The Baptist Reformation: The Conservative Resurgence in the Southern Baptist Convention [Hardcover]

Jerry Sutton (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 2000

Jerry Sutton examines the twenty-year struggle to restore the destiny and distinction of the Southern Baptist Convention by describing the context of the struggle, the reformation that began in the Convention and how it took place, and the institutions in which the resurgence took place. This book serves as a testimony and an expression of gratitude to those who worked to bring about the Baptist Reformation.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 560 pages
• Publisher: Broadman & Holman Publishers (January 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0805440917
• ISBN-13: 978-0805421989
• ASIN: 080542198X
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.1 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #740,027 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

26 of 37 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Thoroughly documented, fair, and reasonable account, July 19, 2001

By 

John B. Carpenter (Yanceyville, NC) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Baptist Reformation: The Conservative Resurgence in the Southern Baptist Convention (Hardcover)

Dr. Jerry Sutton chronicles one of the most remarkable church movements in the late twentieth century: the reformation of the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC). This was remarkable because it was so exceptional, against the trends of nearly every other "mainline" denomination and Western culture as a whole. Sutton, who earned a Ph.D. in church history and is a Southern Baptist pastor, offers us here the first major, formal account of the "conservative resurgence" that I know of from the conservative (or evangelical) side. Until this book, "the controversy," as Southern Baptists called it, had been interpreted by self-described "moderates" with predictably skewed perspectives. One such "moderate" account, Bill Leonard's God's Last and Only Hope makes a suitable contrast to Sutton's evangelical view.

Sutton's account, as a "participant observer," is divided into four sections. The first describes the shabby theological and institutional condition into which he believes the SBC had fallen under "moderate" leadership. Proving that some of the professors in the seminaries and agencies in the bureaucracy had strayed far from the will of the SBC, as expressed in resolutions at their annual convention and their Baptist Faith and Message (their de facto creed) is essential to his case that conservatives were not just out for power but driven by a passion to restore the evangelical faith. I believe Sutton proved his point. The second part chronicles the way the SBC began to change. He describes the elections of successive conservative presidents to the SBC since 1979 and the opposition they met from incensed "moderates." Here we get a glimpse of the fervent politicking that swept the SBC. Sutton shows that despite the "moderate" charges that the conservatives were playing dirty politics, the "moderates", if anything, were more political. As a student in a SBC college during "the controversy," I remember some of the "moderate" religion professors using our class time for partisan ecclesiastical politics and derisive remarks about the "fundamentalists." The third part records the resistance of the entrenched bureaucracy to the conservative changes, including one SBC agency that continued to use denominational funds to advocate the legitimacy of abortion despite increasingly pro-life resolutions by the annual convention. In the fourth part, Sutton interprets the key issues that were at stake. He emphasizes that the "conservative resurgence" was genuinely motivated by a concern to restore faithful adherence to the reliability of scripture, especially in SBC seminaries.

Sutton's book is not as polemical as one would expect. He does not even take full advantage of all the contradictions the "moderates" are shown to be guilty of. Instead he allows the new president of Southern seminary, R. Albert Mohler, Jr., to tell us about "the fundamentalism of the left" - the liberal tendency to talk about "tolerance" and "diversity" while excluding conservatives. He also records, but does not exploit, the way the "moderates" hid behind SBC bureaucracies before the conservative resurgence and then suddenly wanted to change the rules to protect themselves after the conservatives began to take over. In addition, he shows how the "moderates" used denominational loyalty to attack the conservative movement during the early years of the resurgence but quickly formed splinter groups, even a shadow denomination (the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship - CBF), after it was clear the conservatives had won. Sutton does not use his admission to a bias as a license to commit character assassination.

Incidentally, since the publication of Sutton's book, Bill Leonard has become, as dean at Wake Forest, a champion for legitimizing homosexuality within the church and over 41% of the CBF voted to affirm homosexuality with many in the majority voting against the measure simply because they were afraid of losing financial support, points conveniently overlooked by news reports from the Baptist General Conference of Texas - BGCT (allied, unofficially, with the "moderates"). That leaders of the "moderates," as now found in the CBF and BGCT, have so quickly moved to affirm what the Bible condemns as perversion reveals that the "conservative" concerns which motivated the reformation were Biblically grounded all along.

Sutton's book is, at points, awkwardly worded and occasionally repetitious. (Often this is the result of fully quoting or paraphrasing other people.) Sutton's analysis could have been more supple at points, turning the "moderates'" arguments on their heads. For example, he simply dismisses Leonard's proposition that the SBC controversy was caused by a change in American culture. Leornard seems to think that excuses the "moderate" and liberal theological deviance. I wish Sutton had explored the point further, perhaps granting it to Leonard but then defined liberalism, as has Professor Robert Yarbrough of Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, as that theological movement which allows the secular culture to be normative. In addition, I would have liked to have seen some reflection on what exactly the Baptist claim to "have no creed but the Bible" means. This is at the crux of the controversy. Sutton and the conservatives were certainly right to reject the "moderates'" implicit claim that such a position allows them to take any position, even those explicitly rejecting the veracity of scripture. Unfortunately, Sutton does not describe in positive terms what it means in practice. However, Sutton has given us a valuable text not only about America's largest Protestant denomination but about the nature of and resistance to reform movements.

10 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars A mind-numbingly tedious account of a necessary reformation, June 13, 2005

By 

Brian Prucey "1-888-Jesus-2000" (Benton, LA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Baptist Reformation: The Conservative Resurgence in the Southern Baptist Convention (Hardcover)

Synopsis

The Baptist Reformation is a meticulous account of the why's and how's of the Southern Baptist Convention's conservative resurgence. Sutton chronicled in mind-numbingly tedious detail the events and persons that shaped the twenty-year struggle to restore the institutions of the Southern Baptist Convention back to their historically conservative moorings. He wrote from the perspective of a self-proclaimed participant-observer to help other conservatives understand the need for the conservative resurgence, to overview the strategies employed, and to assess the resurgence's effects on the agencies of the convention. Additionally, Sutton sought to respond to the liberal-moderate critics who, in his opinion, unfairly slandered the conservative resurgence and its leaders.

Analysis

If it is true that the winners in any struggle get to write the history, then with regard to the Southern Baptist conservative resurgence, The Baptist Reformation is that history. One could probably describe Sutton's account of the events as polemical history. Sutton did not approach the task as an unbiased historian. His objective was not to present a fair and balanced profile of the conservative resurgence, but to justify it and praise it. Beginning with the 1961 "Elliot Controversy," Sutton detailed the examples of theological liberalism conservatives felt had displaced centuries of historic Baptist orthodoxy within the convention's boards, agencies, and institutions--especially the six seminaries. Foundational to all these left-leaning theologies was the Bultmannian neo-orthodox view of the Scriptures espoused by a few within the liberal-moderate faction. Specifically, Sutton and other conservatives charged that the application of the historical-critical hermeneutic method to Scripture interpretation did violence to the true meaning of the text. Higher criticism at its core casts doubts upon the veracity of years of traditional interpretation. In fact, conservatives faulted the historical-critical method for casting doubt upon the inspiration and very nature of Scripture itself. Conservatives charged that once one no longer viewed Scripture as authoritative, inerrant, and infallible (the historic Baptist position) then one could interpret Scripture to mean whatever he or she wanted it to mean.

Sutton, and by extension other conservatives, rightly rejected higher criticism as a valid hermeneutic method. However, they did not specify the hermeneutic technique that would lead the scholar in a proper "Baptist" exegesis. This reader was left with the impression that a proper Baptist hermeneutic would be guided by at least four exegetical keys: historical, grammatical, Christological, and orthodoxy. In other words, no proper interpretation of Scripture could refute historic Baptist beliefs. Thus, one is to interpret Scripture by historic Baptist beliefs instead of Baptist beliefs being informed by the Scriptures. Such a position would make Baptists the sole arbiter of orthodoxy for all Christianity leaving no room for honest disagreement.

Additionally, conservatives and liberals did constant battle in the realm of semantics. Conservatives rightly supported the view that the Scriptures were infallible, inerrant, and a completely trustworthy revelation of God and his plan for creation. When pressed by liberals to define their terms, the conservatives contended that the Scriptures were infallible and inerrant in their original autographs. Liberals accurately charged that the autographs are lost, but wrongly assumed that infallibility was consequently lost. Furthermore, the conservatives failed to demonstrate how inerrancy continued through the millennia (chapter 19 notwithstanding). Several questions remained unanswered from Sutton treatise.

In general, conservatives failed to identify which surviving manuscripts retained the original inerrancy and infallibility of the autographs. If the surviving apographs are as equally inerrant as the autographs, then is one particular text-type (Alexandrian versus Byzantine versus Western versus Caesarean) more inerrant than another text-type? Is the "majority" Textus Receptus more infallible and inerrant than the eclectic Nestle-Aland? What about the inerrancy of the vernacular translations? Every translation is in some way an interpretation of the meaning of the original language. How does a translation retain the original infallibility and inerrancy? Are some translations more infallible (because of superior scholarship) than others are? Who then decides these issues? For the conservatives to claim that inerrancy and infallibility apply only to the autographs plays into the hands of liberals and opens the door of doubt for grassroots Baptists who want and need to believe that the Bible they hold in their hands is the Word of God. Conservatives failed at this point. It is foolhardy to appeal to the teachings of dead theologians, as Sutton did. Doing so only gives the impression that this is the way it always has been, so do not rock the boat--an intellectually unsatisfying position.

The conservatives had charged that neo-orthodoxy had crept into the convention's seminaries aided and abetted by a complicit, complaisant, and complacent bureaucracy. However, when conservatives were asked to name names, Paige Patterson released his 1980 "Reply of Concern" naming seven men whose teachings were outside of historic Baptist beliefs (111). Seven! Are Sutton's readers to believe that the conservatives went to battle for the convention over seven liberals? Conservatives had repeatedly charged that the convention was overrun with liberal heretics, and all they could name were seven. Additionally, the seventh meeting of the Peace Committee gave clean bills of health to four of the six seminaries, finding fault only with Southern and Southeastern, mostly because those seminaries were unresponsive to Peace Committee requests (156-158). Perhaps liberalism in the seminaries was not as rampant as conservatives led Baptists to believe.

For their part, the liberal-moderates gave the conservatives plenty of ammunition with which to fight the battle. Liberal-moderates at first came to the battle armed only with an elitist mentality. They adopted an air of intellectual superiority. To the liberals, conservatives were intellectually lazy if not intellectually bankrupt. Later, liberals hung their hat on the principles of academic freedom, "unity amid diversity," and the doctrine of the priesthood of all believers. However, as conservatives rightly pointed out, orthodoxy can stand only so much diversity before it becomes heresy. The conservatives argued that there were certain "irreducible minimums in theology" (185). To the conservatives, if convention official made their living off the largess of Southern Baptist labors, then their work should conform to Southern Baptist doctrines. Additionally, liberals made the false assumption that grassroots Southern Baptist did not care about doctrinal integrity.

Both sides used emotionally charged language to define their cause as well as each other. Liberal-moderates used terms like "fundamentalist" and "ultra-conservative." Conservatives freely used the word "heresy" when describing the liberal-moderate position. Unfortunately, the conservatives defined heresy as anything that fell outside of historic Baptist beliefs without honestly admitting that Baptist have never been a singularly monolithic group (General Baptists versus Particular Baptists or Separate Baptists versus Peculiar Baptists) and their beliefs have been far from ubiquitous throughout history (Arminism versus Calvinism). Conservatives also hurt their case when they found only one issue of concern with certain professors or writers. They tended to throw the baby out with the bathwater. For example, conservatives objected to Southern Seminary professor Dale Moody's assessment that the New Testament teaches the possibility of apostasy--an unsettled issue within Christian orthodoxy in general, although repudiated by Baptist specifically. Furthermore, Moody was accused of suggesting that people may be "saved" apart from conscious personal faith in Jesus Christ. However, Moody's position paralleled Calvin's "Secret Christian" doctrine. However, in Sutton's discussion, to be un-baptistic on one point of theology was to be heretical in toto--an overreaching premise.

Much of Sutton's book dealt less with the "why" of the conservative resurgence and more with the "how." Specifically, frustrated conservatives realized that change within the duplicitous bureaucracy required electing conservative presidents who would appoint conservatives to the Committee on Committees. The Committee on Committees in turn would recommend conservative appointments to the Committee on Boards (now Nominations), which in turn would recommend the appointment of conservative trustees to the convention's various agencies, boards, and institutions. These trustees would oversee the selection of conservative chief executives and set conservative policies for their respective agencies.

The conservatives' takeover strategy was two-fold: support the election of conservative presidents at the annual SBC meeting and rally conservative messengers to attend the annual meetings in such numbers so as to overwhelm liberal-moderate supporters. Each of these strategies had its own set of implementation tactics. Conservatives needed to find and offer credible presidential candidate. The vetting process was highly nepotistic. Those who were the chief architects of the conservative resurgence each had their bite at the presidential apple. Additionally, future prospective presidents were groomed into national stardom through a series of national Bible conferences and the annual SBC Pastor's Conference. These conferences... Read more ›

5.0 out of 5 stars Detailed History of the Conservative Resurgence, February 16, 2010

By 

Trevin Wax - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Baptist Reformation: The Conservative Resurgence in the Southern Baptist Convention (Hardcover)

If you're looking for a topical, detailed resource that lays out the Conservative Resurgence in the Southern Baptist Convention, you ought to pick up Jerry Sutton's book on the controversy. Sutton documents in painstaking detail the debate between conservatives and moderates in the SBC in the 1980's and 1990's.

The Baptist Reformation: The Conservative Resurgence in the Southern Baptist Convention (Broadman & Holman, 2000) is clearly written from the conservative point of view, but Sutton seeks to fairly represent the moderate position. By using terminology preferred by both sides of the controversy, he ensures that the tone is polite instead of inflammatory.

The book begins by showing the problems that worried conservatives in the SBC. Sutton points to perceived theological error being taught in the seminaries, a deficient view of Scripture, and an institutional bureaucracy that stifled the voices and desires of ordinary Southern Baptists.

Next, Sutton explains how the Convention changed. The bulk of the book leads the reader chronologically through the Southern Baptist Convention from 1979-2000. Each chapter is devoted to the successive conservative presidents whose leadership brought lasting change. SBC presidents are empowered to make appointments to the committee that nominates people to other committees. By changing the leadership at the helm, the Southern Baptist ship slowly turned around.

The last part of the book is topical. Sutton shows readers how particular institutions changed. He analyzes the missions agencies, the Sunday School board, the seminaries, and the executive committee.

For most of the book, Sutton describes the Conservative Resurgence from the air. Then at the end, he dives down and shows how change took place at the local, institutional level.

The book ends with Sutton's reflections on why the Convention changed. He gives a compelling conservative interpretation of the Resurgence.

The Baptist Reformation is an important book for Southern Baptist historians. Sutton observes the controversy from the inside. He is not an impartial observer, but he seeks to report fairly and accurately what took place. This book is a valuable reference for anyone interested in seeing how the Southern Baptist Convention changed direction in the last twenty years of the twentieth century.