What "Being Baptist" meant for Southern Baptists during World War II.

My purpose is to describe the Baptist identity from the perspective of Southern Baptists during the years from 1938 to 1946.

In other words, I am concerned with a single question: what did being Baptist mean for Southern Baptists during these years? The focus, therefore, is not, as the title may suggest, on Southern Baptists' attitudes toward war or their commitment, or lack of it, to peacemaking during World War II. (1) Rather, the concern here is to depict Southern Baptists' understanding of the Baptist identity during the war years.

Moreover, I am not seeking to describe the major features of the Southern Baptist Convention itself during these years. Except as those issues may have impacted their perception of the Baptist identity, I will not address Southern Baptists' celebrated commitment to denominational evangelism and missions, their passion for Christian education at the seminary and college levels, their concern--indeed, almost fixation--for the denomination's financial solvency, their growth and expansion patterns, their social concerns or lack of them, their constitutional revisions and by law changes, the almost total lack of women in their deliberations, or other such factors characterizing the internal life of the denomination. While important-even crucial-issues for the denomination's history, these have been addressed in varying degrees in the three standard denominational histories by W. W Barnes, Robert A. Baker, and Jesse C. Fletcher. (2) What these denominational histories failed to address clearly, however, was how Southern Baptists understood the Baptist identity during the period of World War II.

World War II began in 1939, although the United States did not enter the fray until 1941. The war ended in 1945. So, the chronological parameters of this paper include one year prior to the war to one year after the war. To fudge on the dates just slightly, therefore, I have portrayed here the Southern Baptist perception of what it meant to be Baptist at the middle of the twentieth century.

Southern Baptist Documents Profiling the Baptist Identity

Where does one go to find answers to the question of what Southern Baptists considered to be the Baptist identity at mid-century? Baptists are not a creedal people--a point made abundantly clear in the sources for this paper--so, one lacks access to a Baptist Book of Concord, such as the Lutherans possess, or a Book of Common Prayer, such as the Episcopalians own, or even a Westminster Confession, such as the-Presbyterians treasure.

One could analyze the 1925 Baptist Faith and Message (3) (BFM-25) in search of the Baptist identity, but that was ill-advised in this study for two reasons. One, the BFM-25 did not fit the chronological period under study. And two, even though still on the Southern Baptist books and unrevised at the beginning of the war, the BFM-25 never held much sway or achieved denominational prominertce. Certainly, it had not been creedalized as a kind of Baptist Westminster by the beginning of World War II.

W. W. Barnes, for forty years crusty professor of church history at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, underscored the virtual irrelevance of the confession of faith in Southern Baptist life. In 1934, almost exactly a decade after the adoption of the BFM-25 and in one of the most prophetic books on Southern Baptist history I know anything about, Barnes teased about the denominational insignificance of the BFM-25. He wrote: "The convention adopted the statement by a large majority of the messengers present, but it has been received by Southern Baptist churches generally with a tremendous outburst of silence." (4) So, while the BFM-25 possessed-and possesses-valuable descriptions of the Baptist identity, it had not shaped the Southern Baptist awareness of the Baptist identity in a powerful way by the beginning of World War II. Indeed, few, if any, references to the BFM-25 appeared in the research for this particular paper. Barnes hit the bull's eye with his evaluation that the 1925 confession of faith had been received "with a tremendous outburst of silence." The lack of influence of the BFM-25 surely may be attributed to the pervasive and profound anticreedal attitude of most Southern Baptists during the first half of the twentieth century. That anticreedal attitude, of course, underwent a radical metamorphosis by the end of the century, as fundamentalists captured and creedalized the SBC.

While I did not utilize the BFM-25 to discover the Southern Baptist understanding of the Baptist identity during the Second World War, two genre of sources proved especially valuable for this paper. These two categories were (1) official statements adopted and released by the Southern Baptist Convention and (2) personal statements by prominent Southern Baptists during this period. These sources appeared rather plentiful rather than scarce, as one might expect. More extensive research doubtless would uncover many more of the personal statements, the second category mentioned above. These twin statements of the Baptist identity--the official and the personal--were not only plentiful; they were also amazingly congruent. What the official documents affirmed, the personal statements mirrored and vice versa.

At least three factors explain Southern Baptists' interest in describing the Baptist identity during this era. First, the circumstances of the war itself gave rise to an emergency clarification of the Baptist identity. The evolving fascist nations and totalitarian governments in Germany, Italy, and Japan, caused Baptists, with their historic love of freedom, to underscore their distinctive principles on several different occasions.

Second, in addition to the war, the prominence of the ecumenical movement during the decade of the forties elicited statements clarifying the Baptist identity.

Third, and maybe most significantly, the emerging power of the Roman Catholic Church and its growing influence in America in the first half of the twentieth century awakened grave concern in Southern Baptist ranks. Their affirmation of the Baptist identity often stemmed from a fear of Roman Catholic power and corollary issues related to religious liberty and separation of church and state.

Before profiling the Baptist identity, as Southern Baptists identified it in the era of World War II, I am compelled to pause and say some brief words about the major sources for this study. I do this not because I am trying to follow the rather wooden "Review of the Sources" segment one finds in most doctoral dissertations but for other, more important, reasons. The sources require comment for at least two reasons.

First, a cursory reading of Southern Baptist history since the 1940s leads one to believe that these documents, especially those emanating from official SBC actions, remain relatively unknown, even among Southern Baptist historians.

Second, several of these documents were uniquely and distinctly Southern Baptist documents. They were not sources from the broader Baptist heritage merely adapted for Southern Baptist purposes. For example, the Baptist Faith and Message of 1925 was a revision of The New Hampshire Confession of Faith of 1833. The BFM-25 was not, therefore, a specifically Southern Baptist document.

Out of the first category of sources--official SBC pronouncements--I focused on five strategic documents. They are the "Report on Interdenominational Relations" of 1938; (5) "A Pronouncement Upon Religious Liberty" of 1939; (6) the "Reply to World Council of Churches" of 1940; (7) the very important but little known statement, "Southern Baptists and World Peace" of 1944; (8) and, most importantly, the relatively unknown "Statement of Principles," (9) proposed in 1942, issued in 1945 and adopted in 1946.

Four personal statements of the Baptist identity comprise the second category of sources, admittedly not as important as the first. These four statements came from the hands of three of the most influential Southern Baptists of the period under study. John R. Sampey, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in 1929-42 and president of the SBC for the three-year period of 1936-38, wrote two of the statements. He entitled one "The Faith and Doctrine of Baptists," (1) and the other, his SBC presidential address of 1938, he called "Spiritual Equipment: The Need of the Times." (11)

While Sampey was a central spokesperson for Southern Baptists, the most significant of the personal statements recounting the Baptist identity came from George W. Timett, pastor of the First Baptist Church of Dallas, Texas. Truett reigned unchallenged as the single most important Southern Baptist leader during the World War II period until his death on July 7, 1944. In 1939, Truett delivered his presidential address before the Baptist World Alliance meeting in Atlanta. He called it "The Baptist Message and Mission for the World Today." (12) Ernest A. Payne, great British Baptist historian, writing after the BWA congress, hailed Truett's speech as "a masterly exposition of Baptist principles." (13) It was a classic. J. B. Lawrence, the enormously influential executive secretary of the Home Mission Board from 1929 to 1954, published in 1945 a brief piece entitled "The People Called Baptists." (14) If J. R. Sampey, George Truett, and J. B. Lawrence are not reliable Southern Baptist sources of the Baptist identity during the era of World War II, one probably will search in vain for dependable sources.

How did these Southern Baptist documents and denominational leaders describe the Baptist identity? What issues claimed their attention as they elucidated the Baptist vision of Christianity? I want to address four components of the Baptist identity in order of the prominence Southern Baptists gave them during this period. I do not suggest that this ranking is the correct way for arranging the tiles which comprise the Baptist mosaic. The Baptist identity can be approached from many angles. (15) I am saying, however, that my reading of this period of Southern Baptist history causes me to rank them in the following order.

First, and quite surprisingly, Southern Baptists wrote often and preached repetitively of the centrality of the individual in matters of faith. Those who deplore and derisively dub Baptists as hyper-individualists will not be happy with this assessment. Or maybe they will, for it provides fodder for their point of view. One has to read only a few of the documents to encounter the recurring affirmation that the individual human being was central in describing the Baptist identity.

While it is a toss up as to what should be listed in second place, the role of the state in religious matters gets the edge in my evaluation. Violations of separation of church and state and corollary issues related to religious liberty preoccupied the SBC during this time.

Third, Southern Baptists wrote often about their understanding of the church. This. concern sprang from both their effort to differentiate themselves from Catholic ecclesiasticism and from the Southern Baptist imperative to respond to the ecumenical movement.

Fourth, Southern Baptists, like other Baptists before and after, could not speak of what it meant to be Baptist without addressing issues related to religious authority, issues such as the centrality of Holy Scripture, the preeminence of the New Testament, and the Lordship of Christ over both church and individual conscience.

The Baptist Identity and the Prominence of the Individual Person

Surely, the closest thing during these years to a Baptist confession of faith was the "Statement of Principles." The SBC adopted it in 1946 as a kind of centennial confession of its beliefs. In his sesquicentennial history of the SBC, Jesse Fletcher pointed out correctly that neither Barnes, Baker, nor McBeth had mentioned this document in their histories. (16) This is most interesting since this centennial statement was, as stated previously, a distinctly Southern Baptist confession of faith. Proposed initially by the Social Service Commission of the SBC in San Antonio in 1942 because, as they said, "the hour in which we live calls for a statement of the great Baptist principles," (17) the statement was several years in the making. An authentically "blue ribbon" committee, broadly representative of Southern Baptists and chaired by Ellis Fuller, president of Southern Seminary, issued the statement in 1945. Because the convention did not meet that year due to the war, Southern Baptists adopted it the next year, in 1946.

Surely part of the reason why this document is so little known is the same as the insignificance of the BFM-25 before it; Southern Baptists simply were not fixated on the idea of confessional statements. Louie Newton, for example, the unrivaled Baptist leader of Georgia during these years, editorialized in the Christian Index following the proposal of the statement in 1942, saying that there was no reason for it. (18)

Needed or not, Southern Baptists adopted it, printing it in both the 1945 and 1946 SBC annuals. Not quite two pages in length, the brief confession contained three headings, "Preamble," "Principles," and "Fields of Application." And the very first sentence, following the Preamble, boldly affirmed the following: "Our distinctive belief is our Doctrine of Man in the personal order of life, that is, what God says concerning man." (19) The confession then spelled out this "distinctive belief" by asserting (1) the infinite value of the individual, (2) the soul competency of the individual, (3) the inalienable rights of the individual, and (4) the responsibility of the individual. The "Statement of Principles" continued, "Out of this doctrine of the individual grows the Baptist conviction concerning all aspects of religious experience and life." (20) So what Baptist concepts derived from this allegedly "distinctive belief" about the individual? They listed five such concepts: (1) personal conversion, (2) a voluntary and democratic local church, (3) the authority of the New Testament, (4) the separation of church and state, and (5) religious liberty. The committee fused three of the five ideas directly to the centrality of the individual. The one regarding the New Testament probably intended to highlight the right of personal interpretation of Scripture, but it did not clearly enunciate this fact. The statement on church and state is also somewhat obscure, but, again, the assumption would have been that such separation protects the individual conscience.

After they identified their "Principles," Southern Baptists demonstrated how those fundamental Baptist tenets related to their contemporary world. In other words, the confession underscored the fact that the stress on the individual led not to hyperindividualism but contained vastly important social and ethical implications. This stress on the individual really was not "excessive individualism" run amuck. To the contrary, what one finds in the last major section of the document is a Baptist protest against a pack mentality and totalitarian view of life which ran roughshod over the individual in the decade of the 1940s.

For example, these Baptists, in the face of the ecumenical movement, affirmed Christians' obligations to seek Christian unity. They protested, however, what they called "overlordship of the individually redeemed or their churches." In a very real sense, sectarianism, totalitarianism, imperialism, classism, racism, and "exploitation, manipulation, or neglect" are all condemned in this document. But here is the central point: this Baptist ethical protest, doubtless more elevated in rhetoric than implemented in reality, evolved out of a basic theological belief in the value, worth, and centrality of the individual person. This accent on the individual human being mandated that Christianity come down in the middle of human history, not retreat from it. Had Southern Baptists followed the theological logic in the 1946 confession, they probably would have been a far more socially involved people in subsequent years.

To utilize the 1946 statement as primary documentation for Southern Baptists' stated commitment to the centrality of the individual is no isolated historical prooftexting. Boredom would seize us, if time and space permitted fuller elaboration from other sources. Suffice it to say that of the nine documents which form the primary research for this paper, eight of them trumpeted, in one way or another, this "cardinal, bed-rock principle," as Truett put it, from which "all our Baptist principles emerge." (21) The only document that failed to refer to it explicitly was the 1940 "Reply to the World Council of Churches." But one who counts local church autonomy as a derivative of the idea, which the "Statement of Principles" certainly did, will discover it in that document as well.

Again, what constituted the varied components of this "principle of individualism" which George Truett saw as the "supreme emphasis" of the New Testament? As Baptists described it during this period, it included the following: authentic personal/individual experience with the Holy, an egalitarian community of faith, the right of personal interpretation of Scripture within the bounds of local church authority, a holy disdain of a superior clergy, believer's baptism, religious liberty, separation of church and state, protest against totalitarianism, the competency of the individual soul before God, and, in summary, the principle of voluntarism in all matters of religious faith.

You are doubtless aware that some Baptists--Southern and otherwise--today look with grave suspicion on this undiminished and unvarnished affirmation of the individual. Some among us, including both historians and theologians, have interpreted this emphasis on the prominence of the individual and soul competency as a historical aberration in Baptist history and the fomenter of great evil among the Baptist people. Voices as divergent and different as Al Mohler, the Manifesto, and even some Reconstructionists, have railed against this Baptist affirmation of the individual person. On the other hand, while understanding the theological potholes involved, one may see this emphasis on the individual as baptistic, both historically and theologically, as "Amazing Grace." The role of the individual is not the only issue, and it is not the whole issue in describing the Baptist identity, not by any means. But if you extract what these mid-century Southern Baptists meant by "the principle of individualism" from the Baptist identity, you end up with something other than Baptists as they understood it. Clear continuity rather than radical discontinuity exists between this emphasis on the individual's worth, competency, and responsibility and the voices of people such as Thomas Helwys, John Mutton, John Clarke, and Obadiah Holmes, all of whom worked and wrote in seventeenth-century Baptist life. (22)

The Baptist Identity and the Role of the State

During the turbulence of a world war, one may expect to read religious expositions on the role of government in human affairs. In issuing "A Pronouncement Upon Religious Liberty" in 1939, the SBC highlighted its rationale for speaking out:

   No issue in modern life is more urgent or more complicated than the
   relation of organized religion to organized society. The sudden rise of the
   European dictators to power has changed fundamentally the organic law of
   the governments through which they exercise sovereignty, and as a result,
   the institutions of religion are either suppressed or made subservient to
   the ambitious national programs of these new totalitarian states. (23)

Hitler, Mussolini, and others of their ilk, however, were not the only threats. "Every session of the Congress," said these Baptists, raised questions concerning the relation of the federal government to the agencies of faith. The SBC deplored mandatory Social Security for churches and religious institutions, repudiated state aid to sectarian schools, and rebuked the president of the United States for appointing an ambassador to the Vatican, among other church/state concerns. (24) Not surprisingly, these years of church/state struggles birthed one of the great American voices for religious liberty, the Baptist Joint Committee on Public Affairs.

Contending that the church should not be above, below, or alongside the state, Baptists argued for separation of church and state, a point of view "championed," they asserted, by "Baptists everywhere." (25) What powered this hard-headed Baptist advocacy for separation of church and state? It certainly was not a disdain for the state. Baptists acknowledged themselves to be citizens of two commonwealths, and they claimed the right to be good citizens of both. (26)

Not disdain for government, but a shrill call for freedom of individual conscience fueled the Baptist call for church-state separation. Arguing from what he unapologetically called this "principle of individualism," reflected in the New Testament and embraced by Baptists everywhere, George Truett logically concluded that every individual person had

   the right to worship God according to the dictates of ... conscience; and
   that no man, nor set of men, no government, religious or civil, has the
   right to dictate how a person may worship God, and to punish him if he does
   not worship that way. (27)

He followed those lines with two of his most-quoted sentences about the Baptist vision of Christianity:

   The right of private judgment is the crown jewel of humanity. And for any
   person or institution to dare to come between the soul and God is a
   blasphemous impertinence and a defamation of the crown rights of the Son of
   God. (28)

So the Baptist view of the state came from a radical demand for a free conscience. Whence comes the free conscience? It came from God, of course. (29) God, not people or people's governments, reigned sovereign over life.

Moreover, Baptists insisted that the very essence and meaning of "faith" mandated an unshackled soul. For Baptists, faith, to be genuine, had to be free. Word usage should be noted and heeded here. Baptists enlisted a number of words to make their point, but three illustrations must suffice: "voluntary," (30 "personal conviction," (31) and "spiritual." (32) Faith, to be valid, is "voluntary" obedience to God. The only conversion that counts is conversion by "conviction." "Spirituality," a huge word in American society today, meant for Baptists of the World War II era "the free pursuit" of piety. "Forced faith," "coerced faith," "unchosen faith," "involuntary faith," "convictionless faith," "ritualistic faith," "sacramental faith"--all such theological constructs would have been an oxymoron for these Baptists.

They called this soul freedom for which they stood passionately as an "inherent right." It came, like one's genes, with creation itself. No government could "concede" it, for it was not the government's to distribute. They also called it an "inalienable right." The word simply means "nontransferable." This right could not be transferred to the state without casting government in the unenviable "function of God." (33) For this reason, Baptists carefully distinguished between religious toleration and religious liberty. (34)

An "inherent" and "inalienable" right, absolute religious liberty was cheered also by Southern Baptists as a "universal" right. It was applicable to all persons in all places: Baptists, Christians, Jews, "and ... everybody else." Baptists puffed freedom of conscience, said Truett, not merely for themselves but "for Protestants of all denominations, for Romanists, for Jews, for Quakers, for Turks, for Pagans, and for all men everywhere." (35) Clearly, these Baptists envisioned America pluralistically, a republic with moral foundations but with rooms for people of all faiths and those with no faith.

While the right to religious freedom meant the right from religion, it also meant freedom for religion. In the marketplace of ideas, Baptists envisioned an intellectual and spiritual free-for-all. Thus, faith of any kind possessed the right to worship, the right to evangelize, and the right to teach and propagate its ideas. (36) If you could persuade, said Baptists, you deserved to prevail.

Finally, Baptists recognized that freedom had a price tag on it. The kind of individualism that produced this passion for freedom was not an "every tub sits on its on bottom" caricature, insensitive to other bottomless tubs. Blessed with a bottom to sit on, these World War II Southern Baptists understood, in their heads at least, that they had work to do. Free people were responsible people. "Religious liberty is the nursing mother of all liberty," (37) said the pastor from Dallas to the Baptists of the world in Atlanta. Some took him seriously and they wrote a few years later:

     Believing that God has created all men free and equal and has given to
   them certain inalienable fights which must ever be respected, we assert the
   right of all nations, both great and small, to self-government, and the
   obligation of the strong to protect the weak, whether small nations, racial
   minorities, or underprivileged peoples, in the exercise of their God-given
   freedom. (38)

The Baptist Identity and the Nature of the Church

An appropriate starting point to discuss Southern Baptists' understanding of the church during the war years is to state what they did not intend by "church." They certainly did not mean "The Southern Baptist Church." No such thing has ever existed among Baptists and should never exist. When the SBC declined the invitation to join the World Council of Churches (WCC) in 1940, it gave ecclesiology as one of it reasons:

      Directly replying to your invitation, permit us to advise that the
   Southern Baptist Convention is a voluntary association of Baptists for
   the purpose of eliciting, combining and directing the energies of our
   denomination in missionary activity at home and abroad, and in education
   and benevolent work throughout the world. Our Convention has no
   ecclesiological authority. It is in no sense the Southern Baptist Church.
   The thousands of churches to which our Convention looks for support of its
   missionary, benevolent and educational program, cherish their independence
   and would disapprove of any attempted exercise of ecclesiastical authority
   over them. (39)

On scrutinizing their reasoning, of course, one wonders why ecclesiology would forbid the SBC from union with the World Council of Churches and yet permit that same type union with the Baptist World Alliance. In truth, the SBC could have and can and does join anything it wants, for it has its own independence and autonomy. In doing so, however, it does not commit any Baptist church, any Baptist association, or any Baptist state convention to its actions, because it is not The Southern Baptist Church.

The fact that the SBC denied explicitly that it was a church is significant for several reasons. One, during the last twenty years or so, that phrase--"The Southern Baptist Church"--has appeared with increasing regularity in letters to editors by Baptists who should know better and by secular religion writers who seem not to have a clue about Baptist ecclesiology above the local-church level.

Two, the increasing centralization within the SBC in the last twenty years makes some think that the SBC has furtively and unofficially, through its resolutions and financial and confessional constrictionism, become The Southern Baptist Church, the very thing that fundamentalist leadership allegedly deplored in the 1980s.

Three, at the very time that the SBC touted church independence and decentralization as reasons for not aligning with the World Council of Churches, some within the SBC accused it of a growing centralization. Indeed, any objective analysis would conclude that centralization was occurring during this period, some of it the inevitable result of a growing denomination. (40)

But if the SBC of the 1940s stated explicitly what the church was not, did it say clearly what it was? Could it be positive as well as negative? The SBC answered with an unambiguous "yes." Terminology and word usage again were crucial. Baptists, because of their polity, preferred the word "churches," but they used the word "church," in the singular, in at least three ways. First, they used the word to depict an individual Baptist church. Second, they used it to describe another denomination with a connectional or episcopal system of church polity, such as "The Methodist Church" or "The Presbyterian Church." Third, they used it to point to what the Bible called "the Body of Christ," insisting that the Body of Christ "is not to be identified with any denomination or church that seeks to exercise ecclesiastical authority, but includes all the regenerated whoever and wherever they are, as these are led by the Holy Spirit." (41)

Like their understanding of the state, these Baptists understood their ecclesiology to be derivative of their anthropology. Their concept of church stemmed from their emphasis on the individual. Therefore, said the "Statement of Principles" of 1946:

   The local church, a voluntary fellowship of baptized believers, is
   Responsible directly and only to Christ, the Creator and Head of the
   church. It is a democratic body in which all the members are equally free
   and responsible participants. Its divinely called ministry is chosen by the
   church itself under the guidance of the Holy Spirit. (42)

That definition required little ink, but within it the SBC asserted at least six decisive points for their relatively simple understanding of the church. First, the churches are of God; they belong to Christ. Here we bump into again that cherished Baptist phrase--"the undelegated sovereignty" of Christ. Christ, not pope or priest or preacher, reigned as the "only head and sovereign of his churches." (43)

Second, the churches are local. Localism usurped universalism, but it did not obliterate it. Churches, Baptists said, have names and addresses, like First Baptist Church, 1400 Main Street. But there is a church without address or zip code, and these Baptists gladly called it the Body of Christ.

Third, the churches' membership rests on the principle of voluntarism; only people of conviction are baptized, voluntarily. Compulsion and manipulation of any kind and of all kinds cannot create the churches of Christ.

Fourth, the churches are democratic in process where members are both "equally free and responsible participants." They politely rejected the offer to join the WCC because they were "sensible of the dangers of totalitarian trends which threaten the autonomy of all free churches." (44) Whether such totalitarianism actually existed in the WCC is another matter.

Fifth, the ministry is a divine calling, subject to the churches rather than the churches being subject to the ministry. The churches are never to "bend to a superior clergy." (45)

Sixth, God's Spirit guides the churches; Baptist churches, while democratic in process, are theocratic in principle. (46) Baptists sought through the democratic process to implement the will of God.

The Baptist Identity and Religious Authority

Since Southern Baptists battled vigorously over the nature of the Bible and religious authority for the last twenty years of the twentieth century, a brief review of what mid-century Southern Baptists said regarding religious authority may be instructive. Clearly, Southern Baptists during the era of World War II held a lofty view of Holy Scripture. Interestingly, however, code words such as "inerrancy" and "infallibility" were rare in official SBC documents. They appeared in none of the official SBC documents used in this study.

Even the word "Bible" appeared less than the word "Scripture." What showed up more often than anything else, however, was an allusion to the New Testament--not simply the Bible--as the Baptist authority for faith and practice. In adopting "A Pronouncement Upon Religious Liberty" in 1938, Southern Baptists enumerated the basic principles that animated Baptist life. They also referred to those basic teachings as principles which Southern Baptists believed "to be clearly taught in the New Testament." (47)

Eight years later, when the SBC adopted the "Statement of Principles" in 1946, the Southern Baptist people said that "the one and only authority in faith and practice is the New Testament as the divinely inspired record and interpretation of the supreme revelation of God through Jesus Christ as Redeemer, Saviour and Lord." (48)

Note three aspects of this affirmation of religious authority. First, the "one and only authority in faith and practice is the New Testament." Second, the New Testament is the "divinely inspired record and interpretation." Third, the New Testament is the divinely inspired record and interpretation "of the supreme revelation of God through Jesus Christ as Redeemer, Saviour and Lord."

In 1937, John R. Sampey attended the Life and Work Conference in Oxford and the Faith and Order Conference in Edinburgh. He went as an official representative of Southern Baptists at the request of the Executive Committee of the SBC. In his presidential address before the Southern Baptist Convention the next year in Richmond, Sampey reflected on his ecumenical sojourn. Noting his personal reservations concerning organic church union, and then holding aloft the cardinal Baptist principle of soul competency, this revered Old Testament scholar said:

   An intelligent and convinced Baptist with the New Testament in his hand
   finds little to draw him toward a Church which denies the competence of the
   individual soul to do business with God through Christ Jesus as the sole
   Mediator. We cannot get the consent of our minds to surrender the freedom
   with which Christ Jesus has set us free, in order to unite with Roman
   Catholics, Anglo-Catholics or even evangelical Pedobaptists. We rejoice in
   spiritual fellowship with all who love our Lord Jesus; but we must stand
   for the faith and order of the New Testament as we understand it. (49)

Not once, but twice Sampey referred to the New Testament as the bedrock of Baptist belief.

This same president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary only a few years earlier went even further, extolling Jesus as the ultimate religious authority for the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. Speaking on the occasion of the Diamond Jubilee Anniversary of Southern Seminary in 1934 before the SBC, Sampey sought, as he said, "to interpret the soul of the Seminary." He spoke of the seminary's devotion to Holy Scriptures, its love affair with preaching, its commitment to personal evangelism and the cultivation of the shepherd's heart, its ecumenical and democratic temper, and the prominence of worship. But he reached the climax of his address in his final point, and he spoke powerfully of Christ as the ultimate religious authority for Southern Seminary. Said Sampey:

      The Lord Jesus has the first place in the heart of the seminary. In all
   things he must have the pre-eminence. Christ Jesus is our Lord. If he
   corrects Moses, and elevates his standards, we stand with Jesus rather than
   with Moses. Even the Bible cannot hold the place in our hearts that Jesus
   holds. He is King of Kings and Lord of Lords. (50)

This emphasis on the Lordship of Christ over both churches and conscience was no isolated theme. The phrase "the undelegated sovereignty of Jesus Christ" appeared frequently. Often utilized to deflect Roman Catholic teachings, it also suggested more: it meant that the will of Christ was first and foremost in the believer's life. Hear the 1938 "Report on Interdenominational Relations" speaking on the Lordship of Christ:

   We here declare our unalterable belief in the universal, unchangeable, and
   undelegated sovereignty of Jesus Christ. We believe that he is the rightful
   and only head and sovereign of his churches; that his word and will, as
   revealed in the holy Scriptures, is the unchangeable and only law of his
   reign; that whatever is not found in the Scriptures, cannot be bound on the
   conscience of men; and that the supreme test of true Christian discipleship
   is obedience to the will of Christ, as revealed in the Bible. (51)

These Baptists, as most of their kinsfolk through the ages, had a Christocentric Bible.

Conclusion

If one compares the SBC at the mid-century years to the SBC at the end of the century, what stands out? First, at mid-century Southern Baptists trumpeted the individual and the individual's soul competency, but at the end of the century that conviction has not only been muted but transformed by J. R. Sampey's successor at Southern Seminary. Individual soul competency is now viewed as the source of theological ambiguity among Southern Baptists.

Second, on church/state issues, you would probably find far more openness to such things as prayer in schools and faith-based charities among contemporary Southern Baptist leadership than one would have ever discovered at mid-century. The Southern Baptist leadership at mid-century appeared far more radical in their call for separation of church and state.

Third, in the ecumenical attitudes of the SBC leadership of the 40s, one finds a crystal-clear opposition to organic church union, but along with that attitude one senses a somewhat gentle kinship with other Christians, expressed in the Southern Baptist stress on "spiritual union." Indeed, an outspoken liberal minority, composed of prominent pastors, opposed the SBC's rejection of membership in the World Council of Churches. On the other hand, the ecumenical spirit in the SBC today appears more to be an ecumenism of the right. It is open primarily to the right extreme of the theological spectrum; it, therefore, naturally embraces the theological viewpoint, for example, of Jerry Falwell.

Fourth, women appeared virtually invisible in leadership positions at mid-century, and that situation has not only continued but hardened, with theological rationale to buttress it at the end of the century.

Fifth, while Southern Baptist leadership at the end of the century spoke long and often of "biblical inerrancy," the mid-century leadership referred to the "authority of the New Testament." That New Testament clearly had Christ as the supreme and central revelation of God. Deleting that sentence--"the criterion by which the Bible is to be interpreted is Jesus Christ"--as Southern Baptists did in the 2000 revision of the Baptist Faith and Message, doubtless would have had rough sledding in the late 30s and 40s. After alt, it was the president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, who was also a president of the SBC, who said, "Even the Bible cannot hold the place in our hearts that Jesus holds."

George W. Truett had towered, almost giant-like, over the entire SBC in the 30s and 40s. He died on July 7, 1944. L. R. Scarborough had towered over the western half of the SBC in the 30s and 40s. He died April 10, 1945. J. R. Sampey had towered over the eastern half of the SBC. He died August 18, 1946. Truett in 1944! Scarborough in 1945! Sampey in 1946! Within a brief span of twenty-five months, an SBC tradition could have passed quietly and heroically off the scene. That legacy fell, however, on very young but stout shoulders-shoulders keenly aware of a great Baptist tradition in the South. These young shoulders belonged to Duke K. McCall, Theron Rankin, Baker James Cauthen, James Sullivan, Porter Routh, and Albert McClellan. Eventually Grady Cothen, Foy Valentine, Darold Morgan, Randall Lolley, and Russell Dilday, among others, shouldered that tradition as well. By 2000, that Truett/Scarborough/Sampey legacy had been muffled within the SBC, only to emerge in new organizational structures. In the SBC, a new and different and vigorous tradition had begun.

If you divided the twentieth century of the SBC into quarters--1900-25, 1925-50, 1950-75, 1975-2000-and then you tried to put the most influential Southern Baptist name with those years, whose pictures would fit into those four chronological frames? I suggest it would look like this:

1900-25--E. Y. Mullins
1925-50--George W. Truett
1950-75--W. A. Criswell
1975-2000--Adrian Rogers

Within each half of the twentieth century, one can see a distinct and contrasting vision of what it means to be Baptist. The differences in those visions are the differences in the SBC at mid-century and at the end of the century.

Notes

(1.) See Baptist History and Heritage 16 (April 1993), and Paul R. Dekar, For the Healing of the Nations: Baptist Peacemakers (Macon, Ga.: Smyth & Helwys, 1993) for information on this general subject.

(2.) The three book-length histories of the Southern Baptist Convention are William Wright Barnes, The Southern Baptist Convention, 1845-1953 (Nashville: Broadman Press, 1954); Robert A. Baker, The Southern Baptist Convention and Its People, 1607-1972 (Nashville: Broadman Press, 1974); and Jesse C. Fletcher, The Southern Baptist Convention: A Sesquicentennial History (Nashville: Broadman & Holman, 1994).

(3.) Annual, Southern Baptist Convention [SBC], 1925, 71-76.

(4.) William Wright Barnes, The Southern Baptist Convention: A Study in the Development of Ecclesiology (Fort Worth, Tex.: Published by the author, 1934), 8.

(5.) Annual, SBC, 1938, 24-25.

(6.) Annual, SBC, 1939, 114-16.

(7.) Annual, SBC, 1940, 99.

(8.) Annual, SBC, 1944, 149-50.

(9.) Annual, SBC, 1946, 38-39. See also Annual, SBC, 1942, 94, and Annual, SBC, 1945, 59-60.

(10.) John R. Sampey, "The Faith and Doctrine of Baptists," Christian Index 119, no. 12 (June 15, 1939): 12.

(11.) John R. Sampey, "Spiritual Equipment: The Need of the Times," Christian Index 118, no. 19 (May 12, 1938): 3-4, 19.

(12.) George W. Truett, "The Baptist Message and Mission for the World Today," The Life of Baptists in the Life of the World, ed. Walter B. Shurden (Nashville: Broadman Press, 1985), 108-27.

(13.) As cited in Shurden, The Life of Baptists in the Life of the World, 107.

(14.) J. B. Lawrence, "The People Called Baptists," Christian Index 125, no. 23 (June 7, 1945): 3, 7.

(15.) I have addressed this issue in a previous article. See Walter B. Shurden, "The Baptist Identity and the Baptist Manifesto," Perspectives in Religious Studies 25 (Winter 1998): 321-24.

(16.) Fletcher, 177.

(17.) Annual, SBC, 1942, 94

(18.) Newton opposed the addition of the California churches into the SBC, and he said further: "Another action of the convention which seemed to me unnecessary was the creation of a committee to restate the Baptist position. I wonder how any group of Baptists can improve on the Baptist Bill of Rights, adopted in 1939, upon the statement of the Baptist position by Dr. George W. Truett in his presidential address at the Sixth Congress of the Baptist World Alliance, upon the numerous declarations of the convention in fairly recent years touching every phase and factor of the Baptist position." See Louie Newton, "The San Antonio Convention," Christian Index 122, no.21 (May 28, 1942): 9. Note that Newton failed to refer to the BFM-25, another indication of its unimportance at this stage of denominational history.

(19.) Annual, SBC, 1946, 39

(20.) Ibid. Likewise, the first sentence in the section of the 1939 statement on religious liberty that laid out "the principles that animate the activities of the Baptists" was "the worth of the individual." See Annual, SBC, 1939, 115, and John R. Sampey, "The Faith and Doctrine of Baptists," 12.

(21.) Truett, 113.

(22.) The following interpretations, vastly different in quality and significantly different in interpretations, fit loosely into this Baptist critique of Baptist individualism: Winthrop S. Hudson, ed., Baptist Concepts of the Church (Chicago: Judson Press, 1959), 11-29, 196-218; James B. Jordan, "Editor's Introduction," Christianity and Civilization: The Failure of American Baptist Culture, ed. James B. Jordan and Gary North (Geneva Divinity School, 1982), v-xv; Curtis W. Freeman, "Can Baptist Theology Be Revisioned," Perspectives in Religious Studies 24 (Fall 1997): 272-302; "Re-Envisioning Baptist Identity: A Manifesto for Baptist Communities in North America," Perspectives in Religious Studies 24 (Fall 1997): 303-10; Gregory A. Wills, Democratic Religion: Freedom, Authority, and Church Discipline in the Baptist South, 1785-1900 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997); and R. Albert Mohler, compiler, "Introduction," E. Y. Mullins: The Axioms of Religion, ed. Timothy and Denise George (Nashville: Broadman & Holman, 1997), 1-32.

(23.) Annual, SBC, 1939, 114.

(24.) Ibid., 115.

(25.) Ibid., 114.

(26.) Ibid., 116.

(27.) Truett, 114.

(28.) Ibid.

(29.) "Statement of Principles," Annual, SBC, 1946, 38. "God gives to the individual man natural, inalienable rights and privileges which should be recognized in human society."

(30.) See "A Pronouncement Upon Religious Liberty," Annual, SBC, 1939, 115; and Truett, 116.

(31.) See "Report on Interdenominational Relations," Annual, SBC, 1938, 24, 25. This report was talking about church union rather than freedom of conscience, but the Baptist emphasis is exactly the same. The report said, "We believe that intelligent, personal conviction in religion is essential to strength in Christian character...."

(32.) See "A Pronouncement Upon Religious Liberty," Annual, SBC, 1939, 115.

(33.) Ibid.

(34.) Truett, 115.

(35.) See "A Pronouncement Upon Religious Liberty, Annual, SBC, 1939, 116; Truett, 116; "Statement of Principles," Annual, SBC, 38.

(36.) See "Southern Baptists and World Peace," Annual, SBC, 1944, 150; "Statement of Principles," Annual, SBC, 1946, 38.

(37.) Truett, 115.

(38.) "Southern Baptists and World Peace," Annual, SBC 1944, 149.

(39.) See Annual, SBC, 1940, 99. In his response to the welcome given by Governor Leon Phillips of Oklahoma at the 1939 meeting of the SBC, David M. Gardner of St. Petersburg, Florida, echoed the nonecclesial character of the SBC when he said, "Why are we here? We are here in the capacity of a Southern Baptist Convention, the freest people on earth. We are not here as a convention of churches, nor as a convention of boards, institutions and agencies. We are not here as a convention of state groups. We are not delegates from churches, not even representatives of churches, but as a convention of individual Baptist messengers from churches meeting without ecclesiastical authority, quality or functions." See Christian Index 119, no. 20 (May 25, 1939): 3

(40.) A brief editorial described a leader who complained of "Baptist organized work." The man had "heard some rumblings of an effort to control a certain state agency through one of the Southwide boards, and was protesting against it." Then Gilbert went on to say, "Of recent years there has been entirely too much talk of South-wide this and that to set well with the churches and pastors, especially the churches and pastors that have a regard for cherished Baptist opinion. At this time when the trend in public affairs points to a break down in democracy, Baptists should not despise their independence nor forget their cherished views on soul liberty." See Christian Index, 1938, 118, no. 19 (May 12, 1938): 8.

(41.) "A Pronouncement Upon Religious Liberty," Annual, SBC, 1939, 115.

(42.) Annual, SBC, 1946, 38.

(43.) Annual. SBC, 1938, 24.

(44.) Annual, SBC, 1940, 99.

(45.) Annual, SBC, 1938, 24.

(46.) Annual, SBC, 1939, 115.

(47.) Ibid.

(48.) Annual, SBC, 1946, 38.

(49.) Sampey, "Spiritual Equipment: The need of the Times," 3. For a similar account of Sampey's ecumenical experience, see John R. Sampey, Memoirs of John R. Sampey (Nashville: Broadman Press, 1947), 249-52.

(50.) John R. Sampey, "Diamond Jubilee Address," 24, copy in the possession of the writer.

(51.) Annual, SBC, 1938, 24.

Walter B. Shurden is Callaway Professor of Christianity, Department of Christianity, and executive director, the Center for Baptist Studies, Mercer University, Macon, Georgia.