against Southern Baptist Convention
Back in 1979, two men began a political movement within the Southern Baptist Convention, claimng to be "restoring the denomination to its conservative roots." Their primary goal was to require seminary professors and missionary personnel at the denomination's six theological schools and two mission boards, to align exactly with the doctrine of Biblical Inerrancy and Infallibility. This doctrine, which is the belief that the sixty-six books of the Protestant Bible are without error in their original manuscripts, and should always be interpreted in a literal context, is a core doctrine of what is known as Fundamentalism.
The two men who launched this political campaign within the denomination have since been exposed as having motives other than moving the denomination in a more conservative direction. They simply used it to point fingers, make accusations, get professors fired and replace the convention leadership serving on the seminary trustee boards and the denomination's executive committee with like minded conservatives, mainly those of the fundamentalist ilk.
One of the men was Paige Patterson. When he helped launch the movement in 1979, he was president of the broken down, financially strapped Criswell College, a tiny school affiliated with the First Baptist Church of Dallas. Patterson was the theological voice of the movement, using the term "liberal" to apply to anyone who disagreed with his view of just about anything. Once he achieved his goals within the denomination, he used the power and influence he had aquired to get himself into the presidencies of two seminaries, from which he expanded his own personal preaching ministry with private donors. During his tenure at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, in Ft. Worth, the enrollment declined and the school ran up a multi-million dollar deficit spending bill.
The other man, Paul Pressler, was an attorney, and an appeals court and circuit court judge in Texas. He was also a Republican mover and shaker, an influencer and kingmaker in the state GOP with ambitions to do the same on the national level. He was also a youth pastor and Sunday school teacher on the side, originally in a Presbyterian church in Houston, but later as a member of both First and Second Baptist Churches of Houston, large, mega churches with lots of wealthy, influential members.
On the surface, these men were perceived as "saviors" of the Southern Baptist Convention from creeping liberal theology. But their behavior out of the public spotlight shows a measure of hypocrisy that calls their credibility into question. During Patterson's tenure at Southeastern, he mishandled a reported sexual assault that eventually led to a lawsuit being filed, after Patterson's departure. At Southwestern, his hand-picked board of trustees never called him to account for deficit spending, including money spent on a complete renovation of the President's home, or for the declining enrollment which was significant over his term. And there were mishandled sexual abuse cases there as well, eventually causing even his stacked board to dismiss him.
Pressler used the theological controversy to bring the Southern Baptist Convention into a secular, political alignment with the Republican Party. Part of that alignment was to help Republican candidates for office and part of it was to boost his own standing in the party. He helped establish the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, a right wing lobby organization supported by denominational dollars, and had Richard Land, a Bush administration hold-over, made executive director.
Presssler just recently settled a lawsuit dating back to his time as a youth leader in an independent Presbyterian church in Houston, involving allegations of sexual molestation and abuse of a 14 year old who was a member of his church youth group. At the time the allegations first surfaced, Pressler left the church and joined First Baptist Church of Houston, where he became involved with Patterson in the resurgence movement. During his time at First Baptist, serving as a Sunday school teacher and deacon, church leaders were informed of at least one other incident involving abuse of a teenager. A letter from church leaders to Pressler has surfaced, in which they warned him that his behavior was wrong, removed him from his church positions and then swept it all under the rug by telling him that if word of such instances got out, it could ruin his reputation and the cause he was promoting in the denomination.
The lawsuit also turned up allegations from former male employees of the lawfirm in which he was a partner with Jared Woodfill, who is currently running as a Republican for a state legislative seat. And it turned up evidence that Woodfill and the firm were aware of the allegations.
Pressler has denied all of the allegations. The lawsuit, which expanded to include the Southern Baptist Convention's executive committee, because of evidence suggesting it was aware of the allegations against Pressler, and the Woodfill law firm, along with Pressler, was settled during the past month. The amounts were undisclosed, and there's been very little said about it. The Southern Baptist Convention's executive committee is already in a complicated mess over years of reported sexual abuse by clergy within its churches, reported to them, and about which they did nothing. Woodfill is running for the state legislature and doesn't need the publicity. Pressler, at this point, is 93 years old, protected by statutes of limitation and no longer has any role in the Southern Baptist Convention.
But this is typical Republican modus operandi. It's become standard operating procedure since Trump first ran for the White House in 2016. It undermines the credibility of the Southern Baptists' "Conservative Resurgence." How can men lead a spiritual movement if they're not spiritual? There is no evidence from the inerrant, infallible Bible to support the statement that God sometimes uses evil men to achieve his purposes. Not in this way, he doesn't. Denominational leaders remain silent, avoiding talking about either man at all, in any setting, simply ignoring what they did and the fact that it calls their own credibility into question and that makes them hypocrites.
And it certainly puts a context on how it is that Christians of this particular ilk can give their political support to a man like Trump, whose worldly, evil lifestyle is the exact opposite of what they claim to preach. No matter what terms are used, there is no justification for a person who is truly Christian, by that definition within an evangelical context, to support Trump.
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