Baptist Civil War Fallout, or Why Evangelical Leaders Aren't Luvin' on Huck

In 1979, Judge Pressler and Paige Patterson, president of Southwestern Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, became alarmed at what they viewed as dangerous creeping liberalism in the Southern Baptist Convention. So they hatched a movement of theological and political conservatives to “take back” the SBC. Pressler and Patterson led what they called the “conservative resurgence” and what Baptist moderates called the “fundamentalist takeover.”

In some ways, the Baptist War resembled the battles in larger American culture at the time, because it was about who controlled the message of what was deemed “mainstream” belief and behavior. At the time (and still today) Americans were arguing over abortion, women’s rights, gay rights, and the death penalty. Were most Americans pro-choice or pro-life? Feminist or not? Were they pro-gay or anti-gay rights? Pro-capital punishment or not?

Southern Baptists, meanwhile, were fighting over the Bible—essentially a proxy for the issues listed above. The Baptists’ fight was over whether the Bible should be read as God’s literal word, completely free of errors. Or whether it should be interpreted as a document written by people who were inspired by God but not immune to errors.

If the Bible is free of error, as conservatives maintain, then cultural issues can be settled by a close reading of scripture. Abortion: no. Women’s rights: circumscribed in church. Gay rights: no. Death penalty: yes. If the Bible is up for interpretation, then cultural issues become much more complicated to settle.

It’s worth noting that this same discussion about the Bible was happening in plenty of other denominations, and still is to some extent. But the Baptists turned their argument into a civil war.

The battle lasted for parts of two decades and was fought annually at the denomination’s annual conventions, which were (and still are) held at giant convention centers in cities throughout the Bible Belt. At those conventions, Baptists elected the denomination’s national leaders; the elections were critically important because the leaders determined the makeup of the boards of the denomination’s major organizations. Conservatives reasoned that if they could wrest control of the denomination’s most important organizations, colleges, and seminaries, it could control the denomination.

And ultimately they did.

This is where Mike Huckabee’s 2008 Presidential candidacy comes in. In 1989, he ran for the presidency of the Arkansas Baptist Convention. Huckabee ran as the moderate’s candidate against the Rev. Ronnie Floyd, today the pastor of First Baptist Church of Springdale, Arkansas, who was the conservatives’ candidate.

An important note here is that there were never just two sides, “conservatives” and “moderates,” in the Baptist Civil War. There were more like five groups:

1. Fundamentalists who believed the Bible was inerrant who didn’t want to have anything to do with anyone who disagreed.
2. Conservatives who also believed the Bible was inerrant but were willing to engage with others and to tolerate some (small) differences in beliefs.
3. Those who were inerrantists but who believed there didn’t need to be a battle over the Bible, or who believed the battle had gone far enough.
4. Moderates who, if they had attended a mainline Protestant seminary, would have been considered conservative. These Baptists believed they needed to believe in Jesus to be saved but also believed the Bible contained some errors.
5. Liberals, who questioned large portions of the Bible but who identified as Baptists.

Huckabee was in group three. He was in no way a theological liberal; he wasn’t even a moderate. He was theologically conservative, and believed in Biblical inerrancy. And he won the election. But that wasn’t the point, according to conservative leaders. He had betrayed the conservative cause. He couldn’t be entirely trusted.

So today, while some Baptists have endorsed him —including Ronnie Floyd—others have not. Judge Pressler is behind Thompson; Patterson is neutral; so is Richard Land, president of the Southern Baptist Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission (and a Casting Stones contributor).

And while all of these non-endorsing Baptist leaders have good things to say about Huckabee, the fact that they won’t endorse him or act on his behalf is crucial, in my opinion. It’s a signal to other evangelical leaders, such as Paul Weyrich of the Free Congress Foundation, who endorsed Romney; Sam Brownback, who endorsed John McCain; Pat Robertson, who endorsed Rudy Giuliani; James Dobson of Focus on the Family who remains officially neutral; and Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council, also officially neutral. And I think it tells evangelical voters, particularly Southern Baptists, all they need to know.