Every year, I look to summer as a time for vacations, baseball and Fourth of July celebrations. But in recent years, my expectations have been diminished, because frankly, I dread June - the month the Southern Baptist Convention meets to conduct its annual business session. After the convention, I find myself trying desperately to explain to friends and acquaintances alike that I while I'm a Southern Baptist, I'm not one of those Southern Baptists, the ones who've taken over.
For example, I have found myself in the awkward position of trying to explain why the convention denounced Disney last year, calling for a boycott to protest some Disney programs and company polices, including health benefits for same-sex partners of company employees. It's difficult to convince anyone that being a Southern Baptist means sharing God's love when church leaders take positions that paint the entire membership as Mickey Mouse haters and gay-bashers.
And it seems the business of late for the nation's largest Protestant convention is to keep women in their place. Meeting June 9-11 in Salt Lake City, the convention altered a doctrinal statement to include a section on family. That statement called for wives to submit graciously to their husbands. It caused a media furor. And I found myself once again trying to distance myself from the Southern Baptist leadership.
For one thing, it's important to keep certain proportions in mind. First, a handpicked committee of seven drafted the controversial statement. Second, only 8,577 people attended the convention meeting - the lowest turnout in 47 years - while there are 15.9 million Southern Baptists. It's safe to say the so-called submission statement represents the view of a small slice of Southern Baptists. Unfortunately, it's the official slice.
Day after day, supporters of the submission statement appeared on national television explaining the convention's position. They argued that they believe in equality, except in spiritual matters. In this one area, the man is to be the head of the household. But that's like telling African-Americans that they are equal, except they have to ride on the back of the bus because in this one area, whites need to sit at the head of the bus. Partial equality by definition is inequality.
Church leaders argued that their position, while unpopular, is biblical. In Ephesians 5:22-23, the wife is told to submit to her husband. But they focus on this text to the exclusion of the whole chapter. For example, 5:21 calls for a mutual submission between husbands and wives - a relationship that many Southern Baptists would call equal. Instead of placing the husband in an authority role over the wife, this complete view of Scripture sees marriage as a team of equal players. No player-coaches allowed.
Church leaders also argued the inerrancy of the Bible this summer. Inerrancy means that the Bible, in its original manuscripts, is accurate in every historical and scientific detail. But when they invoked the word "inerrancy," they reopened unhealed wounds. Wounds created from the nearly 20-year battle for control of the convention. What the general public may not realize is the word "inerrancy" was a clever ruse a handful of fundamentalists devised to seize control of the convention.
If a few men were to persuade Southern Baptists to change course and dump their leaders, they would need a powerful cause to rally the masses. What could be more compelling for a group of Baptists than sticking up for the Bible? It was clever. It worked.
Marching under the banner of inerrancy, they fooled uninformed Southern Baptists into thinking that they needed to purge from their ranks those who don't believe in the Bible. And purge they did. Convention employees were fired without cause. Some were given early-retirement packages. Others were harassed. While still others, such as myself, just slipped away into a new career.
The problem? The issue was not really over the Bible, but over control of the convention's purse strings. As a professional journalist, I covered Southern Baptists for 10 years, and I've never met one who disbelieves the Bible. No Southern Baptist discounts the Bible as an authoritative source. But many take exception to an inerrant view of Scripture.
For example, some Southern Baptists believe certain biblical accounts were meant to be taken symbolically, rather than historically or literally. Others simply don't like the use of the Bible in what's essentially a political-religious war.
If the fight was really over the Bible, who are the church leaders protecting it from? It's been my experience that truth stands on its own and needs no defender.
So how could a handful of people pirate a convention representing nearly 16 million people? Simple. The Southern Baptist Convention was based on a democratic process and it was inconceivable to most that a takeover could succeed. That's because they could not imagine perverting the process. After all, if being Baptist meant anything, it meant that everyone had an equal voice. That is, until 1979, when things began to change.
A small group, led by Paul Pressler and Paige Patterson, devise a plan to control the election of the convention's president. Through the incredible appointment powers of the office, a series of presidents could control the selection of trustees to various Baptist boards.
In 1979, the Pressler-Patterson coalition succeeded in getting its man elected. Year after year, new puppet presidents packed more and more of their representatives on various boards and the tide began to turn - hard to the right. (Running uncontested, Patterson was elected convention president last month.)
Virtually every convention institution was under assault. Among them were Baptist Press, the seminaries and a tiny religious liberty agency based in Washington. After all, what better way to stay in power than to control both the press and the thought patterns of new preachers?
One of the bloodiest battles involved Baptist Press, the convention's official news service. The editors, Al Shackleford and Dan Martin, are good journalists who printed the news regardless of how the convention and its leaders fared. They ran a credible shop.
But the new regime wanted to control the press. When threats and intimidation wouldn't sway Shackleford and Martin, they were fired in a closed-door meeting guarded by off-duty police officers. One officer told the press he was armed. Instead of worrying about inerrancy, perhaps the convention's leaders should have asked themselves why they thought a gun was necessary at a Baptist business meeting?
During the past 20 years, fundamentalists lost one major battle. No matter how hard they tried, they couldn't gain control of or destroy the Baptist Joint Committee, a church-state organization.
Traditionally, Baptists have held a high view of Thomas Jefferson's wall separating church and state. In fact, more than six decades ago, Baptists of various conventions, including Southern, banded together to initiate the joint committee. It would work for religious liberty and government neutrality toward religion.
The new Southern Baptist Convention leadership had a different take on church-state issues. They attempted to control the agency. But the other Baptist conventions that made the agency a "joint" venture refused to let it happen. So after years of trying to control, then obliterate, the Baptist Joint Committee, the Southern Baptist Convention had to settle for withdrawing its funds in 1991.
Shortly after the Southern Baptist Convention's de-funding, I joined the Baptist Joint Committee staff and witnessed firsthand the grass-roots support the Baptist Joint Committee had among Southern Baptist churches, state bodies and individuals, who still send contributions today.
Having been part of that hardy organization has shored me up. After all, June is only 11 months away and who knows what the Southern Baptist Convention will do next.
Pam Parry is a free-lance writer in Alexandria, Va., who teaches as an adjunct at the American University and the George Washington University Center for Career Education. She holds two journalism degrees and a master's degree in religious education from a Southern Baptist seminary. She also teaches Sunday school at First Baptist Church in Alexandria.
Pub Date: 7/12/98