The Genesis controversies: Denominational compromise and the resurgence and expansion of fundamentalism in the Southern Baptist Convention.

摘要

Fundamentalism in the Southern Baptist Convention reemerged in the early 1960s after a period of apparent hibernation as some Baptists attacked The Message of Genesis, a book by one of their professors, Ralph Elliott, which questioned the historicity of certain events in the biblical book of Genesis. Elliott's book evoked a significant controversy in Southern Baptist life that lasted until 1963.;Only six years later fundamentalists provoked another major convention conflict by expressing their objections to the content of the first volume of the Broadman Bible Commentary. The controversy became especially severe during the 1970 convention as Southern Baptists adopted a motion to withdraw volume one. The conflict ended at the 1972 convention when messengers defeated a motion to withdraw the complete commentary.;This study investigates both the Elliott and Broadman Controversies. Since events do not take place in a vacuum, the conflicts are set in their respective historical contexts, both socio-cultural and religious. This study finds that there was an increasing diversity and complexity in Southern Baptist life in the 1960s and early 1970s. The two controversies brought to the forefront doctrinal, social, and regional differences among Southern Baptists. The study also shows the inadequacy of Southern Baptist polity to handle conflicts in an authoritative manner. Southern Baptist polity allowed fundamentalists to circumvent the trustee system and to direct agency or institutional operations from the convention floor.;An examination of both conflicts makes an important contribution by indicating the role of state papers, mimeographed circulars, unofficial publications, and preconvention meetings in manipulating the minds of Southern Baptists against Elliott's book and volume one of the Broadman Commentary. Such activities reshaped the way Southern Baptists carried on business at the annual convention.;As a thesis, this study argues that fundamentalists precipitated the controversies, escalated the conflicts through organized political action, and used the controversies to expand their influence in the convention. Furthermore, establishment men who personally opposed fundamentalist dominance actually encouraged it by accepting uneasy compromises with the militant segment of Southern Baptists who would not be appeased or placated until they could dominate the convention.