Paige Patterson’s plan to make the SBC more fundamentalist
It all started with a meeting over fancy donuts. Paige Patterson and a friend met together to plot the fundamentalist takeover of the Southern Baptist Convention. Before that time, the SBC had been more theologically diverse (though, not necessarily racially diverse due to its founding as a group that desired slavery). But if this group of fundamentalists was going to get a whole denomination to turn their way, they’d have to be clever. It would take time.
Use the system against itself
Their scheme involved getting fundies elected into high office who could then turn committees and sub-committees to their side. It’s a story of a minority group gaining control of a large organization, and steering it toward their vision of what it means to be a Christian.
Sources
- The Fundamentalist Takeover of the Southern Baptist Convention – by Rob James, Gary Leazer
- The Evangelicals by Frances Fitzgerald
- Christianity Today article about Paige Patterson’s allegations
- Religion News article about Patterson
- Tennesseean article about Patterson
- Article about early Baptists
- Church History in Plain Language by Bruce Shelley
- Cornell’s article about the separation of church and state
- Frances Shaeffer and the Shaping of Evangelical America by Barry Hankins
- Johnson Archives about SBC
- Johnson Archives SBC Resolutions
- Certified Pastry Aficianatro article about beignets
Discussion Questions
- The episode starts with a discussion of accusations about Paige Patterson. What was your reaction to that story and why?
- Is it possible for a spouse to be a part of the salvation of their husband or wife? Where are the lines?
- When were you baptized? Did you do it as an adult, child, or both? Why?
- What do you think is the “right” way to baptize someone? Why?
- What are your thoughts on inerrancy?
Transcript: (note: may not completely match the final edited version)
This episode is part of a long series exploring how some evangelicals tied themselves to the Republican Party. It can stand on its own, but when you’re done go back and start at the beginning of season 6. In the first few minutes of this show, we’re going to bring up the subject of abuse. It won’t be graphic, but it may not be appropriate for all audiences. You can skip the first 3-4 minutes if you want to get around it. This is The Fundamentalist Takeover of the Southern Baptist Convention.
In 2018, over 2,000 women in the Southern Baptist Convention signed a letter written to the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary The letter included this passage:
LETTER: “The Southern Baptist Convention cannot allow the biblical view of leadership to be misused in such a way that a leader with an unbiblical view of authority, womanhood, and sexuality be allowed to continue in leadership.”2
It was written in response to an audio clip from 2000, where, during what appears to be a question and answer segment, Paige Patterson, former president of the SBC, gave advice for women facing abuse. This is where the story gets a bit graphic. He offers an example of advice he gave in a church where he once served.
[get down]
The woman followed his advice. Then, on Sunday she came up to him with two black eyes. Obviously, her husband had beaten her again. She said to Patterson, “I hope you’re happy.”
[did to her]
It’s an ugly story. Paige Patterson seems fixated on the husband’s salvation. What he glosses over is the abuse. What that woman endured. There is a lack of reporting to the authorities, confrontation of the abuser, or the option of a safe place to stay. If you want to save a guy’s soul, why not go to him instead of letting him beat his wife first? By the way, interesting tie-in, Patterson delivered the opening speech at the Pro-Family, Pro-Life Rally in Houston, TX in 1977. The rally that stood in opposition to the National Women’s Conference. Remember that? Sadly, it makes one reconsider that event in new light. Patterson preaching against feminism, while across town women gathered to argue for their rights. Only for him to be brought down decades later by an issue that disproportionately affects women.
In 2018, the media was replete with stories of women who came forward. People and organizations of all kinds were called to reckon with the history of abuse in the United States. But there was more. According to Christianity Today:
CT: “Paige Patterson lied to the board of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary about a rape allegation that came before him at another seminary, withheld documents from his previous presidency, and referenced attempting to “break down” the victim of a more recent rape incident.”
Some charges were dismissed. But the story had particular resonance. Patterson was more than just the head of a seminary. A national figure. He, along with others, was an architect of the fundamentalist takeover of the Southern Baptist Convention. A move that drowned out moderate voices and boosted fundamentalists into power. No small thing for the largest Protestant denomination in the United States.
This is an important story for us to cover as we catalog how some evangelicals in the US tied themselves to the Republican Party. It wasn’t just the SBC. Rather than go denomination by denomination, I thought it best to focus on just one. This move was part of a national trend as theology shifted toward the conservative, often incorporating political ideologies. It started in 1979 and brought with it some lasting changes just one year before the election of Ronald Reagan. What began with Patterson and another man grew into an institutional takeover, and, some might say, left a black eye on the Southern Baptist Convention.
You’re listening to the show that uses journalistic tools to look inside the Christian Church. We press pause on the culture wars in order to explore how we got here and how we can do better. I’m Chris Staron. This is Truce.
It’s rare to find a funny line in the history books I use for this show. As an improv comedian, I appreciate one when I read it. There is a small book I purchased, thanks to patrons, called The Fundamentalist Takeover in the Southern Baptist Convention. The introduction starts with a brief rundown of the condition of the SBC before it was taken over by fundamentalists in the late 1970s. It was moderate. Then the fundies made this claim: that the seminaries and denominational agencies were being overrun with liberals. 5
Not like… you know, we want national healthcare liberals, theological liberals. It’s the whole reason fundamentalism became a thing in the early 1900s. Because there were people who were saying, “the miraculous parts of the Bible aren’t real” or “we believe Jesus was a good man, but not God,” or even “there are more ways to God than just through Jesus.”6 We covered this in-depth last season. I called them by another name: modernists.
When the fundies ramped things up in the 1970s, they trotted out that old chestnut: that modernists are coming. This is where the book features its sick burn.
SBC: “If a lion that ate liberals was set loose in Southern Baptist institutions prior to the fundamentalist takeover, he would have soon starved to death.”
It’s funny, right? There really wasn’t a problem with modernist theology in the SBC. But their concerns were enough of a boogeyman to open the gates and allow the fundamentalists to take over. Before we get there… a little history lesson. First… some music.
(old timey music)
King James the I of England. His reign was after the Protestant Reformation, there have already been wars over religion. And James championed this idea that was already fashionable among rulers: that they get their power not from the people, but from God.8 Some people protested, and for their efforts, died in prison, or were hanged, drawn and quartered… nasty stuff.9
These people were called “separatists”, which will be confusing later because the term came to mean something else. Religious liberty was the key issue. When the movement spread to the colonies on North America, one liberty they sought was to baptize adults.
Adult baptism. It’s something we take for granted here because it’s totally legal here and normal in a lot of churches. Here is me baptizing a young man in my church last year…
(clip)
Can you tell I was emotional? What gave it away?
Some churches baptize people when they are babies. (baby crying). It’s how they did it in King James’ time, sometimes as a way to declare the church’s power over a person from birth. Some Christians, though, argued that baptism was meant for people who made a personal commitment to Christ. Like my friend did. Babies can’t do that. This idea, though, was considered in some places in the colonies, to be blasphemous. A capital offense. So, yeah, life wasn’t much better for Baptists in the colonies than it had been for their separatist elders back in England.
This persecution brings us to one of the most famous letter exchanges of the post-Revolution era. That of Thomas Jefferson and the Danbury Baptist Association of Connecticut. Now we need some different music. (Music) What is that? A flute or a fife? I could never tell.
The First Amendment had already been added, limiting the power of the government to respect one national religion. But some states like Connecticut and Massachusetts dug in with the Congregational denomination. They didn’t force people to attend, but they enjoyed taxpayer money, and the muckety mucks often favored it.
The Danbury Baptists sent new president Thomas Jefferson a letter asking him to encourage laws. He was president, not a legislator, but he did send a response, including this famous passage:
JEFFERSON: “Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between a man and his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legislative powers of government reach actions only and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature would “make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,” thus building a wall of separation between Church and State.”
The origins of separation predate the letter and are an example of Jefferson being influenced by… the Enlightenment. Despite what Frances Schaeffer claimed. The phrase “building a wall of separation between Church and State” is all Jefferson. And who wanted it??? Baptists. Why? Because they had long been persecuted for their beliefs.
The Southern Baptist Convention was founded on similar principles. They didn’t want to force everyone to believe the exact same thing, Summarizing what one historian said about those early days, they weren’t about theological uniformity. Their goal was missions.
And… well, this was the early 1800s in the South. It was also about slavery. Saw that coming, didn’t you? Along with southern Methodists and Presbyterians, they pushed the mythology of the Lost Cause, or, as another historian put it:
FITZGERALD: “…the cult of fallen heroes and the idealization of antebellum white culture as chivalrous, decent, and pure.”
Southern preachers boosted the idea that the South was the most spiritual part of the country and that the war wasn’t a judgment on slavery. But God’s punishment for their lack of spiritual fervor. Yeah, that stuff was in the SBC.
But… they didn’t pick sides on battles over Calvinism and Arminianism, or pre and post-millennialism. They doubled down on their fight against evolution shortly after the Scopes trial of 192517. In the Progressive Era, the SBC fought against things like alcohol and gambling. They sometimes framed WWII as a global struggle for Christianity. Afterward, the SBC established monies for world relief, supported the United Nations (the United Nations!), and stepped up efforts of world evangelism.
The SBC even went so far as to back the integration of schools with Brown v Board of Education, despite protests. No, I don’t think all members were on board, but as an institution, that’s pretty good. After WWII when church attendance in the US boomed, the SBC outpaced other denominations from five million members in 1941 to 10 million in 1961. They did, however, refuse to join the National Association of Evangelicals21. Like any large group of people, they made some good decisions and some poor. They weren’t always unified, especially on things like race. And they zigzagged in ways that might surprise us.
As they did in their 1971 convention. There, they worked to liberalize laws around abortion to permit it in rape, incest, and fetal deformity… but also…
SBC: “…in the likelihood of damage to the emotional, mental, and physical health of the mother.”
That sentiment wasn’t long-lived. But it was echoed by others, even those with fundamentalist backgrounds like the NAE, though with some caveats.
To say someone was a Southern Baptist didn’t mean they agreed on all points. As morals changed in secular society in the 1960s, along with protests over war, and the rights of women, homosexuals, and people of diverse races, some people felt uneasy. Especially conservatives, even those who voted to renounce segregation like WA Criswell. Criswell was, in the early 70s, the president of the SBC.24
He and his followers took the anxiety in the country as proof that people had turned their back on the Bible. Maybe they hadn’t heard of Vietnam and Watergate. They grew fearful that the denomination spent too much time on progressive causes and not enough on missions.
So they formed The Southern Baptist Journal. Hoping for what one historian called:
FITZGERALD: “…an uncompromising stand on biblical inerrancy and belief in a literal creation.
Inerrancy became their key issue.
Inerrancy sounds complicated but is pretty simple. If the Bible says it happened, it really happened. There was a literal creation… an actual big fish to swallow Jonah… and that Jesus really was virgin born. There are various flavors of inerrancy, though. Like, was the Prodigal Son a real person or an illustration Jesus used to make a point?
This conservative faction of the SBC was big on inerrancy. They started their own schools, the Criswell Bible Studies Center in Dallas and the Mid-American Baptist Seminary in Memphis27. But in the mid-70s, they were still just a faction. With their own schools, their own conferences, network, and seminaries. Not quite in control. But they were hardly outsiders. Speakers at the 1977 conference included those like Criswell who preached on the need to double down on inerrancy.
In the mid-1970s, the SBC was run by moderate conservatives, bent on maintaining unity. But that was about to change. As the country witnessed a sudden conservative resurgence, the SBC was soon swept up. The largest denomination in the United States was about to be taken over.
I’ll continue the story after these messages. But while you listen to the ads, why not leave a 5-star review on your favorite podcasting app? Thanks
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Welcome back.
In 1967, two men met at Cafe du Monde in the French Quarter of New Orleans. They’re famous for their beignets and, in researching this episode, I realized I had been there shortly after Hurricane Katrina while I was producing my first audio story. This is the sound of me trying my first one. A beignet, by the way, is basically a donut in a different shape.
These two guys met there to discuss what they perceived as the liberal drift of the SBC. One of them was Paige Patterson, the guy from the top of the episode who was ousted for mishandling sexual abuse. At the time he was a student.
The other was Paul Pressler, a state appeals court judge in Houston. Twelve years later, for the 1979 annual meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention, the two formed the Pressler-Patterson coalition. Their goal: a conservative takeover of the denomination.31
To do so, they just needed to play the system. Pressler had the idea, and he called it “going for the jugular”.
Here’s how it worked. First… elect a president who is sympathetic to their goals. They get a one-year term.
PRESIDENT: (boisterous) I stand behind the inerrancy of scripture!
The president had a lot of power. Almost at the end of their term, they nominated people for the committee on committees.
COMMITTEE: (boisterous)I nominate people who think exactly like me.
That committee got to choose people for the one nomination. This happened a full year later. All of these bits are staggered.
COMMITTEE: (proclaiming!) We too stand with the inerrancy of scripture!
COMMITTEE: (proclaiming!) We too stand with the inerrancy of scripture!
COMMITTEE: (proclaiming!) We too stand with the inerrancy of scripture!
Then this group nominated trustees and directors to SBC agencies and institutions. Like schools and missions boards. Those people then got to hire staff.
COMMITTEE: I see here on your resume that you think the country is in the toilet. When can you start?
Simple as that. If they got the seat at the top, they could get their kind of people hired everywhere else. Use weaknesses in the system to gain control of the system itself. The process took years. Two years from the election of the president to that of the trustees. But trustees weren’t all elected at once. From beginning to end, the takeover was really a ten-year process. It all started with that first presidential election.
Pressler and Patterson crisscrossed the nation before the 1979 convention to build their coalition, conducting a 15-state get-out-the-vote campaign.
At the pastor’s conference, James Robison, one of the fundamentalists, told those in the audience that…
ROBISON: “My friends, I wouldn’t tolerate a rattlesnake in my house… I wouldn’t tolerate a cancer in my body. I want you to know that anyone who casts doubt on the Word of God is worse than cancer and worse than snakes.”
Therefore, he argued, southern Baptists needed a president…
ROBISON: “…who is totally committed to removing from this denomination anyone who does not believe that the Bible is the inerrant, infallible Word of the living God.”
Their man for the job was Adrian Rogers. You may have heard his sermons on the radio or read his books. He was pastor of the Bellevue Baptist Church in Memphis. Despite their being several other conservative candidates, he won with 50% of the votes because the fundamentalists voted as a bloc.
By the way, there is a bit of a twist here. In the period between last season and now, I’ve been referring to fundamentalists as people who are separatists. Not like the separatists who vexed King James from earlier. Instead, these are people who largely stay out of issues of the world because they’ve got their own subculture. For a long time, the way to tell the difference between evangelicals and fundamentalists was whether or not they were engaged in the culture. But thanks to people like Frances Shaeffer, the New Right, Jerry Falwell, Criswell, Phyllis Schlafly, and others, fundies were getting in on the game. Thus creating a new thing: fundamentalists who engage the culture. A new species! What historian George Marsden deemed “fundamentalist evangelicals”.
Fundamentalist candidates won the convention presidency for decades, including Paige Patterson himself. 43 Within ten years, nearly all of the boards that govern the operations of the SBC were stocked with people from the takeover. Schools, publishing, missions. It took a long time for things to change, though. Remember that it was two years from a fundamentalist president to fundamentalist trustees. That is likely why, in 1979 the denomination seems similar to the way it had been. Even to the point of reaffirming their previous stance on abortion. They had this little gem adding it:
SBC: “…we also affirm our conviction about the limited role of government in dealing with matters relating to abortion…” 44
Largely, in 1979… business as usual. Spending time affirming and reaffirming previous decisions. And… then came 1980…
SBC: “Be it further resolved, That opposition be expressed toward all policies that allow “abortion on demand,” and be it further resolved, That we abhor the use of tax money or public, tax-supported medical facilities for selfish, non-therapeutic abortion, and be it finally resolved, That we favor appropriate legislation and/or a constitutional amendment prohibiting abortion except to save the life of the mother.”
See that change? They went in 1979 from affirming several kinds of abortion to only allowing it when the mother’s life was in danger. Allow me to point out something else that will be important in a few episodes… the concern over tax money being used. Even in 79, there is a libertarian desire to keep the government out of this practice.
The same year, 1980, the year the country voted in Ronald Reagan, they issued strong statements against pornography, homosexuality, and the Equal Rights amendment, and called for a reversal of Roe v. Wade.
At first, the old guard of the denomination seemed to regard the takeover as a momentary conservative nudge. Just the pendulum of public opinion swinging in another direction.
Remember, the SBC had long made room for a variety of beliefs, avoiding things like creeds. But the fundamentalists didn’t share that desire. Theirs was a mission of conformity.47 In 1987 a report was created that offered recommendations of what “most” Southern Baptists believe…
CREED: “One: They believe in direct creation and therefore they believe Adam and Eve were real persons. TWO: they believe the named authors did indeed write the biblical books attributed to them by those books…”
Which sounds, you know… like a creed. And it was used in the North American Missions Board as a guideline for hiring new staff.49
Then there is a curious 1988 resolution. Since the Protestant Reformation in the 1500s, there has been a strong emphasis on individual Christians having direct access to God. No need for a priest or bishop to go between us and God. Every believer is equal. But then in 1988, there was a resolution passed that took a curious swipe at this idea…
1988 RESOLUTION (faded out): “Whereas, The high profile emphasis on the doctrine of the priesthood of the believer in Southern Baptist life is a recent historical development; and Whereas, the doctrine of the priesthood of the believer has been used to justify wrongly the attitude that a Christian may believe whatever he so chooses and still be considered a loyal Southern Baptist; and Whereas, the doctrine of the priesthood of the believer can been used to justify the undermining of pastoral authority in the local church…”
It’s a little hard to grasp all of that, so I’ll summarize. Essentially it calls the priesthood of the believers a new theological development.
Says that it wrongly gives permission to some to believe whatever they like. That it has been used to question leadership. You know, people calling out pastors like those at the top of the show who called out Paige Patterson. It also does a weird about-face and re-affirms the idea of the priesthood of believers. It pokes holes in it… and then says, “Yeah, we’re still cool with it.” without providing reasons. This may seem like a small thing, but some fundamentalist leaders like WA Criswell, who we’ve already mentioned, really liked their power. This is a quote from him:
CRISWELL: “Lay leadership of the church is unbiblical when it weakens the pastor’s authority as ruler of the church… A laity-led, deacon-led church will be a weak church anywhere on God’s earth. The pastor is the ruler of the church. There is no other thing than that in the Bible.”51
This belief, if twisted the right way, could allow preachers to have unchecked power. Not something every pastor sought, but it was there if they wanted it.
Fundamentalists also took over the SBC colleges and seminaries. Pressler and Patterson stirred fear that they were being infiltrated by “liberalism” and that many professors didn’t believe the Bible. Nothing motivates like fear, right? Fundamentalist students, equipped with tape recorders, recorded professors and took notes on them. At least one professor was targeted for something he claimed he never said, but that a student reported. Others resigned.
Dr. Richard Land became director of the Christian Life Commission. You remember him, right? He’s the one who railroaded me years ago at the Southern Baptist Convention. I made an episode about it at the end of season 3.
(CLIP)
That guy. He was a strong anti-abortionist, approved of capital punishment, was all about inerrancy, and other key pieces of the fundamentalist agenda and steered them to become more involved in national politics.
Fundamentalists took over the Foreign Missions Board. Started their own publications, and flexed their muscles in the SBC’s Lifeway Christian Resources. Virtually every nook and cranny of the SBC.
The temptation is to say that the fundamentalist push was just to elect Ronald Reagan. But maybe you noticed that some of this happened even after he was out of office. You can hear the echos of Frances Schaeffer’s worldview fundamentalism. It’s all there.
And the fundamentalists, excuse me, fundamentalist evangelicals, pulled their denomination deeper into politics and culture wars. A denomination born out of fears of religious homogenization, came full circle and demanded homogenization.
(music shift)
In June of 1990, a group of men gathered together again at Cafe du Monde in New Orleans. Imagine them there, drinking their coffee and eating expensive donuts. Beignets. Perhaps the birds were chirping. Or maybe they heard people partying on boats nearby. It must have felt like visiting Graceland. This is where their whole movement started! This is where Paige Patterson and Paul Pressler hatched their plan. And it had worked! Like a reveler in an old-time movie, one climbed onto a table. He yelled, “Victory in Jesus!”. Why? The Southern Baptist Convention had been taken over by the fundamentalists.
This episode involved a lot of different sources. Visit trucepodcast.com for a full list. Major help came from the short book The Fundamentalist Takeover in the Southern Baptist Convention by Rob James, Gary Leazer, and James Shoopman. I’m also indebted to Frances Fitzgerald’s The Evangelicals.
Truce… takes so so long to produce. When I typed these words I was sitting in the rotunda of the Star Valley High School in Afton, Wyoming. A group of teenage girls shouted a song in the distance. Parents cheered at a wrestling tournament I’d driven our local team to. I do this show while juggling so many things. Listening to audiobooks while washing busses, recording scripts in my church basement, and editing while I volunteer at the library to try to increase my chances of getting an affordable house someday. This show not only takes work but sacrifice. There is no big organization backing me. It’s just us. You and I and listeners like you. If you want to be a part of making this my full-time job, visit trucepodcast.com/donate. There you can learn about supporting Truce on Venmo, Paypal, Patreon, or by old-fashioned check. That would mean more episodes for you, and I’d have to dodge fewer footballs being tossed around by hoards of little kids playing around my table. Seriously, I should have moved. Those kids are not careful around computers.
Thanks to everyone who gave their voices for this episode…
Truce is a production of Truce Media LLC.
God willing, we’ll talk again soon.
I’m Chris Staron. This is Truce.
Okay… the difference between a beignet and a donut, according to the Internet: Beignets are made with a single rise, making for a chewy texture. They have a longer rise, and they are often covered in powdered sugar.57
I don’t know… sounds like a donut…
