A Genealogy of Dissent: Southern Baptist Protest in the Twentieth Century.

A Genealogy of Dissent: Southern Baptist Protest in the Twentieth Century. By David Stricklin. Religion in the South. (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, c. 1999. Pp. xviii, 229. $36.00, ISBN 0-8131-2093-4.)

This book appears at an important time in American religious life. Representatives of the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) currently occupy center stage in the attempt of a major denomination to provide a countercultural response to the American "public square." Their efforts are generally representative of a radical right agenda. David Stricklin, an assistant professor in the division of fine arts at Lyon College, addresses Southern Baptists' history of dissent throughout the twentieth century. His focus, however, is on those whose concerns moved them more left of center. Stricklin contends that a "genealogy of dissent" led certain individuals and groups of Southern Baptists to respond against the grain of southern culture, refusing to be "at ease in Zion" (p. 19) when it came to significant issues of the social gospel such as race, civil rights, war and peace, women in ministry, and certain theological debates.

Stricklin recounts the activities of well-known dissenters, including the founder of Koinonia Farms, Clarence Jordan; noted SBC ethicists T. B. Maston, Henlee Barnette, and Foy Valentine; outspoken pastor Carlyle Marney; and educator Edwin McNeill Poteat. One of the great services of the book is the information it provides about certain lesser known "prophets" such as Walter Johnson, a pastor and denominational administrator who wrote extensively on issues of economics and politics, constantly urging Southern Baptist churches to develop radical methods for community service and Christian discipleship. Johnson's influence on those later Southern Baptist dissenters has often been overlooked or underreported. Another fascinating segment of the book comes from oral histories that suggest that C. E. Matthews, a Texas Baptist pastor and church leader in the mid-twentieth century, was also a member of the Ku Klux Klan, apparently not an uncommon occurrence for some preachers during the period. That such events occurred with such relative nonchalance is both intriguing and bone-chilling.

The book explores a variety of minority voices in SBC social and theological history. The final chapter, on the recent controversy within the SBC between so-called fundamentalists and moderates, is helpful in identifying the more rightward expressions of dissent evident among the current generation of conservative leaders. That chapter needs to be another volume, however, and Stricklin is less successful in describing the complexities of the controversy. Other than that, his work is a fine contribution to Baptist and southern studies.

BILL J. LEONARD
Wake Forest University