The rise, decline, and fall of Christian Life commission entities and voices.

Edward Gibbon, in his autobiography, related the revelatory experience that led him to develop his multi-volume Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Gibbon's testimony of his epiphany was this:

   It was at Rome, on the 15th of October 1764, as I sat musing amid
   the ruins of the Capitol, while the barefooted friars were singing
   vespers in the temple of Jupiter, that the idea of writing the
   decline and fall of the city first started to my mind.... [M]y
   original plan was circumscribed to the decay of the city rather
   than of the empire, and ... my reading and reflections began to
   point toward that object. (1)

Whether apocryphal or not, we can identify with Gibbon's sense of seeing history flash before his eyes--and then ask the questions that call for further investigation and thinking, "How did that happen?"

Baptist life in the United States provides its own similarities to the ruins of the forum. More specifically, the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) experienced a comparable pattern in the rise and, what historians and theologians should call, the decline and fall of social ethics arms of the denomination at the national and state convention levels. These agencies were a platform for addressing public issues. Because of the platform, people such as Foy Valentine, Jimmy Allen, James Dunn, and Phil Strickland became public figures. These men promoted awareness regarding issues such as religious liberty, race relations, citizenship, family, and economics.

With some metaphorical assistance from Edward Gibbon, we will present the development of the Christian Life Commission idea and its erosion. (2) We will also demonstrate a correlation between the lack of social concern with the decline in the influence and numbers of those who are the Baptist figures addressing the issues. Our intent is to reveal some viable lessons for current and future Baptist life. (3)

The range of our exploration is certainly nothing close to Gibbon's mammoth work, but we must realize the scale of the matter under consideration. Our topic covers matters that arose before any of us were born and that will continue well beyond our lifetimes. We have to enlarge our imaginations to consider things beyond our own egocentric interests and range of mortality.

The Rise of the Christian Life Commission Idea

The gene of addressing social issues with the gospel, however recessive, was present in the SBC's establishment. How to conduct missions lay at the nucleus of the genesis of the SBC, but arguments ensued over whether or not slave owners could be appointed as missionaries, a basic ethical dilemma over a social issue. From 1845 to 1908, the SBC made little reference to social issues until the temperance movement found its way into committee structure.

A. J. Barton, a Texas Baptist, was active with the Anti-Saloon League in Texas and moved into national prominence with the organization. He was appointed as chair of the SBC Temperance Committee and served for decades. Swirling about him through those years were the North Carolina Poteats, a Baptist family who articulated a decidedly broader and bolder agenda on social issues. (4)

Not until J. B. Weatherspoon expanded the rote of the Social Service Commission in the 1940s, located in the corner of his Southern Baptist Theological Seminary office, did something akin to the Poteat agenda come forward. Hugh Brimm, elected as a salaried director of the Social Service Commission, considered a broad range of social issues, for that time and a little for our own time, which contained edginess and a forward-looking stance. (5)

In Texas, around the time Brimm came onto the scene, A. C. Miller was elected as director of the entity first using the name, the Christian Life Commission. (6) Miller served with a few others, including T. B. Maston, at the direction of the Baptist General Convention of Texas (BGCT) to develop a structure specifically to address the social issues facing the churches. (7)

John W. Storey opined as to why Texas, something of a Southern state, but yet Southwestern, developed this structure when the rest of the SBC-aligned state conventions had essentially rejected the Social Gospel movement, probably because that movement fit with a context of industrialization and urbanization--not the Old Confederacy. Storey's analysis followed Charles Reagan Wilson's study of the "Religion of the Lost Cause," embodying how Southerners may have given up political aspirations for a separate nation, but they preserved their culture by blending Christian rhetoric and symbols with Southern traditions in the following antebellum period. (8)

Storey offered four reasons for the development of a Christian ethics emphasis in Texas, including, strangely enough, that Texas was becoming the most urban of the Southern-Southwestern states. In addition, the BGCT never opposed the social Christianity emphases, the Baptist Standard editorship supported the Christian ethics involvements, and the department of Christian Ethics at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary supplied ministers who understood the ethics facets of the gospel. (9)

The doctoral students of T. B. Maston and then Henlee Barnette were the primary staff people for the early CLC entities in Texas and Nashville. Thus, issues and style emanating from the CLCs found their beginnings in the work of these two inimitable Baptist, Christian ethicists. (10) Each brought to the larger discussion substantive, analytical thinking and a sense of what constituted the whole gospel and how it should be delivered and lived out by whole persons.

Particularly through the energies of Foy Valentine, Miller's successor both at the Texas CLC and in Nashville, other CLC-like denominational agencies began to develop. By the early 1980s, Baptist state convention infrastructures had personnel addressing social and moral concerns much like the Nashville CLC. These persons met together at least once per year at the invitation of the Nashville agency to pursue common challenges and opportunities. For instance, the wide range of publications available on social issues disseminated further as these agencies pooled financial resources.

An interesting spectrum developed as Kentucky gave one employee half of the job time to complete CLC work; Virginia had one person on its staff who worked in the area of Christian ethics, as did Mississippi, Missouri, Tennessee, and Arkansas; North Carolina had three to four. Texas, then and now, continued to be the next largest staff after the Nashville CLC with four to five staff people giving attention to Christian ethics. By 1980, the CLCs provided topics and pamphlets for over eight different major categories encompassing aging, alcohol and drugs, citizenship, ecology, economics, marriage, family, sex, poverty, hunger, war, and peace. While much of the work focused towards marriage and family, the breadth of the study demonstrates the matching of CLC work toward specific concerns of members of the SBC. (11)

In a current look at how the now current CLC body of the SBC, renamed the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, produces literature, the focus of topics is now strictly limited to Faith and Family. Other available topical resources on previous CLC pamphlet subjects receive attention in the form of biblical verses that relate to those topics, acting more as a concordance for public use. (12)

The Decline and Fall of the Christian Life Commission Idea

Like a West Texas thunderstorm, the fundamentalists apparently were not there, then they were; but the fundamentalist insurgence had been building for decades with a predisposition toward certain issues, but more than anything, a way of thinking. Baptist fundamentalism encompassed a worldview, which really did not include spiritual formation, out of which the overflow addressed life-the Christian life. (13) Fisher Humphreys and Philip Wise demonstrated that the SBC takeover movement had direct lineage from the fundamentalism seen most vividly in the 1920s. (14)

Lisa McGirr, a historian at Harvard, tracked the emergence of the New American Right political movement in tandem with the growth of SBC churches in Orange County, California, in her book, Suburban Warriors. She attributed this growth to "in-migrants who grew up in regions of the country where conservative Protestantism was strong and simply carried those ideas to their new communities." (15) Certainly, a belief in conservative Protestant doctrine did not make one a right-wing political activist, but these adherents' normative conservatism, firm religious convictions, and moral values helped infuse a socially conservative political culture.

Bill Leonard accurately noted that the SBC began to reflect both a cultural and denominational fragmentation. Ironically, as the fundamentalists were looking to impose their sense of unity on the SBC, the fragmentation accelerated. (16)

The internal insurgence of the SBC took out its vengeance on the Nashville CLC. The CLC had fallen under the suspicious eye of the fundamentalists, particularly as Valentine had led the CLC regarding race relations. (17) The CLC was one of the first agencies that felt the recoil of trustees who held antithetical viewpoints of what the CLC developed. Foy Valentine retired--an event significant enough in itself. His successor, Larry Baker, had enough pressure brought upon him that he resigned, and the rampant takeover began. (18) In one sense, where the CLC went, so went the SBC. (19) A similar pattern can be noted across the state convention frameworks.

The effects of the decline of the state CLCs' influence began several years ago as various Baptist state conventions began their reduction campaigns to Christian ethics emphases. Nearly every state that had CLC staff people either neutered or dissolved those emphases.

Jerry Self retired from a Christian Life position with the Tennessee Baptist Convention several years ago. He reflected on the situation with regard to most of the state conventions and Christian ethics emphases: "After I left they hired a retired West Tennessee Association Director part time to lobby the General Assembly and report on moral issues before the legislature. He didn't do much with the position and there appears not to be any such position in the convention at the present." (20) This trend appears to be a common occurrence as those who previously filled similar positions found their posts dwindled to the bottom of the proverbial institutional totem pole.

Since the beginning of 2006, Phil Strickland has died, and Foy Valentine has died--who though retired continued throughout his days to speak and act on behalf of the cause of Christian ethics. (21) Jimmy Allen and James Dunn, long retired from active CLC work, remain active voices for Christian ethics.

Fisher Humphreys and Philip Wise outlined the traits of generic fundamentalism. They listed these traits: religious origins, a selective use of tradition, reactions to the modern world, a siege mentality, militancy, authoritarian male leaders, a nostalgic view of history with a view of the present as a time of crisis, a we/they approach, and a totalitarian impulse. (22) Such dimensions of denominational life do not lend themselves to the promulgation of a prophetic perspective, and particularly a Baptist, prophetic perspective.

Edward Farley offered considerable aid in identifying how this denominational framework rejected the CLC idea. In Farley's Deep Symbols, he demonstrated how tradition, obligation, reality, law, and hope eroded as theological and ethical symbols, but also how to restore them. Through five points, he explained how this transformation takes place: (23)

(1) when a denomination tries to satisfy its many constituencies.

(2) when the religious community promotes certain undertakings in a pseudo way. An example is what passes for education in the church.

(3) the sheer size of a congregation. The congregation is too large for most members to knout each other, much less be involved with each other in face-to-face ways.

(4) withdrawal into some group or community, one's profession, class, denomination, ethnic group, nation, family, and even gender.

(5) when the master narrative loses meaning and power.

Hindsight may be 20/20. Farley's insight explained how these dynamics worked across lines in the SBC denomination, the fundamentalist insurgency, and their effects on public, prophetic, and Christian proclamation.

Current Expressions of the CLC Idea

Not all is completely lost, but the CLC idea is seriously wounded. A few stalwart souls remain engaged. A staff of two program people and an administrative assistant form the Christian ethics emphases for the Baptist State Convention in North Carolina. (24) Their importance is severely limited because of staffing and the consistent shifting of the North Carolina convention to the ultra-right. Texas remains the strongest standard-bearer of the former Christian Life Commission. Their impact, however, has lessened with the death of Strickland and the inevitable entropic effects of reorganization within the BGCT.

Only a few of the moderate-based theological education enterprises have an emphasis with Christian ethics faculty. There are no more giants in the land such as Barnette and Maston to shape following generations thinking about Christian life wholistically. The Christian Ethics department at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, for instance, was staffed after 1998 with the intent of not having anyone in the department who reflected the Maston tradition. (25)

Following Baker's resignation as CLC director in Nashville, Robert Parham served as interim director of the organization. With the hiring of a new director, Parham left to form the Baptist Center for Ethics, also based in Nashville. The Center continues to be a moderate Baptist-supported office. Recently, the Center has become a virtual office, with products and communication done through the Internet. The communication power of the Internet comes to bear on behalf of Christian ethics, but the lack of an incarnated projection of this distinction of the Christian life contributes to the de-evolution process underway.

Lessons Learned

Edward Gibbon concluded his three-volume work with some condensed observations regarding the decline and fall of the Roman Empire. No one factor led to the Empire's demise. Four stood out for Gibbon. We leave for the readers and hearers of these points to find the juxtaposition of these ideas with the decline and fall of the CLC idea:

(1) The edifices which represented the grandeur of Rome began to exhibit deterioration and had little repair. (26)

(2) The barbarians and the Christians, with their particular approach to Christianity, each had their own contribution, but perhaps not as superficial as historians have made. (27)

(3) As the structures deteriorated, people began to carry away pieces of stone to use for their own construction. (28)

(4) The domestic hostilities of the Romans themselves contributed to the decline. (29)

Historians and theologians alike strongly critiqued Gibbon because of his inclusion of Christianity as a factor in the demise of the Roman Empire. The critiques usually arose from those who perceived the semantics to be sacrosanct. One must keep that evaluation by Gibbon in the mix, however, as one notes the inclusion of Christianity into the operations of the Empire by Constantine. Early in the fourth century came a blending of church and state, the consequences of which diluted the Empire's political and religious effectiveness. The content of the larger Baptist demographic in the United States now projects a philosophy, which is cozy with the State, so cozy as to try to use the power of the State for evangelism purposes. (30) Such a philosophy and theology sets the boundary lines of what and how matters of Christian ethics are to be addressed. In a recent article, Bill Moyers called for true Baptists to rally and put truth claims of fundamentalists to the test of reality. To comply with Moyers's challenge will require Baptists to have the courage to stand in opposition to those that wish to contain Baptist doctrine within a box. For a country built upon the framework of equality for all and ideas of separation between church and state, religious-political groups on the far right wish to combine and limit those freedoms of the seemingly voiceless ordinary citizens. (31)

Strategies and Tactics for the Future

As the infrastructure of the SBC shifted to fundamentalist control, those declared as outsiders had to ask if they had come into a post-denominational era. Is, for example, the CLC idea best and only workable as part of a denominational infrastructure open to its dimensions of working? Where do the Baptist prophets come from?

In one of his last, and arguably best, published works, Phil Strickland poignantly addressed the question, "Where Have All the Prophets Gone?" (32) Strickland noted the need for prophets and the prophetic voice from preachers, laypeople, and denominations. Only a few individuals of notoriety, he stated, are delivering prophetic messages. (33) There is need for more public, Baptist voices who will say the gospel with the CLC idea in mind. Dependence on charismatic personalities has been too high. For the prophetic element of Baptist life to continue, to grow, to have impact, more must be heard from rank-and-file Baptists. (34) James Luther Adams articulated,

   A church that does not concern itself with the struggle in history
   for human decency and justice, a church that does not show concern
   for the shape of things to come, a church that does not attempt to
   interpret the signs of the times, is not a prophetic church. We
   have long held to the idea of the priesthood of all believers. The
   prophetic ... church is not a church in which the prophetic
   function is assigned merely to the few. The prophetic ... church
   is the church in which persons think and work together to
   interpret the signs of the times in the light of their faith, to
   make explicit through discussion the epochal thing that the times
   demand. The prophetic ... church is the church in which all members
   share the common responsibility to attempt to foresee the
   consequences of human behavior (both individual and institutional),
   with the intention of making history in place of merely being
   pushed around by it. Only through the prophetism of all believers
   can we together foresee doom and mend our common ways. (35)

Perhaps a generation or more of Baptists have evolved who either cannot or will not defend Baptist convictions enough to ward off those who can and will detract from them. Further, those who find being a Baptist prophet attractive must consider that the work is a dangerous one. Being the Baptist prophet can be dangerous to one's health; those in CLC work have told of receiving death threats because of their perspectives on race relations, gambling, or any number of other social issues.

We must take seriously the imperatives, not just the implications, of the gospel. These imperatives form the guidelines, objectives, even criteria of address for the CLC types. Thus, a re-reading of the Old Testament, the New Testament, and the applications in the contexts of biblical personalities can demonstrate those matters which must be articulated in our own time. Realizing the imperatives of the gospel calls us to engage our culture; at points we can find ourselves in step with it and that is doing the gospel. At times, and those we must discern carefully, we are required to develop counter themes to the culture.

This kind of realization must be developed-redeveloped probably; for what lies before us is nothing less than a recasting of the Baptist vision--in our local churches, for it is there from where the next wave of Christian ethics public voices will come. We must develop resources of personality and persons to deal with the inevitable and often harsh resistance.

The takeover by the fundamentalists constituted a semantic and emotional victory as much as anything. We can also identify that something went terribly wrong, that the ethical protocols used--ends justifying the means--were more an ethical fallacy than an ethical principle. Thus, we must pay more attention to what is going on around us. A major part of this generation's Baptists' accountability is to pass along from what, where, and how we have come to be. Much of what happened in the last twenty-five to fifty years is because good Baptist, Christian people went to sleep at the wheel.

What we are calling for is not merely reform of the SBC--the system is so far off course as to warrant beginning anew. (36) In fact, this draws us to the point that Baptists must understand systems and organizational ethics. With all the genius regarding church-state issues, for example, overall we have not maintained an application of the gospel, particularly with regard to Baptist institutions, reference points to which people turn for understanding how we act. The question becomes that of understanding the implementation of power and justice not only on a microcosmic scale, but in a macrocosmic one, as well. A clearer understanding of how the system worked may well have given rise to preventive maintenance that would have closed the loop holes discovered and exploited by the fundamentalists.

We must recognize that the situation can get worse before it gets better; for the value systems that have been in place for a generation will keep playing out for some time. It took a long time to get to where we are; it will take a long time to be better. We must communicate that there is no trichotomy between Christian ethics, evangelism, and spiritual formation. They are parts of a larger, interfaced whole. We must begin reflecting on the thrusts of this article. The first impression is overwhelming, if the ethical practice of Christian faith (and that is a redundancy) is important to you. We may well repeat the disciples' statement to Jesus, "Who, Lord, can be saved?" Thus to even engage what we are talking about becomes a practice of faith. We may well have to think in terms of, "If the projection of a wholistic Gospel is at stake, what if its continuing projection depends on me? What do I do? If it is to be, it is up to me." That idea marks this article in that we are offering one attempt at going public in relation to Baptist, prophetic Christianity.

We could not conclude this article any better than Edward Gibbon concluded his review of the Roman Empire with this sentence: "It was among the ruins of the Capitol that I first conceived the idea of a work which has amused and exercised near twenty years of my life, and which, however inadequate to my own wishes, I finally deliver to the curiosity and candour of the public. (37)

(1.) Edward Gibbon, The Autobiography of Edward Gibbon (New York: Meridian Books, 1961), 154. His methodology, marked by erudite research and prodigious work, remains as a major reference point for all historians.

(2.) William M. Pinson, Jr., whose Th.D. in Christian ethics was obtained through the supervision of T. B. Maston, outlined the philosophical and theological parameters of the CLC emphases in his book Applying the Gospel: Suggestions for Christian Social Action in a Local Church (Nashville, TN: Broadman Press, 1975), 11: The world is plagued with unmet human need. Society is in crisis. The Bible sets forth a mandate to apply the good news of God to all of life. The Word of God and the plight of men call Christians to active social concern. Christians should take seriously the whole Bible. This calls for concern about salvation and starvation, repentance and racism, faith and family, regeneration and revolution, justification and justice, sanctification and sex, hell and housing, heaven and honesty, love and law--because the Bible includes insights and principles that relate to all of these, with the Bible as our guide, Christians need to become as concerned about dirty air and water as we have been about dirty books and movies. We need to become as concerned about the immoral use of sex in marriage for irresponsible procreation as we have been about it apart from marriage in fornication. We need to become as concerned about people who are kept out of Baptist churches because of race as we have been about those let in without benefit of Baptist immersion. We need to become as concerned about what the poor have for supper as we have been about who is eligible to partake of the Lord's Supper. This we must do if we are true to the Bible.

(3.) Deliberately, because of space limitations but also because the historical sweep of these ideas is so broad, we are going to present something more of an editorial review than a carefully point-by-point referencing of themes we raise.

(4.) John Lee Eighmy, Churches in Cultural Captivity: A History of the Social Altitudes of Southern Baptists, rev. ed. (Knoxville, TN: University of Tennessee Press, 1987), 84. Eighmy mentioned how the Poteats advocated a liberal social philosophy fully in accord with the Progressive age that produced the Social Gospel.

(5.) Ibid., 154-55, 181-84.

(6.) Ibid., 184-85. Miller had extensive work in the church and denominational life, starting in Texas a version of the SBC's Social Service Commission.

(7.) "Eight to Eighty: Some Christian Life Commission Highlights from 1908 to 1980," LIGHT (June-July 1980): 1-5. A thoughtful reflection on this history can be found in Rufus B. Spain, At Ease in Zion: A Social History of Southern Baptists, 1865-1900 (Nashville, TN: Vanderbilt University Press, 1967), and Eighmy's Churches in Cultural Captivity, which reviewed the era of 1900-1972. For a thorough review of the development of the BGCT CLC, see David Stricklin, "An Interpretive History of the Christian Life Commission of the Baptist General Convention of Texas, 1950 1977" (Ph.D. diss., Baylor University, 1981).

(8.) See Charles Reagan Wilson, Baptized in Blood (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1980).

(9.) John W. Storey, Texas Baptist Leadership and Social Christianity, 1900-1980 (College Station, TX: Texas A&M University Press, 1986), 7-14.

(10.) See Henlee H. Barnette, A Pilgrimage of Faith: My Story (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 2004); "Henlee Hulix Barnett: A Special Salute," Christian Ethics Today 3, no. 4 (September 1997); William M. Tillman, Jr., ed. Perspectives on Applied Christianity: Essays in Honor of Thomas Buford Maston (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 1986); Charles Franklin McCullough, "An Evaluation of the Biblical Hermeneutic of T. B. Maston" (Ph.D. diss., Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, 1987); William M. Pinson, Jr., compiler/contributor, An Approach to Christian Ethics The Life, Contribution, and Thought of T B Maston (Nashville, TN: Broadman Press, 1979; William M. Tillman, Jr., "Barnette and Maston: We Need Them More Than Ever," Baptist History and Heritage 38, no. 3 (Summer/Fall, 2003): 28-34.

(11.) C. B. Hastings, "We Are Becoming Socially Aware." See http://www.ministryserver.com/cbhastings/isb00toc.htm, accessed May 20, 2006.

(12.) See http://www.erlc.com/, accessed May 20, 2006. The magazine publication has even undergone a makeover with a change in the name from Light to Salt

(13.) See George M. Marsden, Fundamentalism and American Culture: The Shaping of Twentieth-Century Evangelicalism: 1870-1925 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1980), 6-7, who offered three dominant themes of fundamentalism: a paradoxical tendency to identity with the establishment and outsiders; a relationship to an early American evangelical heritage; a tension between trust and distrust of the intellect. These themes apparently converged in the late 1960s and found expression by 1979 for the SBC.

(14.) Fisher Humphreys and Philip Wise, Fundamentalism (Macon, GA: Smyth & Helwys, 2004), 65-78.

(15.) Lisa McGirr, Suburban Warriors The Origins of the New American Right (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001), 4-5. See also a context setting discussion in William A. Galston and Elaine C. Kamarck, "The Politics of Polarization: A Study Paper Produced by The Third Way Middle Class Project," October 2005.

(16.) Bill J. Leonard, God's Last and Only Hope The Fragmentation of the Southern Baptist Convention (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1990), 22-24. Malcolm Gladwell, The Tipping Point (New York, NY: Little, Brown and Company, 2002) is a popular, but interestingly stated, treatment of how trends, processes, even movements occur.

(17.) See a thorough reflection on the divisions in Andrew M. Manis, "Dying from the neck up: Southern Baptist resistance to the civil rights movement," http://www.findarticlescom/p/articles/mi_m0NXG/is_1_34/ai_94160905/print, accessed October 26, 2005.

(18.) For a concise rendering of the 0nposition of a new moral/political agenda on the SBC, see Rob James and Gary Leazer with James Shoopman, The Fundamentalist Takeover in The Southern Baptist Convention: A Brief History (Timisoara, Romania: impact Media, 1999), 76-79.

(19.) The name Christian Life Commission changed rather immediately as the SBC changed hands. Oddly, though renamed the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, the website reveals little reference in that direction. Rather, more emphasis points to the president of the ERLC, Richard Laud, and the projection of issues that reflect a great deal of James Dobson's Focus on the Family. See http://www.erlc.com/. A subjective perspective on the erosion of the SBC comes with Grady C. Cothen, What Happened to the Southern Baptist Convention?: A Memoir of the Controversy (Macon, GA: Smyth & Helwys Publishing, Inc., 1993). A more succinct, but scholarly, review is Nancy T. Ammerman, "The SBC: Retrospect and Prospect," Review and Expositor 88, no. 1 (Winter 1991): 9-23.

(20.) Jerry Self, e-mail to William M. Tillman, Jr., December 12, 2005. A review of the website of the Tennessee Baptist Convention, http://www.tnbaptist.org/, demonstrates Self's perception is accurate. Conversation with Paul Jones II, formerly of the Christian Action Committee in Mississippi, also confirmed Sells comments.

(21.) Foy Valentine died on January 7, 2006; less than five weeks later on February 11, Phil Strickland died. Valentine in retirement initiated two entities that address facets of applied Christian ethics. See the websites http://www.baylor.edu/christianethics/ and http://www.christianethicstoday.com/.

(22.) Humphreys and Wise, Fundamentalism, 9-15

(23.) Edward Farley, Deep Symbols: Their Postmodern Effacement and Reclamation (Valley Forge, PA: Trinity Press International, 1996), 68-70.

(24.) "The Council on Christian Life and Public Affairs challenges North Carolina Baptists to become more aware of the ethical implications of' the Gospel in daily life. It works to create a social and moral climate in which the Baptist witness for Christ will be most effective. The Convention stipulates that the Council will always speak to our people rather than for them." See http://www.bscnc.org/churchministries/christianlife/.

One of the state conventions that was cultivated in the late 1970s and early 1980s to begin a Christian ethics dimension has developed an emphasis known as The Ethics and Public Affairs Ministry. The office "serves in the role of advocacy in behalf of the Georgia Baptist Convention to the Georgia General Assembly." During annual legislative sessions, "the office also reports on moral and family issue legislation before state lawmakers on the ... web site." As well, a noteworthy qualification is that Ethics & Public Affairs in partnership with the Southern Baptist Convention Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission works on certain legislation before the Congress. One person serves in the office. See http://ethics.gabaptist.org/common/content.asp?PAGE=197.

In Mississippi, two persons represent the Christian Action Committee which has two primary assignments: "provide aids, materials, and services to churches so they may be informed of facts, trends, and conditions relating to the moral, social, ethical, and legal issues that impact their lives" and "emphasize the biblical teachings as they relate to the seven areas of assigned concerns." See http://www.christianaction.com/History%20of%20the%20CAC.htm.

(25.) Paul Jones, II, interview by William M. Tillman, Jr., 1999.

(26.) Edward Gibbon, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, (New York: Random House, 1954), 3:880. Gibbon remarked, "The art of" man is able to construct monuments far more permanent than the narrow span of his own existence: yet these monuments, like himself, are perishable and frail; and in the boundless annals of thime his life and his labours must equally be measured as a fleeting moment."

(27.) Ibid., 866. Gibbon wrote, "in simple truth, the northern conquerors were neither sufficiently savage, nor sufficiently refined, to entertain such aspiring ideas of destruction and revenge.... In the transient possession of a rich and unresisting capital, the soldiers of Alaric and Genseric were stimulated by the passions of a victorious army; amidst the wanton indulgence of lust or cruelty, portable wealth was the object of their search." "From these innocent barbarians the reproach may be transferred to the Catholics of Rome. The statues, altars, and houses of the demons were an abomination in their eyes; and in the absolute command of the city, they might labour with zeal and perseverance to erase the idolatry of their ancestors."

(28.) Ibid., 869. Gibbon noted, "But if the forms of ancient architecture were disregarded by a people insensible of their use and beauty, the plentiful materials were applied to every call of necessity or superstition; till the fairest columns of the Ionic and Corinthian orders, the richest marbles of Paros and Numidia, were degraded, perhaps to the support of a convent or a stable."

(29.) Ibid., 870. Gibbon reflected, "the most potent and forcible cause of destruction, the domestic hostilities of the Romans themselves ... the peace of the city was disturbed by accidental, though frequent, seditions."

(30.) The deep irony here is that too many contemporary Baptists talk about the importance of evangelism but their drive for intimacy with the State demonstrates they do not understand the basic nature of evangelism requiring no coercion. For if the context is shaped so there are only guarantees, no room not to believe, there is really not a context to believe in Christ.

(31.) Bill Moyers, "A Time for Heresy." See http://www.tompaine.com/articles/2006/03/22/a_time_for_heresy.php, accessed March 22, 2006.

(32.) Several sources have carried this address which Phil Strickland wrote for presentation at the Texas Baptists Committed breakfast at the BGCT annual meeting in Austin, Texas, on November 14, 2005. Phil's illness prevented him from presenting the address; but, in his absence George Mason, senior pastor at Wilshire Baptist Church, Dallas, Texas, did so. See A Tribute to Phil Strickland (Dallas, TX: Christian Life Commission, BGCT, 2006), 13-15.

(33.) See "Gore's Challenge to Congress and the Media," The Nation, http://www.tbenation.com/blogs/thebeat?pid, accessed February 14, 2006; Bill Moyers, "Saving Democracy," Common Dreams News Center, http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0224-20.htm, accessed March 10, 2006; Bill Moyers, "A Time for Heresy," http://www.tompaine.com/articles/2006/03/22/a_time_for_heresy.php; accessed, March 22, 2006; Jimmy Carter, Our Endangered Values: America's Moral Crisis (New York, New York: Simon & Schuster, 2005).

(34.) Charles Deweese, "'Big Issues' Confront Baptists Today," The Baptist Standard, October 3, 2005, 4. Deweese offers several factors for prophetic decline: "Baptist state newspapers and pulpits have been converted into public relations outlets.... [M]any editors and preachers are not familiar with the ... highly prophetic writers and preachers in Baptist history.... [J]ob security sometimes provides a powerful motivation to keep one's pen quiet or mouth shut."

(35.) James Luther Adams, "The Prophethood of all Believers," in The Prophethood of all Believers, edited by George K. Beach (Boston: Beacon Press, 1986), 100.

(36.) Efforts initiated toward reconciliation and restoration of the SBC's unity and mission are commendable but likely will result in little change in the abyss that has formed over the years. A gathering sponsored by the Carter Center in Atlanta had attendance from major Baptist infrastructures, except for the SBC. See Marv Knox, "Jimmy Carter gathers Baptist leaders, urges them to transcend differences," http://www.abpnews.com/936.article, accessed May 5, 2006; and Bob Allen, "Group Calls for Greater Cooperation Among Southern Baptists, Other Christians," http://www.ethicsdaily.com/print_popup.elm?AID-7320, accessed May 5, 2006.

(37.) Gibbon, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, 880.

William M. Tillman, Jr., is T. B. Maston Professor of Christian Ethics at Logsdon School of Theology, Abilene, Texas. W. Andrew Tillman is an M.A. Student at the University of Mississippi, Oxford, Mississippi.