"I don't let nobody blow smoke on my blue skies": a study of the "SBC controversy" in a local church.

Local church history, often an exercise of congregational triumphalism or hagiography, can, nevertheless, be a serious endeavor that demonstrates how a congregation understood, contributed to, or was influenced by larger Baptist (and other) issues.

In particular, the study of local churches can reveal important details about how the "Southern Baptist Controversy" was handled or experienced at the local church level. A case study of the "controversy" at Second-Ponce de Leon Baptist Church, Atlanta--an influential Georgia church with a proud Baptist legacy--reveals a church that tried to avoid political involvement through a passionate promotion of the lifeblood of Southern Baptist life--missions. As one prominent church member said, "I don't let nobody blow smoke on my blue skies." Ultimately, this approach was abandoned, and a new sense of denominational identity slowly emerged from the cloudy skies of conflict.

Second-Ponce de Leon Baptist Church

In 1932, Second-Ponce de Leon Baptist Church was formed from a merger of two large influential churches of Atlanta: Second Baptist Church and Ponce de Leon Baptist Church. The nineteenth-century Baptist historian William Cathcart called Second Baptist Church the leading church in Georgia in the post-bellum period because of its wealth, prestige, and influence. (1) By the church's fiftieth anniversary (1904), the membership had included three governors, three United States Senators, and ten mayors. No less impressive was the congregation's denominational pedigree. Church leaders played pivotal roles in the development of Southern Baptist agencies. They had close ties to the Christian Index and Southern Baptist Theological Seminary; they were the driving force behind the origin of Georgia Baptists' children's ministry; and they had organized the first Georgia Baptist woman's missionary society. Prominent leaders of the Home Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC), including executive-secretary I. T. Tichenor, were church members. (2)

Ponce de Leon Baptist Church quickly became an influential Baptist congregation. The church, organized in 1904, was led by layperson William J. Northern, a president of the Georgia Baptist Convention (GBC) for thirteen years and prominent in the SBC Laymen's Movement. Both Atlanta churches were among the top four givers in Georgia to the $75 Million Campaign (1919-1924), the national body's first-large scale stewardship effort.

Amidst urban changes in Atlanta, an unlikely merger of the two proud congregations occurred in 1932 under the name, Second-Ponce de Leon Baptist Church. In subsequent decades, the church became a role model for denominationalism. During the pastorate of Monroe Swilley (1945-1968), gifts to the Cooperative Program were consistently the largest in the GBC; and in 1964, the congregation was third in the SBC in total gifts to missions. When it came to denominational involvement and loyalty, "Second-Ponce" was "second to none" in Southern Baptist life. (3)

Prelude to the "Controversy": The Dilday Years

The history of Southern Baptists is full of controversy. In their history, nothing compares to the havoc wreaked by the "holy war" called the "fundamentalist/moderate conflict" (named the "conservative resurgence" by the victorious group).

Russell Dilday. During the "SBC conflict," Russell Dilday was president of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, Texas (1977-1994). In the decade prior to his presidency (1969-1977), Dilday served as pastor of Second-Ponce de Leon Baptist Church. When the fledging star among Texas Baptists assumed the Atlanta pastorate, he recognized it as one of the leading churches in the southeast. (4) From the outset of his ministry, Dilday immersed himself in denominational activities. Reflecting upon Dilday's fifth anniversary as pastor, Jack Harwell, editor of the Christian Index, suggested that it was "doubtful if many people in Southern Baptist ranks have done as much to serve their denomination during any five-year span as Dr. Dilday has." (5) Throughout the Dilday era, the Atlanta church continued to lead the GBC in giving through the Cooperative Program. (6)

As a denominational loyalist, Dilday was deeply dedicated to Southern Baptists' identity as a cooperative body that united around missions and evangelism. In 1974, he boasted that the "SBC exemplified a final remaining bastion of democratic method and procedure regulating proceedings before a representative religious body." (7) Yet, he felt the denominational winds changing toward a focus upon doctrinal conformity.

On the Sunday morning of July 13, 1975, Dilday preached a sermon entitled "Baptists and the Bible" and responded to the accusations of two new Baptist parachurch groups, "Concerned Georgia Baptists" and the "Baptist Faith and Message Fellowship," that he believed wanted to remove "Bible-doubting liberals" from leadership in the SBC and to withhold Cooperative Program funds from institutions where biblical inerrancy was not affirmed. Dilday reviewed for his listeners the Baptist controversies of the early 1960s and the resulting confessional statement, the Baptist Faith and Message of 1963. He then cautioned the congregation that the confession was not a creed and did not have "authority binding any individual Southern Baptist or any church. It is simply a statement of Baptist faith adopted by the Baptists at the convention." Dilday further added that the anti-creedal tradition of Southern Baptists meant that there is no creed "which Baptists must follow to be Baptists. There is no man-made standard of orthodoxy that can take the place of the Bible as authority, interpreted by each believer according to the Holy Spirit's leadership in his life." (8)

Dilday also addressed the increasingly contentious issue of biblical inerrancy promoted by the parachurch Baptist groups with a Scripture citation: "All scripture is given by inspiration of God and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness." He opined:

   That statement is sufficient. There is no need to propose some
   man-made theory for the process of inspiration as orthodox.... Our
   authority then is the sovereign God revealed through Jesus Christ,
   communicated in his word, the Bible, and confirmed by Christian
   experience. If anyone makes the Bible a legalistic catalogue of
   orthodoxy, he tends to violate everything Jesus stood for while he
   was in the flesh. (9)

In his concluding sermonic remarks, Dilday clearly affirmed his biblical conservatism: "I believe that the Bible is infallible. It was not written as a technical journal of science, or mathematics or history.... It is infallible because it does perfectly the thing it was intended to do." (10) The following year, as the 1976 SBC annual gathering approached, Dilday reiterated his position to the congregation and warned that the convention's attention should not "be wasted on differences in theological positions but rather spent on unity and usefulness in the task God has given us to carry out." (11)

The debate regarding the role of the Bible in Baptist life, as Dilday presciently perceived it in 1975, was not simply a conflict between liberals and conservatives, as the fundamentalist mantra of the 1980s would argue. Nevertheless, the following year Dilday and his church, like most Southern Baptists, suppressed any doubts caused by local fundamentalist stirrings and expended their energies on adopting Southern Baptists' "Bold Mission Thrust," an ambitious plan to take the gospel to the entire world by the year 2000. (12)

Missions Is the Answer: The Marsh Years

The remake of the SBC officially began in 1979. A political strategy to elect a series of convention presidents who affirmed biblical inerrancy was devised by architects Paige Patterson and Judge Paul Pressler, and initiated with the election of Adrian Rogers, pastor of Bellevue Baptist Church of Memphis. While presidential elections were hotly contested, by 1990 the takeover of the convention was a fait accompli. The new victorious leaders proclaimed that a "new reformation" had occurred; they announced that liberalism (the moderates) had been soundly defeated and historic orthodox conservative Baptist theology had been restored. (13)

Robert Marsh. After Dilday resigned from Second-Ponce de Leon Baptist Church in 1978, he was succeeded by C. Robert Marsh. A native Mississippian, Marsh briefly attended Bob Jones University, but rejected its rigid fundamentalist approach to education. After graduating from two Southern Baptist schools, Marsh served as a pastor in Mississippi and Alabama before going to Atlanta.

Like Dilday, Marsh was an intense denominationalist and missions advocate during the heyday of denominationalism. When controversy erupted over the election of Adrian Rogers through "back-room politics" as SBC president in 1979, Marsh appeared unconcerned. In a deacon's report, Marsh contended that the annual convention was a positive meeting, despite media reports to the contrary. In explaining his perspective, Marsh said that he did not use the language of biblical inerrancy, but that he and Rogers were close friends at seminary, and Rogers was an excellent preacher. Rogers was simply a good choice for president. (14)

Marsh still did not express any concern about the developing conflict in the convention during the next two years. In September 1980, when convention president Bailey Smith uttered his nationally controversial opinion, "God does not hear the prayer of a Jew," Marsh never wrote in the church's newsletter about Smith's remarks (as many Baptists did), (15) and in comments to the deacons he did not complain about Smith's reelection in 1981. At the same time, members of "Second-Ponce" applauded Smith's reputation for evangelism. After the 1981 and 1982 annual meetings of the SBC, Marsh told the deacons that Southern Baptists "were on the fight track." (16)

In July 1982, however, the first sign of "the controversy" appeared in the congregation's newsletter, the Church News. Marsh acknowledged the conflict without taking sides, and said that "there has been enough squabbling; we need to move on ... there will always be points of theological debate." After the 1984 convention, Marsh addressed the denomination's persistent struggle in a deacons' meeting. He shared what would become his pastoral approach throughout the rest of his ministry: he disdained the publicity that accompanied labels like conservative, liberal, and fundamentalist and proclaimed that "missions was the heart and soul of Baptist life." "The programs that hold us together are Foreign Missions and Home Missions," he concluded. To the congregation as a whole, Marsh repeated his Church News column on "squabbling" that he had written two years earlier. (17)

The SBC conflict reached a climactic point in 1985. As the key convention approached, Marsh wrote that Baptists were defined by cooperative action rather than signed creeds. The annual meeting in Dallas was attended by 45,000 messengers--the largest ever--and the "moderates" condemned the convention president, Charles Stanley of First Baptist Church, Atlanta, for grossly manipulative parliamentary leadership. Marsh, despite the fact that many of his own parishioners had exited First Baptist Church in protest of Charles Stanley's authoritarian leadership in the 1970s, (18) still maintained his cautious approach. Attempting to be a reconciler, Marsh never publicly criticized Stanley and chose to continue expressions of optimism. To the deacons, he emphasized the convention's adoption of a record budget and the annual reports from the Home and Foreign Mission Boards. In the Church News, Marsh acknowledged that the convention was struggling, but asserted that "our commitments and our objectives will keep us going strong and forward." He encouraged the congregation to focus on building bridges and when that was done, "God will spare us." (19) For Marsh, a passionate focus on increased mission giving, despite the conflict swirling around the convention, was the key to unity. Consequently, in 1986, the church increased its Cooperative Program gifts to $450,000, which was 17 percent of the church's budget and a 42.8 percent increase in funds in two years. (20)

During the second half of the eighties, Marsh clearly articulated views that would resonate with the moderate faction of the convention. He never espoused biblical inerrancy; he argued that honest theological disagreement was permissible within the convention; and he criticized creedalism. After the 1986 convention, he declared that while Southern Baptists had always been theologically conservative, "Jesus did not establish any theological checklist." (21) Marsh also warned against the SBC becoming a pawn of any secular political party, although he never explicitly acknowledged the moderate charge that aligned the new SBC leaders with the political Religious Right. In 1987, Marsh reiterated familiar themes: he avoided politicizing his church in order to focus on missions and he desired to be a reconciler in the denominational conflict. (22)

In the early years of "the controversy," some fundamentalists had been harshly critical of the Cooperative Program because their money was supporting "liberalism." In similar fashion, as moderates continued to lose elections, some began to question the logic of giving money to an agenda they opposed and from which they felt increasingly disenfranchised. But many Baptists, even if they had concerns with fundamentalist methods and victories, usually had decades of deeply rooted tradition and undying loyalty to the Baptist stewardship programs that produced, in their minds, the most effective missionary enterprise in Christian history. This sense of loyalty was clearly expressed in a deacons' meeting in June 1988 after yet another moderate convention loss. In a subsequent Church News column, Jim Neyland, minister of church administration, cited the words of fellow church member James Griffith, the GBC executive director, to the deacons: "The bottom line is that if the moderates pull out or reduce their giving to the Cooperative Program, the missionaries will be the ones to suffer." Neyland concurred and noted with strong approbation Griffith's final word to the deacons: "I don't let nobody blow smoke on my blue skies." (23)

"Conservatives" proclaimed victory after the 1990 convention in New Orleans. They had achieved total control of all the SBC's agencies and were employing only like-minded supporters. Moderates were resigned to defeat and disillusioned about the future. After the convention, Robert Marsh made his most definitive statement about the SBC to the deacons in an address that he entitled "The Tragic Controversy in the Southern Baptist Convention." Marsh expressed some sympathy for the concerns of conservatives. A few professors, he thought, had refused to address "conservative-evangelical" viewpoints. On the other hand, no "conservative resurgence" was necessary since isolated problems could and would have been addressed.

Marsh argued that the basic problem was not fundamentalism versus liberalism, or conservative versus moderate. The issue was "a narrow-minded provincialism--a bucolic and narrow thinking--a mean spirit refusing to allow open discussion in search for truth." He agreed with the moderate stance that "the conservative agenda has a "tragic litmus test": "Who believes the Word of God the way I believe the Word of God?" And that question is answered by this observation: if you do not hold to this conservative agenda, you are not a Bible believer." (24) Inerrancy was not the issue, Marsh added, but whether someone had to believe in inerrancy to be a Baptist.

Marsh's address to the deacons was intensely personal. He lamented the toll the conflict had inflicted on his family, especially upon his brother-in-law, Fisher Humphreys, who had been criticized while teaching at New Orleans Seminary. (25) Marsh also noted that his son, Charles, would most likely never have the opportunity to teach in a Southern Baptist school because he received his theological education at schools that would not affirm the SBC's conservative direction. (26)

Marsh's criticism of the direction of the new SBC, however, did not include any public profession of a moderate identity. He announced, "I am not for sale to any political party in our denomination." He reiterated his goal of being an agent of reconciliation and said he would not alienate himself from any other Baptist. Three different times Marsh affirmed that he never had and never would "prostitute" the pulpit to parade personal hurts and frustrations or "to embroil our people in a controversy which could polarize this church and thereby destroy this church." "When I stand before Jesus Christ, He is not going to ask me or any of my pastor friends, 'Did you make out of your people moderates or conservative?'" The "bottom line" for Marsh was, "I am not going to turn my back on our missionaries, seminary professors ... and others who are leading us in world evangelization." (27)

After the defeat in New Orleans, some moderates met in Atlanta three months later (August 1990) and discussed alternative methods for supporting Southern Baptist missions. The meeting eventually led to the formation of the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship (CBF). Marsh never commented about the CBF. As he said, he would continue to work completely within the structure of the denomination, even if he did not agree with its new direction. No one was going to blow smoke on the blue skies of his convention, at least when it came to mission identity and loyalty.

Marsh's approach to "the controversy" was one attempted by many non-fundamentalist churches. "Avoid politics, support missions, the denominational pendulum never swings too far; everything will ultimately be fine." Conventional wisdom did not hold, however. The pendulum swung to the right and stayed there.

Marsh's motives were genuine and his love for missions was unquestioned. Pastors who followed Marsh at Second-Ponce de Leon Baptist Church, however, recognized that the methods of the eighties were no longer feasible (and many moderates--some then, some later--opined that they never were). With the fragmentation resulting from the "controversy," traditional stewardship approaches (i.e., reliance on the Cooperative Program) became increasingly problematic. Mission stewardship was inescapably connected to the denominational realignment. If a local congregation had not strongly sided with the new leadership of the convention, to say the denominational skies were blue was to never look up.

A Delicate Balance between the SBC and the CBF: The Denison Years

Soon after the conclusion of Marsh's ministry in September 1993, Second-Ponce de Leon Baptist Church found itself unable to sustain its intentional lack of involvement in "the controversy." Two factors revealed the inadequacy of past practices for the future. The Pastor Search Committee was supposed to find a pastoral candidate who, like Marsh, had not been involved in the Baptist conflict. The quest proved difficult; the committee found prospects with differing views who wanted to know the church's position. The signal event that turned the tide at the church, however, was the brutal firing of the congregation's former pastor, Russell Dilday, as the president of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary on March 9, 1994. The church's deacons responded with a letter, printed in the Christian Index, which expressed "extreme displeasure with the treatment given Dr. Dilday." In the letter, the deacons reminded national Baptist leaders that they had not participated in the conflict and had continued to support the SBC with financial resources. (28) Suddenly, denominational warfare was very personal.

James Denison. James Denison came to Second-Ponce de Leon Baptist Church as a staunch supporter of moderate Baptist life in Texas. The native Texan was pastor of First Baptist Church, Midland, and served on the executive committee of Texas Baptists Committed, a "mainstream" Baptist organization that opposed fundamentalism. He also came to Atlanta at the encouragement of his mentor, Russell Dilday, and obviously was dismayed at the new direction of theological education at Southern Baptist seminaries. (29)

The pastoral call of Denison and the firing of Dilday at Southwestern gave rise to the formation of a Denominational Relations Task Force at the church in September 1994. Similar to other churches concerned about the new SBC, the task force was to give tangible voice to dissent. Specifically, it was "to develop a recommendation for a method by which church members can contribute money to which group they choose, the SBC or the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship." When the deacons discussed this plan, it marked the first time the CBF had been mentioned in the deacons' minutes. (30)

A new day of denominational identity was dawning. Some church members were actively involved in the work of moderate Baptist life. (31) Denison, while not the pioneer of CBF interest at the church, was a supporter and "endorser" of the work of others. This inclusive atmosphere was seen symbolically when Daniel Vestal, who became the national coordinator of the CBF in 1996, joined the church's fellowship in 1997. (32)

Support for the CBF was gradual, and never unanimous. The church agreed to address the freedom of individual church members to include the CBF in their giving; then the congregation was confronted with the question whether they as a whole could support these new Baptist ministries that were outside the normal SBC channels.

In October 1994, after terrible flooding in the state, confusion and debate resulted over money to be given for Georgia Flood Relief. The ministerial staff announced that gifts would support efforts begun by Keith Parks, Global Missions Coordinator of the CBF (and former head of the SBC Foreign Mission Board). A week later, the GBC announced its relief aid initiatives. The church decided to give money to Parks--he had recently attended a reception for former pastor, Robert Marsh, at the church--but concerns were evident because the congregation had never before approved money for the CBF. Conflict was avoided when it was announced that no donations were given directly to the CBF but went to persons in need. Convention matters had clearly entered the church's stewardship picture, but Denison remarked, "Cooperative Missions is a problem of the convention that must be faced as a church. We must deal with the problem in unity so as to make everyone feel good about how we give our mission money. Convention politics should not divide our church." (33)

Openness toward CBF ministries continued to develop in subsequent months. Keith Parks spoke at a church-wide world missions luncheon in December 1994 as part of the Week of Prayer for Foreign Missions--the first time the CBF was officially represented in a mission emphasis. Then on June 1, 1995, a new giving plan, proposed by the Denominational Relations Task Force, took effect. The plan allowed each church member to choose one of three options to specify the direction of the portion of his/her 1995 budget gifts that were listed as Cooperative Missions:

* Cooperative Program of the SBC

* CBF

* Divided equally between the Cooperative Program and the CBF.

Unallocated gifts were still designated to the Cooperative Program of the SBC. Again noting the traumatic firing of Dilday, the task force hailed the giving options as the best way to "maintain unity in our diversity." (34)

Denison attempted a delicate balance between the SBC and CBF in mission emphases, a pragmatic approach in light of "Second-Ponce's" deeply rooted Southern Baptist mission heritage. In June 1995, for example, Jerry Rankin, head of the Foreign Mission Board, and Larry Lewis, leader of the Home Mission Board, were the featured speakers for Celebrating Missions Day. Advertisements for CBF of Georgia meetings began appearing in March 1996 in the Church News. In 1997, Home Missions week highlighted the ministry of a CBF missionary to the Kurds; subsequently, the congregation helped sponsor a Kurdish refugee family. (35) Some church members expressed concern about diminishing support for SBC missionaries, but the majority of congregants pledged their monetary gifts to the CBF (56 percent CBF to 44 percent SBC). Reflecting the church's split loyalties, the Week of Prayer for World Missions in December 1997 (traditionally the SBC focus on the Lottie Moon Christmas Offering) included both CBF and SBC mission speakers. (36)

Denison's strongest support for moderate Baptist activities was seen in his promotion of the Atlanta based Mercer School of Theology, a new moderate alternative to Southern Baptist theological education that began in 1996. Denison, who served as an adjunct professor, told his congregation that they were one of the school's "founding churches" and church members were a part of the first student body. In 1997, the church appeared to grow even closer to Mercer's new venture. Church members James and Carolyn McAfee donated $10 million to the school; consequently, it was renamed the "McAfee School of Theology." (37)

Conclusion

Second-Ponce de Leon Baptist Church is one paradigm of the local Baptist church experience during the SBC controversy. While some churches took the fast track to a moderate or fundamentalist stance, many tried to avoid the conflict. Some churches, by default of their non-involvement, simply remained loyal to their Southern Baptist identity. Some, despite problems with political maneuverings by the fundamentalist leadership, cast their lot with the new direction of the convention. Others, who became moderate, were like Second-Ponce de Leon Baptist Church. For as long as possible, the church attempted to stay out of the fray, believing that a focus on missions would survive any political/theological infighting that might occur. This attitude, encapsulated in the folksy sound bite, "I don't let nobody blow smoke on my blue skies," enabled many persons to avoid confronting the issues impacting the SBC. For those who ultimately abandoned the approach, a personal experience with fundamentalism was often needed to trigger the "conversion." In the case of Second-Ponce de Leon Baptist Church, the brutal firing of Russell Dilday as president of Southwestern Seminary was the defining "call to arms." (38)

At Second-Ponce de Leon Baptist Church, a congregation with a rich Baptist legacy, the majority of members who care about the direction of their mission gifts have moved in a moderate direction. Still, a minority have not. The church has allowed the freedom for various giving methods to co-exist. At the national level, these differences have proved irreconcilable. Only the future will tell whether the uneasy compromise is sustainable at the local level. In some settings, the conflict seems a thing of the past, in others, the issue of Baptist identity rages on. The nature/existence of Baptist identity and its contribution (or lack of) to the reconfiguration of ministry needs in a postmodern culture will be a story told in local churches in the next decade. It is a story worth the attention of historians and other observers.

(1.) William Cathcart, The Baptist Encyclopedia, 1 (Philadelphia: L. H. Everts, 1880), 49.

(2.) Two nineteenth-century editors, David Shaver and the prominent H. H. Tucker (on and off for twenty-two years), were church members. Gov. Joseph E. Brown was recognized for his gift of $50,000 to a financially strapped Southern Seminary in 1880, a gift that some observers suggested saved the school from closure. Martha Wilson, missions pioneer, was the leader of women's missions in Georgia in the late nineteenth century. The state women's missions group was organized and met at Second Baptist Church.

(3.) This article refocuses with a new thematic emphasis (and different organizational format) some of the research found in C. Douglas Weaver, Second to None: A History of Second-Ponce de Leon Baptist Church (Brentwood, TN: Baptist History and Heritage Society, 2004). To see how another local church dealt with Baptist conflict, see C. Douglas Weaver, Eyelid Town Needs a Downtown Church, A History of First Baptist Church, Gainesville, Florida (Brentwood, TN: Baptist History and Heritage, 2000), 162.

(4.) Russell Dilday, e-mail correspondence with Doug Weaver, November 18, 2003. When elected as the vice-president of the Baptist General Convention of Texas, Dilday was the youngest ever to hold the position.

(5.) Jack Harwell, "'Denominationalism' Is a Happy Way of Life for Busy Young Pastor of Big Atlanta Church," Christian Index (September 5, 1974): 3-4.

(6.) The 1973 budget, $1,000,001, was the first million-dollar budget for a Southern Baptist church east of the Mississippi River. Total receipts for 1973 were $1,010,942. Mission allocations totaled over $300,000 with $180,000 Wen to the Cooperative Program of the SBC, the third largest in the convention. See Georgia Baptist Convention Annuals 1973-1977. The church's newsletter, entitled Church News, September 2, 1973. Hereafter cited CN. Deacons' Minutes of Second Ponce de Leon Baptist Church, January 14, 1974. Hereafter cited DM.

(7.) DM, June 17, 1974.

(8.) CN, July 25, 1975. The Church News published Dilday's sermon, "Baptists and the Bible," in full. During the early years of the SBC conflict, Dilday published The Doctrine of Biblical Authority (Nashville: Convention Press, 1982) in which he held a strong view of biblical authority but resisted the use of the word "inerrancy" to describe biblical inspiration. Fundamentalists immediately opposed Dilday's views.

(9.) Ibid.

(10.) Ibid.

(11.) CN, June 13, 1976.

(12.) CN, June 19, 1977; CN, October 16, 1977.

(13.) See Jerry Sutton, The Baptist Reformation: The Conservative Resurgence in the Southern Baptist Convention (Nashville: Broadman and Holman, 2000).

(14.) DM, June 18, 1979.

(15.) Jerry Hayner, pastor of First Baptist Church, Gainesville, Florida, commented in his church's newsletter about Bailey Smith's controversial remark: "Who is he, or anyone else for that matter, to say whose prayer God hears?" See Weaver, Every Town Needs a Downtown Church, 163.

(16.) DM, June 15, 1981; DM, June 21, 1982.

(17.) CN, July 4, 1982; CN, October 7, 1984; DM, June 18, 1984. At the 1984 convention, messengers passed the controversial resolution on the "Edenic fall" and urged restrictions on women in ministry. Marsh never mentions these specifics in the Church News (this year or any other year of the controversy).

(18.) Thirty-eight deacons were among the church members that left First Baptist Church. Most of the exited members went to Second-Ponce de Leon Baptist Church. See Jesse Fletcher, The Southern Baptist Convention: A Sesquicentennial History (Nashville: Broadman and Holman, 1994), 247.

(19.) CN, June 2, 1985; CN, June 30, 1985; DM, June 17, 1985.

(20.) The Cooperative Program percentage was reduced to 14 percent the next year, a percentage the church had given before. Still, the strong emphasis upon mission giving was obvious. In 1988, for example, $115,000 was given to the Lottie Moon offering for foreign missions.

(21.) CN, June 22, 1986.

(22.) CN, November 22, 1987.

(23.) Ibid.

(24.) Robert Marsh, "The Tragic Controversy in the Southern Baptist Convention," presented to deacons, June 18, 1990.

(25.) Ibid. Marsh's views appear to be quite similar to the position taken by his brother-in-law, Fisher Humphreys, in the 1994 book, Fisher Humphreys, The Way We Were: How Southern Baptist Theology hers Changed and What it Means to Us All (New York: McCraeken Press, 1994), 173. While lamenting the fundamentalist direction of the SBC, Humphreys declared, "I am very happy to continue to be a part of the Convention." in a subsequent edition of the book, however, Humphreys deleted this comment. In recent years, Humphreys has been more identified with the CBF.

(26.) Charles Marsh is the director of the Project on Lived Theology at the University of Virginia. He received two degrees in theology, a Master's at Harvard University and a Ph.D. at the University of Virginia.

(27.) Robert Marsh, "The Tragic Controversy in the Southern Baptist Convention," June 18, 1990.

(28.) CN, March 21, 1994; CN, May 1, 1994. See the letter to the Southwestern trustees about Dilday's termination in the "Index Forum," Christian Index (April 14, 1994): 5.

(29.) Weaver, Second to None, 188.

(30.) DM, September 19, 1994; DM, February 12, 1995.

(31.) Church member William Trawick, for example, was on the coordinating council of the Georgia CBF for five years in the 1990s.

(32.) James Denison, interview with Doug Weaver, November 13, 2003.

(33.) CN, July 17, 1994; DM, October 17, 1994.

(34.) CN, April 9, 1995.

(35.) CN, June 18, 1995; CN, March 9, 1997; CN, April 27, 1997.

(36.) DM, January 20, 1997.

(37.) The gift was the largest ever by a living donor in the history of Mercer University. The McAfees were co-chairs of the School of Theology component of the university's $130 million "Mercer 2000 Capital Campaign" and James McAfee was the current chair of the Mercer University board of trustees. See "School's Financial Future Secured By $10 Million Endowment Gift," Christian Index (May 1, 1997): 1.

(38.) During the SBC controversy, Roy Honeycutt, the president of Southern Baptist Seminary provoked controversy with his moderate "call to arms" convocation address about the conflict

Doug Weaver is assistant professor of religion at Baylor University, Waco, Texas.