Baptist News Global: Dragging the SBC into Court drags truth into light
Texas Baptist Standard: Pressler a "Monster" and a "Predator"
Watergate is the standard used to measure the lowest point of corruption in American politics, at least up to this point. It's about to be surpassed by multiple scandals of the Trump administration, which are going to bring convictions over the next few months, but right now, that's the standard for measuring political corruption.
Currently, in the Southern Baptist Convention, there's a scandal going on that rivals the corruption of Watergate. It's spectacular in the dishonesty, personal ambition and political corruption taking place because it is happening among a Christian denomination that brags about its theology and doctrine and the moral purity and piety which it uses to promote itself. Blatant hypocrisy can be quite a contrast to sincere faith.
The Conservative Resurgence in the Southern Baptist Convention
Here's a little background on what's going on.
In 1979, a movement that became known as the "Conservative Resurgence" began in the Southern Baptist Convention. Ostensibly, the aim of this movement was to stop the leftward drift of the denomination's theological schools and mission boards by electing officers committed to the Doctrine of Biblical Authority. This doctrine states that the sixty-six books of the Protestant Bible are truth, without any mixture of error, and are infallible and the sole authority for all matters of faith and practice. The ten year struggle for control of the convention's trustee boards and leadership committees was engineered by two men given credit for being its "architects."
Dr. Paige Patterson, then president of Criswell College, a small, financially strapped Bible college connected to First Baptist Church of Dallas, was the theological and doctrinal leader of the resurgence. His aim was to expose seminary professors who were undermining, in his mind, the doctrine of Biblical Authority, teaching that the Biblical text was inaccurate, and contained human error. Paul Pressler, an attorney and Texas appeals court justice, was the political organizer of the movement, figuring out how to use the convention's rules of order to get nominees on committees and trustee boards committed to their position. Pressler was a long-time operative in the GOP, someone whose endorsement was sought by candidates running for public office in Texas, such as Senator Ted Cruz.
From 1979 to 1989, these two men orchestrated the recruitment and seating of messengers to annual meetings of the Southern Baptist Convention who would be favorable to their desire to serve as officers, and who would be motivated by their fear of "creeping liberalism" into the curriculum and teaching of the seminaries. The issue was really a clash between the denomination's academic elite and the church members in the pew, Baptists from the south who were mistrustful of education and seminaries and academic elites. Over a decade, the Conservative Resurgence succeeded in putting a majority of fundamentalists on trustee boards of SBC entities and on the Executive Committee, and changing the entire position of the convention.
Personal Agendas Were a Factor
While using inerrancy as a means to motivate churches to get involved and send messengers to the convention meetings, both Patterson and Pressler used the personal influence and power they got by doing this to feather their own nests. There are those, this author included, who don't believe that either men really cared much about the Bible as they did about themselves and their career, and the salary they could get from the SBC.
Patterson wrote letters, called in favors, stacked trustee boards and got himself elevated from broken down Criswell College to the Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary as its President, and then, to the prize he wanted, the presidency of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, his alma mater and at the time, the largest, most influential of all six of the SBC's theological schools. Pressler, the Republican party connection, worked to connect the SBC to the GOP, mainly by changing its public affairs commission, a small, single staff office known as the Christian Life Commission, into the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, and used his influence to bring in a former Bush administration wannabe, Richard Land, as its executive director.
Against the Backdrop of a Sexual Abuse Scandal in the SBC
Patterson was ousted as president of Southwestern in May of 2018 for mishandling a reported rape which took place on the campus at Southeastern Seminary during Patterson's tenure there, in 2003. Initially, after determining that the investigation into the rape, conducted by Patterson, was mishandled, he was offered a position as President Emeritus and Theologian-in-Residence at Southwestern in exchange for stepping down from the Presidency. But after information from the internal investigation was given to trustees, they immediately terminated his employment.
Issues surrounding Pressler are serious, according to one attorney for the Southern Baptist Convention, and have been occurring all through the time he was considered one of the architects of the conservative resurgence. The Texas Baptist Standard link to the comments made on social media by Attorney Gene Besen provides background information on the lawsuit brought against Pressler, his law partner Jared Woodfill, who is currently a Republican candidate for a Texas house seat, and the Executive Committee of the Southern Baptist Convention. The defendants all recently agreed to a settlement of an undisclosed amount on behalf of the plaintiff. Pressler denies any wrongdoing.
Critics of the conservative resurgence who have always claimed that it was more about personal ambition than about Biblical fidelity have had their criticism validated by these events. And they have come along in the wake of a sexual abuse scandal, uncovered and reported by The Houston Chronicle in June of 2019, just prior to an annual meeting of the SBC that is causing a lot of controversy regarding how to handle the revelations of abuse, prevent further abuse, censure or dismiss churches that refuse to cooperate in getting rid of abusive clergy, covering up cases that were reported to the Executive Committee as a result of local church autonomy, and ministering to the victims of abuse and their families. Resistance to even acknowledging the problem, much less dealing with it, is finding ways to express itself in every annual meeting.
And to go along with all of this, the Southern Baptist Convention has decided this is the time to come down hard on churches which have women serving in leadership positions on their staff, using the word "pastor" as part of their job title. So while there's a monumental fight and a blame game going on over the unresolved sexual abuse issue, the SBC has chosen this time to assert its complementarian beliefs that only men can be elders or pastors in local churches.
I can certainly see why this denomination has a credibility problem. This is what happens, when far right wing politics blends with fundamentalist religion.
So What Happens?
Ultimately, mixing conservative and fundamentalist religion with far right wing politics produces dangerous extremism. People elevate their passion and feelings above the rule of law, considering it an illegitimate barrier to their freedom which permits them to fight against the freedom and personal rights of others who don't share similar convictions. This skews any conviction of what is right and wrong, and it undermines the value of human life which becomes subject to someone's personal determination of "righteousness." It turns people into crusaders for God's vengeance against his enemies, while he holds their coattails and cheers them on. That's a perspective that is both oppositional to American values of freedom and democracy, and Christian values of the sanctity of every human life.
The Southern Baptist Convention is on the verge of losing its title as "The largest Protestant denomination in the United States." Since it's membership peaked in 2006, it has lost 2.8 million members, almost a fourth of its total, and it has lost 1.8 million in its weekly worship attendance which is over a fourth of the total. The vast majority of these losses, which have climbed into the 400,000 range per year, have occurred since 2015. And the public message that gets put out, after all of the debates, is not concern for the hundreds of women who have been abused because they trusted someone in their church, but is a whine over the money this is costing the executive committee.
This is the Achilles heel of this largest of Evangelical denominations. The lack of sincerity of leadership that appears to be more interested in power and authority than in restoring the cooperative missions and ministry aims of the denomination is visible, and people are leaving because of it. Baptisms, representing the number of people who profess to be converted to Christianity, and which have always been a measure of the relative health of the denomination as a whole, are experiencing all time lows. The denomination is at risk of fragmenting even further, splintering, splitting or completely dissolving, and that's a fact that is quite visible.
This is also bound to have a negative effect on right wing political support. Not only have the numbers declined, which means less votes from white Evangelicals for right wing candidates, but the erosion of trust has the effect of rubbing off on candidates who have been somewhat extreme in their views, and that means a loss of marginal support as well. Pressler's work to tie the SBC to the GOP now has negative consequences as the SBC's reputation is tarnished. And on top of everything else that has gone on, the denomination is poised to approve an amendment to its constitution this summer which, if it passes, would lead to the expulsion of churches who have women serving in vocational ministry. This is something which has already led to churches disaffiliating with the convention, and inevitably will lead to even more defections.
Conservativism is regressive, resolves nothing, and leads to failure. Here is an egregious example of that, in America's largest Protestant denomination.
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