Are there parallels between the conservative
takeover of the Southern Baptist Convention and what is happening in
the PC(USA)? What can be learned from the experience of the Southern
Baptists? How did a "non-creedal" church which insisted on
freedom of biblical interpretation and freedom of the congregation
become so conformist in spirit?
Thoughts on the Southern Baptist
experience
by Gene TeSelle
Gene TeSelle, former president of the Witherspoon
Society, is now serving as Witherspoon's Liaison with Presbyterian
Organizations.
[Updated 12-23-00]
Part I
The Women's Missionary Union: a study in compromise and survival
I have been reading a draft of a dissertation by Sally
Holt on the Southern Baptists, and specifically on its Women's
Missionary Union (WMU), which has thus far resisted takeover. It makes
use of "social exchange" analysis, a form of rational choice
theory that (1) looks at long-term organizational relationships in terms
of beliefs and loyalties, expectations and rewards (positive factors
which make the relationship and its "structural power" an
object worth maintaining) and (2) asks also about the less frequent use
of "coercive power," which the recipients, of course, perceive
to be injustice, putting them in the position of asking whether to
retaliate, and then leading both sides to calculate what they might lose
with continued conflict.
The WMU began as a way of sending "mites" to
support foreign and then national missions. Two annual offerings, named
for women missionaries, have become institutionalized in the SBC. In the
late nineteenth century, of course, the SBC didn't know what to do with
a women's organization; lest women have any leadership role in the
Convention, the WMU was made an "auxiliary" rather than an
"agency." That marginal status has had both negative and
positive features. The women involved were the wives and daughters of
male SBC leaders, thus members of the Baptist "establishment";
their marginalization cannot be ascribed to anything other than gender
stereotypes. Yet they were independent; in fact they gained considerable
power through their offerings, especially during financial hard times in
the Twenties and Thirties, reinforcing a whole array of mutual
expectations and loyalties which are explored in the dissertation.
After that period, of course, the Southern Baptist
Convention recovered, grew mightily, and became steadily more
conservative.
The end game has been played out during the Nineties.
I'll try to summarize a complex chronology. There were various
proposals, formal and informal, to give the WMU full "agency"
status, under the control of the fundamentalist leadership (the
presenting reason, of course, was to prevent "discrimination
against women"; fears were also expressed about a
"feminization of missions" and spiritual "adultery"
on the part of the WMU). Suspicions were heightened when the WMU
accepted offerings from the moderate Cooperative Baptist Fellowship
(which the Foreign Mission Board and several other agencies had also
done) and agreed to support all Southern Baptist mission efforts,
including those sponsored by the CBF; the proceeds of the traditional
offerings, however, remained within the SBC, and for that reason the
reaction of SBC leaders stunned the WMU.
In 1993 the FMB sent a videotape with hostile
questioning of WMU leaders to missionaries; but it backfired, since the
WMU had long been in touch with missionaries and churches, and on this
occasion sent statements of support for all SBC mission efforts. Also in
1993 a special committee on restructure was recommended and appointed by
the executive committee. In 1994 the FMB applied for trademark control
of the annual Lottie Moon offering; this did not become public until
1995, just as the Program and Structure Committee made its report. The
report left the WMU out of consideration, assigning its tasks to other
agencies, offering the consolation prize of a resolution expressing
appreciation for the WMU's service to the SBC.
Coercive power had been used against the WMU. But the
WMU's role in legitimizing and supporting the two churchwide offerings
(even though control over them had long since been given up) forced the
leadership to make largely unspoken concessions.
The "social exchange" lesson here is that,
even in the absence of genuine "equality," there may be enough
"mutuality" that both sides come to the judgment that they
have more to lose than to gain from continued hostility and coercion.
The SBC leadership is willing to have in its midst an independent WMU,
even one that channels some funds to the CBF and symbolizes leadership
by women, as long as it continues to raise money and legitimate the
offerings. The WMU, although some would say it is in an abusive
relationship, is able to remain loyal to its longstanding heritage as an
independent organization and to offer to Southern Baptist women
(including the wives and daughters of ministers who are institutionally
tied to Southern Baptist churches) a space that cannot be found
elsewhere. The WMU has its own publications and is broadening its appeal
to women outside Baptist circles. But its membership and budget are in a
steady state or declining as the SBC leadership promotes other
organizations for women.
Does this sound familiar to Presbyterians?
Part II
Paul Pressler: A Leader in the Take-Over
It has been very instructive to read the recent book
by a Texas appeals judge, one of the instigators of the conservative
takeover of the Southern Baptist Convention--Paul Pressler's A Hill
on Which to Die: One Southern Baptist's Journey. (The hill in
question is the citadel of liberalism, which had to be charged; and God,
Pressler is sure, has given the victory, even though at great personal
cost to many conservatives, including himself.)
Two factors have been determinative in Pressler's
career as a religious activist.
First, he is an economic and social conservative; he
has been a leader in the Council for National Policy, an organization
that figures prominently in A Moment to Decide. If you type it
into Google or another search engine you can pull up a number of reports
on the Council for National Policy, a secretive organization founded by
Tim LaHaye in 1981 with many well-known conservatives as members. There
are those who doubt whether there is a "vast right- wing
conspiracy"; if there is one, this is a good place to look for it.
Participants include political figures like Dick Armey, Tom Delay,
Ernest Istook, Jack Kemp, and Trent Lott; strategists and publicists
like Gary Bauer, Oliver North, Phyllis Schlafly, Richard Viguerie, and
Paul Weyrich; and religious conservatives like Bill Bright, James
Dobson, Jerry Falwell, Bob Jones, Gary North, Ralph Reed, Pat Robertson,
R.J. Rushdoony, and Donald Wildmon.
Second, Pressler, ever since his prep school days at
Exeter and his undergraduate days at Princeton, has been an evangelical
crusader, unhappy about New England liberals, and he has not liked
Southern Baptist liberals (masquerading as "moderates"),
either. He was convinced that they had taken over the six seminaries and
the bureaucracy in Nashville and must be stopped; two appendices
documenting his opinions, one from 1964 and the other from 1985, show
that he has been a consistent heresy-hunter.
The most significant revelation in the book is that in
1975 Bill Powell called attention to the power of the SBC president, who
appoints the Committee on Committees, which then makes nominations to
the Committee on Boards, which reports its nominations to the various
Boards to the next annual meeting, where these nominations are voted
upon. In 1979 the successful strategy was planned in Criswell's home in
Dallas. Much of the book is a narrative of the successive victories in
the election of the president; often the "messengers" gave a
majority vote to the conservative candidate on the first ballot, with no
runoff necessary. As new trustees were appointed, most of the seminaries
were taken over by the conservatives during the Eighties, and the
Nashville bureaucracy during the Eighties and Nineties.
The changes that have taken place, it must be noted,
have been approved by the majority of rank-and-file Southern Baptists,
both in the votes of the "messengers" at the annual convention
and in the actions of local congregations. If Pressler correctly
verbalizes their mood, they want Baptist freedom to be expressed not in
diversity and ongoing inquiry but in "personal responsibility"
and doctrinal definiteness.
In other words, the Southern Baptist rank and file
seem much more conservative than the "moderate" leadership
which, in the eyes of some, misled them; thus when the chips were down
they supported the conservatives.
The moderates, in turn, insist that they have been
acting on the basis of the traditional freedoms of Southern Baptist
tradition-- "Bible freedom," "soul freedom,"
"church freedom," and "religious freedom."
The 1925 preface to the Baptist Faith and Message,
quoted in all subsequent versions, emphasized that the document was a
"consensus" or a "statement of religious
convictions," not intended to "add anything to the simple
conditions of salvation revealed in the New Testament," not
"complete" or "having any quality of finality or
infallibility," only a "guide in interpretation, having no
authority over the conscience," and "not to be used to hamper
freedom of thought or investigation in other realms of life."
Despite these affirmations, moderates see in recent
developments, including changes in the Baptist Faith and Message
in 1998 and 2000, a trend toward hierarchy, doctrinal uniformity, and
strict enforcement. The freedom of the local church is clearly
supplanted (often by vote of the "messengers" from the local
churches!) by the authority of the Convention; and the priesthood of
believers has been trumped first by the authority of the majority of
Baptists, then by the authority of the pastor, explicitly affirmed in
recent years.
Part III
The Keys to Power in the Southern Baptist Take-Over
Religious conservatism can be analyzed as a cohesive
"social movement" which is sure of its convictions and seeks
constant assurance that others hold them, too (infallibility of
Scripture, a personal Satan, and blood atonement are Pressler's own
shibboleths). This religious certitude can then be effectively mobilized
against social change. While race is not explicitly mentioned, it is not
coincidental that the move toward fundamentalism has taken place since
the civil rights era. Pressler himself began his public career as a
Democrat but became a Republican after the Democrats "abandoned
their moral positions."
With the dawn of greater legal and procedural equality
(not only in race but in many other areas), traditional privilege has to
be maintained by other means. It can be maintained, first of all,
through wealth. This certainly exempts the holder from
many of the problems faced by the less affluent, enabling flight to the
suburbs and to private schools, for example. The Reagan-era tax cuts
transferred billions of dollars to the wealthy, and they have used it to
influence both political parties. But wealth must usually remain hidden,
except where it can be labeled the result of initiative,
self-discipline, and divine favor. Wealth is also ambiguous, uniting
Southern evangelicals with those horrible Northeastern latitudinarians.
Privilege can also be maintained by enlisting
the non-wealthy, encouraging them to identify with the wealthy
and powerful. During the recent presidential campaign, for example, many
ordinary people were convinced that they would be better off if taxes
were reduced and the inheritance tax were abolished, even though the
benefit to them would be at best minuscule. Those who tell pollsters
that they are "conservatives" often prefer to keep the
existing structures of power rather than risk the uncertainties of
change.
But most convincingly, privilege can be maintained
through claims of virtue. It is much easier to insist
upon this, especially when you can scapegoat welfare cheats, sexual
deviants, uppity women, and all who disrupt old-style
"civility."
The rigid doctrinal stance of fundamentalism mirrors
and rationalizes the rigid defense of these bulwarks of privilege, for
its leaders have a great stake in maintaining traditional conceptions of
how society should work. There have been many changes in society since
the Sixties. They can be upsetting, and the society around us is not the
same one that people knew in their childhood.
In the political world we have seen a number of
successful attempts to mobilize the "conservative" impulse in
the electorate, ranging from the George Wallace campaign of 1968 (which
triggered a permanent realignment of the electorate), to the
"Reagan Democrats" of the Eighties, and on to the strange
career of the "New Democrats" of the Democratic Leadership
Council, whose standard bearers have been Bill Clinton, Al Gore, and Joe
Lieberman. Let us recall, however, that in fact "the Sixties"
were the expression of a pent-up agenda that had been building during
the Fifties; indeed, those who, like Pressler, criticize the Federal
Council and the National Council of Churches recognize that in many ways
that agenda was as old as the twentieth century.
Rather than try to undo a whole century, it seems far
more gracious to accept its basic achievements, especially insofar as
they are compatible with the freedoms and responsibilities upon which
many Christians have insisted, and to do all we can to ensure that they
are carried forward in a spirit of equity and inclusiveness.
