Newsletter
July 1999

 

Articles By David R. Currie, Executive Director

A MATTER OF PERSPECTIVE Games People Play


 
20 reflections after 20 years
By Walter B. Shurden
1. The most prophetic line of the Southern Baptist Convention Holy War: “We will have a great time here, if for no other reason than to elect Adrian Rogers our president.”
A Glorious Exception
By Michael Clingenpeel
Oaks and pines are very different trees.
On our campus recently we had a dinner, a “Human Family Reunion.” The dinner is an annual multiracial ecumenical gathering to celebrate the great variety of our human family.
Baptist principles work. The four Baptist freedoms are indeed fragile.
A new survey indicated that after 200 years of separation of church and state, more and more American’s want their religion involved in politics.
There are winners and losers in the 1999-2000 Southern Baptists Convention Cooperative Program Budget the Executive committee will propose to messengers at this year’s Annual Meeting.
I have heard numerous comments about Texas Baptists Committed’s political victory since the Houston BGCT annual meeting in November.
The Significance of Mentors
by Mike Chancellor
A celebration honoring Dr. James Shields’ retirement from Hardin Simmons University was held recently at the Taylor County Exposition Center in Abilene.
Understanding the nature of fundamentalism is a problem people continue to struggle with 20 years after the fundamentalist takeover of the SBC.
“United in Christ,” is the majestic theme of the Hispanic Baptist Convention of Texas, June 27-30, 1999, in Wichita Falls, Texas.
It was 20 years ago when an organized political takeover of the Southern Baptist Convention began with Paige Patterson and Paul Pressler leading the way.

Bill Pinson Speaks Out on the Tactics of the Takeover

“When the organized political effort in the SBC began in 1979, Texas Baptists were as they had always been— committed to the Bible as their authority, theologically conservative and focused on missions and evangelism.”

”Although in 1979 some or even many Texas Baptists may have viewed certain Southern Baptists and some SBC seminaries in the East as ‘liberal,’ most did not favor imposing creedal views or requiring conformity of belief on theological and social issues. Thus the call of the political leaders of the so-called‘conservative resurgence’ seemed either unnecessary or dangerous to many Texas Baptists.”

”The secular political activity, the character assassination, the exclusion from positions of leadership of any but those who were part of the cause, and the firing or forcing from office of persons who did not agree with their political agenda offended and even enraged many Texas Baptists.”

Quotes reprinted from The Baptist Standard, June 9, 1999. Bill Pinson is the executive director of the BGCT since 1983

 

 

New Missouri Baptist group forms

Missouri Baptists have formed a new organization that they say is intended to preserve the Missouri Baptist Convention. The new group, called Mainstream Missouri Baptists, will be led by Doyle Sager, pastor of FBC in Jefferson City, Missouri, and a past president of the Missouri Baptist Convention. The group said it organized to keep the state convention and the Baptist Churches of Missouri “free and focused,” according to a news release. The organization is not an arm of the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, “nor is it anti-CBF,” the release said. Previously printed in Baptist Today.



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