Adrian Rogers on the Word

At the June 11-13, 1985, Southern Baptist Convention in Dallas, a special committee was created to study and determine the sources of controversy and from their conclusions make recommendations to bring harmony. This group became known as the Peace Committee. They made their report on June 16, 1987, while Dr. Rogers served his second term as president of the SBC.

At a certain point in their many deliberations over the Bible’s inspiration, Rogers made his epic and unforgettable assertion after

The Controversy

The last of a series on Southern Baptist history . . . 

Center of the Southern Baptist Controversy

The Controversy. The Conservative Takeover. The Conservative Resurgence. Whatever you call it, a change took place in the late 20^th century in the Southern Baptist Convention. There has always been a diversity of opinion among Southern Baptists, but in the 20^th century for the first time, the integrity of the Scripture began to be questioned in the upper echelons of Southern Baptist educational and denominational life in stark contrast to the millions of Southern Baptists in the pews every Sunday.

The Cooperative Program: genius of SBC missions

Part of an ongoing series on Southern Baptist history . . . 

Also at the 1925 Convention, the Cooperative Program was initiated, the greatest method of missions funding ever invented by the mind of man. Ironically, its success stems from the failure of the Seventy-Five Million Campaign of 1919-1924. The constant fundraising appeals to local churches for individual building projects, mission schools and hospitals, had become a burden to local churches.

After the First World War, Southern Baptists, like their Northern counterparts, launched a campaign to raise $75 million in five years to fund all areas of SBC work and end the individual appeals and competition for funding. Amazingly, churches pledged $92 million, and SBC missions and denominational entities wrote their budgets based on $75 million. Unfortunately, the price of cotton fell after the war from 24 cents/lb. to 11 cents/lb., and the administrative end of the collection proved confusing and scattered.

In the end, only $58 million was actually collected, but the mission boards and other entities had spent the pledged $75 million, putting the entire SBC in a major financial crisis. They were in debt by the end of 1926 to the tune of $6.5 million. The SBC borrowed in bonds, bank loans, and individual loans, all at high interest rates. Finally the SBC was not able to make its payments, some having to be renewed without any payment on principal. Southern Baptists were distressed and despondent while creditors threatened legal proceedings, and there was talk of bankruptcy.

In 1933 the Executive Committee, determined to pay off their debts, enlisted 100,000 people to give one dollar a month over and above their church contributions. Soon the debt began to roll off the Convention, but it would take until 1944 to pay is all completely off. The experience steeled a commitment in SBC leaders to find a simple and consistent method of generating missions funds with very low overhead.

With the commitment to fundraising came also an evangelistic fervor, the greatest growth time in SBC history since Shubal Stearns and the Separate Baptist revivals of the 18^th century. From 350,000 Southern Baptists in 1840, there were over 5 million white Baptists in 1940, and 7 million in 1950.

Then the idea was conceived to receive one offering in all the churches where part stays with the state convention and part goes to SBC missions. In the beginning state conventions and the SBC split Cooperative Program funds 50/50. In 2010, in North Carolina, the state convention has increased its CP split with the SBC from around 35% in 2008 to almost 42%.

The state conventions funded their church planting, orphanages, hospitals, and colleges, and the rest went to the Executive Committee in Nashville, TN. An unwritten rule was that no less than 50% of the money received at Nashville would go to foreign missions. In 2010, 50% still goes to the International Mission Board, 22.79% to North American missions, 22.16% to six SBC seminaries, 3.4% to the Executive Committee administration, and 1.65% to the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission.

Today the Cooperative Program provides consistent funding of all its agencies including the entire Baptist State convention of North Carolina’s evangelism, church planting (100+ church planters planting 99 new churches in 2007), children’s homes, Fruitland Baptist Bible Institute, conference centers, counseling, partnership mission trips, ministries to the aged, families, women, multicultural groups, 37 campuses, $1M in scholarships, Sunday Schools, worship, special needs, and prayer, and on the national level, six seminaries with over 16,000 students, 5200 North American missionaries and just over 5000 international missionaries in 180 countries around the world which started over 25,000 new churches and led 600,000 people to Christ in 2009.  

The Cooperative Program is the envy of the evangelical world.

Early 20th century SBC denominationalism

Part of an ongoing series on Southern Baptist history . . . 

Sunday School Board

J.M. Frost (1848-1916)

The Southern Baptist Publication Society formed May 13, 1847, and headquartered in Charleston, SC, but remained unconnected to the new Convention and ceased with the War. Subsequent efforts for Sunday School literature were hampered by Landmarkist influence, but in 1873 responsibility for Sunday School literature came to the Home Mission Board, which continued to publish the children’s take-home paper, Kind Words. Isaac T. Tichenor said in 1885, “We need literature for our churches or they will disappear.” The American Baptist Publication Society saw in Tichenor’s action a competitor, and it was not going to relinquish $30-50,000 receipts per year in Southern customers. Tichenor called this challenge from the ABPS “the heaviest denominational conflict of the last century.” An 1888 meeting with the ABPS ended “unable to arrive at any agreement.”

In 1891, James Marion Frost (1848-1916) became the first head of the Sunday School Board, now called Lifeway. At the time, few Southern Baptist churches had an organized Sunday School, and were not interested in starting one. Four previous initiatives for Sunday Schools had failed, but with support from Annie “Strongarm” Armstrong who seemed always to want something printed, they published Sunday School and missions literature. For many years Armstrong kept the Sunday School Board afloat financially, and she felt betrayed by Frost when he did not defend her in regard to the female institute at Louisville.

Through his printing press and his theological conservatism, Frost had a formative and strong influence on Southern Baptist churches, remaking them into a denomination. His intense denominationalism influenced the way Southern Baptists began to see themselves, not as isolated congregations, but as a world force for evangelization of the non-South and the entire world. His focus on curriculum for training leadership, organizing the Sunday Schools, and expanding and centralizing efforts created what we know today as the SBC.

Ironically, while the Sunday School Board consolidated and mobilized the Convention for missions, it also created an inherent isolationism that would breed an attitude of denominational self-sufficiency and later form the environment for theological liberalism to grow and flourish at the denominational level while the loyal SBC local churches which had remained conservative were completely oblivious to it. It would in the late 20th century lead to a conservative revolt by the local churches to restore the theological conservatism of J.M. Frost and others to the upper eschelons of Southern Baptist leadership and education.

At his death in 1916, Frost was hailed as one of the greatest of all Southern Baptist statesmen because of his vision that printed curriculum would unite and consolidate thousands of autonomous local congregations into a massive force for world evangelization.

In 1913, Southern Baptists formed the Social Service Commission as an arm of the SBC to monitor the ills of society and keep Southern Baptists informed about social issues. In the early days, they were interested in keeping state and local blue laws in force, as most Southern Baptists were Sabbatarians. The SSC also went after the new motion picture industry which was polluting Baptist youth. It was opposed to the use of tobacco in all forms and advocated anti-lynching legislation in the South.

In 1950, the SSC became the Christian Life Commission, and it changed, beginning to resonate over time with more liberal politics in contrast to Southern Baptists in the pew. The Christian Life Commission advocated a quietly pro-choice position on abortion and was sympathetic to the Vietnam era’s anti-war movement. These positions tagged the CLC as the left wing of the SBC.

In 1997, in the denominational reorganization at the end of the Conservative Resurgence in the SBC, the CLC became the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the SBC under conservative Richard Land.

In 1898, a committee to celebrate a new century suggested the need for a committee to form to oversee orderly denominational activity between annual meetings. The idea was shot down at the SBC that year, but by 1917, the first World War was on, and planning and efficiency were values stressed in that generation. The SBC that year created the Executive Committee of the SBC to handle administrative responsibilities of the SBC during the year.

E. Y. Mullins (1860-1928)

The year 1925 was pivotal in the history of the Southern Baptist Convention. At the 1925 Convention, messengers adopted the SBC’s first official statement of faith called the Baptist Faith and Message. It was based on the 1833 New Hampshire Confession of Faith.

Southern Seminary president Edgar Young Mullins had observed the failure of the Northern Baptist Convention to adopt a statement of faith and the doctrinal decline which followed among them. Mullins stressed that the SBC needed a statement of what is “commonly agreed among us.” He knew that a general articulation of Southern Baptist beliefs was needed as a hedge against the creeping liberalism gaining ground in SBC circles. Evolution, for example, was being taught as fact at Baylor, Furman, Wake Forest College -- all of them state Baptist convention schools receiving funds from Southern Baptists who would have disagreed with that position.

This wise move by Mullins and the 1925 Convention supplied the doctrinal bulwark needed to overcome the rising tide of liberal doctrine in the SBC in the decades to come.

The Southern Baptist Seminaries

J.P. Boyce (1827-1888)

The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary was organized in Greenville, SC, in 1859. Because of financial problems in South Carolina after the War, the seminary relocated to a better economic climate in Louisville, KY, near the Ohio River and railroads. The founding president was James Petigru Boyce from First Baptist Church, Charleston, SC.

Southern Seminary has been the site of several SBC controversies. In 1879, professor of Hebrew and Old Testament, Crawford H. Toy, earlier a two-time fiancé of Lottie Moon, was thrown out for heresy, but the exact issue was not publicized at the time.

Crawford H. Toy (1836-1919)

Influenced by European higher criticism of the Bible and Darwin's new theories, Toy began to question biblical inspiration and defied his President Dr. James P. Boyce, who asked him not to teach doctrines contrary to the school's Abstract of Principles.

The breaking point came with Toy’s April 1879, article in The Sunday School Times outlining his liberal views of Isaiah 53:1-12. The next month, the seminary president took Toy to the Louisville train station and put him on a train headed out of town. Soon after, Toy went to Harvard as professor of Hebrew and Semitic languages, and joined the Unitarian Church. The effect of Toy’s teaching later caused two young missionaries to be dismissed from the Foreign Mission Board for holding his views.

William H. Whitsitt (1841-1911)

In 1898-99, a second controversy developed at Southern Seminary in Louisville. This one was over Baptist history. President William H. Whitsitt got in trouble for publishing in an encyclopedia his view that Baptists did not immerse before 1641 when they contacted Dutch Anabaptists. He got in hot water because at the time most believed Baptists had always been around since John the Baptist. When called before the trustees, Whitsitt denied he wrote the article, but later the trustees found out he had lied. Whitsitt was called again before the trustees and fired. For liberals, Whitsitt was a martyr of academic freedom, but in reality he was fired because he lied to his trustees.

One of those trustees was a man named Benajah Harvey Carroll, pastor of First Baptist Church, Waco, TX. He was not a fan of the higher critical method of interpretation which denied biblical inspiration, remarking, "These modern devotees of higher criticism must wait each week for the mail from Germany to know what to believe or preach, to find out how much, if any of their Bibles remains." Ten years later, Carroll would decide to start a new seminary in Texas.

B.H. Carroll (1843-1914)

In 1908, B.H. Carroll formed Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary and moved it to Fort Worth two years later. Carroll was a man’s man, a Confederate veteran, and pastor of First Baptist Church, Waco, TX. He had a photographic memory, a charismatic personality, and strong opinions. His deathbed commission to his Southwestern presidential successor, Lee Scarborough, was prophetic of the late 20^th century’s conservative resurgence: “Keep the Seminary lashed to the Cross. If heresy ever comes in the teaching, take it to the faculty. If they will not hear you and take prompt action, take it to the trustees of the Seminary. If they will not hear you, take it to the Convention that appoints the Board of Trustees, and if they will not hear you, take it to the great common people of our churches. You will not fail to get a hearing then."

While he was teaching in the religion department at Baylor University in Waco, the religion department grew very large, but the Baylor administration did not like him. So Carroll took the religion department he had grown and left to form Southwestern Seminary, saying, “It’s a shame that Southern boys must go up north (meaning Louisville) to study to teach Southern churches.” The idea caught on, and in 1917, the Baptist Bible Institute of New Orleans was formed, changing its name to New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary in 1946-47.

In 1950, two seminaries formed – Golden Gate Seminary in the San Francisco Valley and Southeastern Seminary on the old campus of Wake Forest College in Wake Forest, NC. Many Southern Baptists in the armed forces had relocated and expanded the SBC reach to the West Coast during World War II, creating a need for an SBC seminary in California. Southern Baptists in the deep South who disliked going north to Louisville for their education began to search for sites for an SBC seminary in the South. They looked in Atlanta and Charlotte, but a campus came available in Wake Forest, NC. In 1940, the R.J. Reynolds family endowed Wake Forest College with a campus in Winston-Salem. The SBC purchased the old campus in Wake Forest, NC, for $6.8 million. The College did not leave until 1956, and Southeastern’s President Staley had to spend $600,000 to clean and repair the campus.

In 1959, Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary opened in Kansas City, MO. Southern Baptist students had been attending the American Baptist Convention’s Central Baptist Seminary there in growing numbers until they outnumbered the Northern students, causing friction with the ABC, so the SBC started its own school. Another school formed as an alternative to the growing liberalism in Southern Baptist seminaries in the mid-twentieth century, Mid-America Theological Seminary almost became an SBC school in the mid-1990s, but in the end they refused to join the SBC.

Annie Armstrong and the Woman's Missionary Union

Lottie Moon (1840-1912)

Part of an ongoing series on Southern Baptist history . . . 

Southern Baptist missionary to China, Lottie Moon noticed that the Methodist women in America had organized to mobilize missions, and with Annie Armstrong in 1887, they together called for a national women’s mission organization.

The Woman’s Missionary Union was organized as an auxiliary of the SBC at the Convention in Richmond in 1888. Choosing auxiliary status gave the WMU freedom to help the SBC while also being self-governing and self-supporting. It would become the largest Protestant missions organization for women in the world.

WMU’s two objectives were educating women and children about missions and raising funds for mission work worldwide. Motivated by the severe financial handicap under which the Foreign Mission Board operated in the 1880s, the WMU immediately went to work raising money. The annual offering for foreign missions began almost as soon as the WMU organized in 1888. Begun as an effort to raise funds to send an assistant to Lottie Moon in China, it was expanded to apply funds to the entire foreign field. By 1918, the annual offering was named in honor of Lottie Moon. The annual offering for home missions began in 1894 and would be named for Annie Armstrong in 1934.

Women in the churches now had an outlet to raise money and mobilize missions, and they did it with ferocity. From 1897-1902, the WMU was responsible for 35-40% of all missionary giving in the SBC. Most of these women were at home, but they collected dry goods, advocated offerings, sold bricks for building projects, and organized children’s offerings. The WMU gave women jobs in the churches. They became female Sunday School teachers, mission leaders, and became a strong part of the SBC.

Annie Armstrong (1850-1938)

Annie Armstrong was a strong, brilliant, hard-driving woman who served as WMU’s first corresponding secretary, refusing a salary and traveling at her own expense. In that position she corresponded with missionaries and denominational leaders, writing over 18,000 letters in 1893 alone. Many of those letters were addressed to Home Mission Board President Isaac T. Tichenor, in which she pled with him to send more personnel and resources to areas in the South and West, areas Armstrong herself had visited on her own and assessed firsthand. By 1895, difficulties were developing between Armstrong and other WMU leaders. When WMU president, Fannie E. S. Heck of North Carolina, opposed her on an issue regarding how to integrate Sunday Schools in missionary work, Armstrong declared, "either she must resign or I shall!"

Soon afterward, Armstrong became embroiled in conflict over the establishment of a Baptist Woman’s Missionary Union Training School in Louisville, KY, at Southern Seminary to train female missionaries. Armstrong opposed the establishment of the school and became an outspoken critic of the institute afterwards. She argued that the WMU's funds should be directed exclusively towards missionary work on the field, not education.

Despite Armstrong's opposition, the SBC voted to build the training school in 1906, but the day it opened the next year, the Convention billed the WMU for the full cost of its construction. The female students were allowed to take seminary classes alongside male students, angering Armstrong who feared the policy would culminate in the ordination of women. Seminaries should educate men only, she argued. The institute was just a school for women to find a husband anyway, she remarked.

When a denominational newspaper in 1907 criticized her opposition to the institute, Armstrong took the editorial as a personal attack and resigned her WMU position in a huff, vowing never again to serve the SBC. She went home to Baltimore and managed a nursing home the rest of her life, but remained active in her local congregation in Baltimore. Four years before her 1938 death, "Strong Arm Annie," as she was called, consented to let the Easter home missions offering be named in her honor.

Though she was not always an easy person with whom to work, Annie Armstrong can be credited as one of the three individuals who ensured the longevity and legacy of the Southern Baptist Convention among Baptist churches in the South. The other two were J.M. Frost of the Sunday School Board and I.T. Tichenor, president of the Home Mission Board. Without them, the SBC may never have lasted across the South. Through the Woman’s Missionary Union and Armstrong’s encouragement of J.M. Frost and her personal financial support in producing published materials through the Sunday School Board, she placed the vision of the SBC in the minds and hearts of local Baptist churches across the South. Through her voluminous correspondence with SBC leaders, missionaries, and local churches, she kept the vision of the SBC burning brightly. But her greatest contribution to the long-term vitality of the SBC was through the missions mobilization, fund-raising, and missions education Armstrong did among the Baptist women of the South.

The WMU would operate the institute until 1956, changing its name in 1953 to the Carver School of Mission and Social Work. After the SBC assumed responsibility in 1956, it merged with the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in 1963, where it became the nation’s only seminary-based school of social work, and its curriculum drifted leftward. During the consolidation of the Conservative Resurgence, Southern Seminary in 1998 transferred the Carver School to Campbellsville (KY) University.

Rise of Baptist liberalism (1870-1922)

Part of an ongoing series on Southern Baptist history . . . 

In the post-War swirl of nineteenth century America, with the rise of the corporation, industrialization, dislocation of families, large numbers of immigrants, the theory of evolution, and technological advancements, the religious thought of Americans was undergoing profound challenges. Those who accommodated themselves to evolution and utilitarian philosophy of science found themselves among the rise of religious liberalism. Because these philosophies remove Deity from their worldview and replace it with naturalism, religious liberals consequently had a high view of humanity and believed, because of the new evolutionary model, that given enough time and resources, we can solve all our own problems without God, producing ourselves a better creation and a better humanity.

The answer for religious liberals, then, was not more of God, but more education. Therefore the great universities which had been founded by evangelicals such as the Ivy League schools turned their curricula toward secular humanism. H. Richard Neibuhr aptly characterized this period thus, “A god without wrath brought men without sin into a kingdom without judgment through the ministrations of a Christ without a cross.”

The slope became slippery indeed. The integrity and authority of the Biblical text inevitably came into question. If God used evolution to create the world, then was Genesis' account of creation trustworthy? And if Genesis 1-11 is untrustworthy, then what about the rest of the Bible? Is it truly inspired, or is it just a great book? If it is not inspired by God, then the most the Bible can be is just great classical literature. If it is only great classical literature, then it has no direction or guidance for mankind beyond the aspirations of the best of human thought, and therefore is no longer qualified for an authoritative place in society and should be sequestered to the research libraries of religious and classical literature and folklore.

Those churches and denominations which accommodated their religion to evolutionary utilitarian science drifted toward decline, heresy, and demoralization, hurting themselves as well as failing to help others with the great questions of life. As G.K. Chesterton observed, "The problem with utilitarianism is that it doesn't work."

Walter Rauschenbusch (1861-1918)

Unfortunately, the pied piper of liberalism found hearers among Baptist scholars. Northern Baptist seminaries began embracing German Rationalism which denied the integrity of the Scripture. The liberal excoriation of the Word led to the Social Gospel, which for the first time in church history divorced practical ministry from the ministry of the Word.

Liberal Northern Baptist scholars like Walter Rauschenbusch (pictured) of Rochester Seminary, the son of an immigrant German Baptist pastor, embraced the social gospel. In his book, Christianity and the Social Order (1907), he advocated a more equitable distribution of goods and funds among people, and that we must stop exploiting workers and do better as Christians.

But Baptist liberalism did not stop with socialism based on secular humanism. Important doctrines became fair game for demolition among Baptist liberals. George Foster, a Baptist scholar at the University of Chicago, in Finality of the Christian Religion (1906) questioned the substitutionary atonement of Christ on the cross and said Paul was the real founder of Christianity.

J.N. Darby (1800-1882)

In the South, Baptists were not drinking the Kool-Aid. Their high view of Scripture led them to form orphanages and hospitals and serve the poor. The attacks on their faith were answered by John Nelson Darby (pictured), of the conservative Plymouth Brethren. His beliefs in creationism, inerrancy, the mediatorial work of Calvary, and bodily resurrection got Southern Baptists’ attention. He taught across the South that Christianity was ruined in our age, and we should just wait for Christ’s Return. Southern Baptists embraced his teaching on dispensationalism, the premillennial return of Christ, and the rapture.  

C.I. Scofield then published a reference Bible which popularized the teachings of the fundamentals of the faith (Fundamentalism) and end-times prophecy (dispensationalism). Two California oil millionaires, Milton and Lyman Stewart, financed publication of The Fundamentals, (1908-1913), an evangelical response to religious liberalism edited by R.A. Torrey. Now a classic set, it affirmed Biblical inerrancy, the Virgin Birth, Christ’s Substitutionary Atonement, the bodily resurrection, and the Second Coming (detailing pre-, post-, and a-millennial positions).

In the Northern Baptist Convention, a conservative response to liberalism was emerging. After the failure of their $100 Million Campaign (1919-1924) just after the First World War, a Fundamentalist Fellowship formed within the Northern Convention. In 1922, a Committee of Nine investigated liberalism in their schools, such as Brown University, the University of Chicago, and Colgate. The schools responded by pulling away or ignoring the NBC. Denominational leaders were embarrassed that they did not know how liberal their schools were and of their inability to pull them back from liberalism. Then a Committee of Seven investigated their missionaries for liberalism. Nearly all of them were exonerated, but a handful of liberals made the whole bunch look bad and hurt missions giving.

E.Y. Mullins (1860-1928)

Then in 1922 the Fundamentalists tried to get the NBC to affirm the 1833 New Hampshire Confession of Faith in order to stem the liberal tide. Moderates and liberals countered that they had no confession but the Bible, and the initiative was defeated. One observer there paying close attention was Edgar Young Mullins (pictured), president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. He foresaw the same issues coming to the Southern Baptist Convention, and three years later would lead in the adoption of the Baptist Faith and Message based on the New Hampshire Confession.

The defeat left the NBC with two conservative/ fundamentalist groups. The more militant of the groups left to form the General Association of Regular Baptist Churches (GARBC) and immediately adopted New Hampshire plus pre-millennialism). The other stream remained and became an increasing minority until they felt forced out in 1947 to form the Conservative Baptists of America.

The Old Landmarkers

Part of an ongoing series on Southern Baptist history . . . 

The nineteenth century South saw the rise of Old Landmarkism, a controversial group of Baptists who asked the right questions at the wrong time and influenced Southern Baptist life up to today in many churches. The term Landmarkism is derived from their battle cry, Proverbs 28:22; 23:10, “Remove not the ancient landmark which thy fathers have set.”

The forced organization and centralization of the missionary movement in the South into two Boards along with Baptists’ flexible polity of local church autonomy led to questions from well-meaning Baptist leaders about the doctrine of the church.

Biblically, they asked, what is a true church? If we take the Reformation marks of a true church, i.e., that a true church exists wherever  there is the right preaching of the Word and the right administration of the sacraments, then what is right? If a church is not teaching correct doctrine, then it is not rightly preaching the Word, and therefore, they reasoned, it is not a true church. If the Bible teaches believers’ baptism, then every church that practices infant baptism is not rightly administering the sacraments, they said, and therefore is not a true church. So the Old Landmarkers rather bluntly counted them either false churches or religious societies.

In the Cotton Grove Resolutions, citing Proverbs 22:28; 23:10, “Remove not the ancient landmark which thy fathers have set,” Landmarkers laid out several controversial positions. First, Baptist churches are the only true churches in the world. All others are either false churches or religious societies. One can be a saved Methodist or Presbyterian, but not in a legitimate church. Second, the church is local and visible. Forget this foolishness about denominations and boards and the invisible church and the church universal. It’s not in the Bible. Third, therefore there should be no pulpit affiliation with these illegitimate groups, and no trading pulpits with other non-Baptist so-called churches. And fourth, only churches can do churchly acts like baptism or the Lord’s Supper. It is illegitimate and possibly sin to participate in these ordinances outside your local church in which you are a member.

Famous Landmarkers included native Vermonter J.R. Graves, who was the controversial editor of the Tennessee Baptist. He emphasized the local church because, he said, Jesus did. He could not find mission boards mentioned in Matthew 28:18-20 no matter how hard he tried.

J.M. Pendleton

James Madison Pendleton (pictured), the “forgotten Landmarker,” and author of An Old Landmark, is the least appreciated of nineteenth century Baptists because of his Landmark position. He was a pastor-scholar, pastor of First Baptist Church, Bowling Green, KY, and president of Union University in Tennessee, writing over 700 editorials in Baptist papers across the South and numerous books including the 300-page Compendium of Christian Theology, for black Baptist preachers in the post-War era.

Pendleton also wrote the Baptist Church Manual which trained deacons to operate like a corporate board of directors and pastors the CEOs who worked at the pleasure of the board, with the congregation functioning as the corporate shareholders. With that one book, Pendleton turned many Baptist churches for a century away from the biblical servant role of deacons. The elevation of deacons' roles to a ruling status created many a little Napoleon who lorded over local churches and made life difficult for many a pastor and congregation in some rural communities even up to today.

Inevitably, Landmark questions turned to missions, missionaries, local churches and mission boards. With all this authority going to these new mission boards, they asked, where are they found in the Bible? Landmarkers couldn't find them, and if they are not in the Bible, can churches form Foreign and Home Mission Boards? Why are we doing this? Where does mission boards' authority reside? With the churches? With the Board members? And is it even Biblical, they questioned.

Enter the case of missionary to China, I.J. Roberts. He had been appointed by the old Triennial Convention mission board back in the early 1830s, but he was not well supported by them, and consequently he had been living for years as an independent missionary. In 1846, like other missionaries who had been part of the American Board, Roberts asked the new Southern Baptist Foreign Mission Board to appoint and support him.

A problem arose, though. Roberts had grown too independent in China. He did what he wanted to do, and the Foreign Board was powerless to control him. Roberts wrote the Board to please send him a wife. Included were love letters he had written to whomever the Board chose for him. In the meantime, he furloughed, came home, married a woman in Kentucky, then returned to China with her to find, to everyone's embarrassment, a single woman waiting for him sent by the Board. In 1851, the Board fired him. Old Landmarkers were watching, and they had their questions and opinions ready.

J.R. Graves

J.R. Graves (pictured) wrote in the Tennessee Baptist, “Can a Board fire a missionary sent out by local churches in Kentucky?” He suggested the local Kentucky churches supporting him should be the ones to decide. Biblically, Graves suggested, since local churches should be sending missionaries anyway and not unbiblical mission boards, the Foreign Mission Board should have no authority to fire a missionary sent out by local churches in Kentucky with funding from local Kentucky churches.

With that question, Graves threatened to destroy the Southern Baptist Convention before it was up and running. In the end, the Board stuck by its guns, maintained its authority to hire and fire missionaries, and the issue quieted, but the controversial questions Landmarkers raised remained.

While they raised legitimate issues of power and authority in the Baptist churches, Landmarkers cast themselves as God’s insiders who were more informed than what they considered their more 'liberal' Baptist brethren. They were often viewed as mean spirited. While they helped keep the budding power of convention bureaucracy in check, they also had a cantankerous, contentious spirit. Landmarkers often appeared to observers as simply a self-appointed set of trouble-makers with a hateful attitude toward anything or anyone with whom they disagreed.

Baptists and postbellum foreign missions

Part of an ongoing series on Southern Baptist history . . . 

Among the Northern Baptist churches, the old Triennial Convention changed its name to the American Baptist Missionary Union in 1846, focusing on foreign missions alone in the Northern society model. Almost immediately there was trouble. The framers of the union wanted to protect their autonomy (read: power), and an executive board was chosen to run the union. Membership was $100 for lifetime membership, so that meant the only people who could be members and run the Union were rich elites. 

While the Union looked good on paper, the membership requirement kept churches from any input. Only individuals had influence. That made the churches angry since the board was not working for them, and church giving dropped dramatically creating an intractable financial crisis that threatened their missionaries. An 1854 change to a $10 per year dues to be a delegate to the annual meeting got more people participating, but the churches still were not behind the Union. Despite the problems, work expanded in Burma and India with women taking an active role in the missionary work.

J.B. Taylor

In the South, the local Baptist churches were energized for foreign missions. Richmond, VA, pastor James B. Taylor (pictured) consented to serve as the first Corresponding Secretary of a new Foreign Mission Board, giving two days a week to the Board which would be based in Richmond.

During Taylor’s tenure (1845-1871), the Board increased its missionary personnel from 2 to 81 missionaries abroad despite the South’s economy being wrecked by the War. This was amazing. The Board’s first fields were China (1845), Liberia (1846), and Sierra Leone (1846). 

Taylor appointed the board’s first single woman missionary, Harriet Baker, in 1849. The work fascinated Southern Baptists. The China mission was much more successful than West Africa, where many missionaries died of malaria only months after arrival so much that finally the Board placed a moratorium on further deployments there. Still, the work continued to expand into Nigeria (1850) and Italy (1871). In the first twenty-five years under Taylor, with no model to work from, the Foreign Mission Board had begun a great work.

H.A. Tupper

The Board’s second Corresponding Secretary was Henry Allen Tupper (pictured) (serving 1872-1893), who opened fields in Mexico (1880), Brazil (1881), and Japan (1889). Like his predecessor, Tupper was also open to sending single women as foreign missionaries, and a single college graduate from Virginia named Lottie Moon was appointed to China under his leadership. Between 1845 and 1920, two-thirds of the SBC mission force in China were women. Nearly every one of them had a high school diploma and some collegiate training. The Board also appointed five female medical doctors during the last half of the nineteenth century.

Under the third corresponding secretary Robert J. Willingham (1893-1913), fields opened in Argentina (1903), Macao (1910), and Uruguay (1911).

Southern Baptists . . . and Northern

Part of an ongoing series on Southern Baptist history . . . 

After the Schism of 1845 that created the Southern Baptist Convention, both groups were forced to reorganize. But the split was not clean cut, and mixing of both groups would continue until the 1890s. In the South, many churches were lukewarm toward the new SBC because the meeting in May 1845 was supposed to involve only talking about what to do, not actually creating a new convention. Add to that the South’s new devastating poverty. In 1860, 13 of the 15 wealthiest states were in the South. In 1900, not one of the 35 wealthiest states was Southern. Three to four billion dollars in capital was lost by the South in the War, and they were left to deal with it.

Home Missions

The American Baptist Publication Society (ABPS) (1845) based in Philadelphia was the least affected by the Schism of 1845. An outgrowth of the old Bible and Tract Society (1824), they continued to serve both the Northern and Southern churches with Bibles, tracts, Sunday School literature, commentaries, study aids, family Bibles, and the Baptist Cyclopedia. Their booming business gave rise to colporteurs, book sellers who came door to door selling literature. Colporteurs were forerunners of the modern evangelists. Their work in the Confederate and Union camps during the War Between the States helped spread the Great Revivals among them. Their work among Northern, Southern, and newly forming African-American churches also raised literacy levels until the 1890s when Southern white and black Baptists began to set up their own publishing houses.

Ever wonder why all the denominations except the Baptists reunited after the War Between the States? The answer is found in the tension between the Northern and Southern Home Mission Boards. It was called mutual encroachment. The Northern board said, “You stay where you are and we will expand wherever we want.”

The American Baptist Home Mission Society (1832) had been the seat of troubles that led to the Schism of 1845, and afterwards they focused on sending missionaries to the West. John Mason Peck was sent out by the ABHMS. Though now largely forgotten, he was a great man of God who planted churches, schools throughout the Midwest despite the Society’s neglect of support for him on the field. The ABHMS financed many church buildings and after the War helped the Freedmen’s Bureau by helping build schools. The US Government and ABHMS worked closely in the South (using student builders)  to finance construction of many historically black universities such as Morehouse College, Howard University, Shaw University, and Jackson State University. This work for freed Blacks by Northern Baptists and the conquering US Government caused great resentment among Southern Baptists. In fact, the ABHMS was authorized under military law to take ownership of Baptist properties in the South for their own use. Unfortunately the ABHMS got overextended financially in the post-War period. Immigration to the North was hitting over one million a year and in the West, the Indians being placed on reservations needed ministry. The question became, “Just who or what is our Home Mission Field?”

The Southern Baptist Home Mission Board formed with headquarters in Marion, Alabama, closer to the Frontier. But they were soon consumed with questions about their vision and direction, asking, “What is Home?” How far north will we go to plant churches? We are going West. Will we go East and North to the great cities filled with new immigrants? Do we plant churches among Blacks? Indians? Church planters also had more preferable options rather than working with the HMB. They could partner with their local association or their local church, or the Northern society rather than the HMB. Then there was money. The HMB was competing with the Foreign Mission Board for funding – and losing.

Henry L. Morehouse (pictured), the president of the Northern board (the Home Mission Society), sparred in the newspapers with Southern Baptist leaders. Morehouse wrote, “Ours is not the ‘Northern society,’ it is the American society,” and he did not care whether Southerners liked it or not, they would stay in the South as long as they wanted.

Despite Morehouse's obnoxious attitude, some Southerners suggested the HMB be abolished. Of the 21 state Baptist conventions or associations at the time in the South, only seven were cooperating with the HMB which had only $28,000 in receipts in 1882 and 40 missionaries, mostly in Indian Territory. While most of the Baptist state conventions in the South worked with the Northern society, the HMB was nearly defunct. Isaac T. Tichenor and other leaders realized that if Southern state conventions and associations did not stop cooperating with the ABHMS, there would soon be no Southern Baptist Convention.

The Home Mission Board needed a change, so in 1882, Isaac T. Tichenor (pictured) moved the Board to Atlanta, a thriving New South city. Tichenor had been a Confederate sniper in the War, and he was bitter about the South’s loss. A popular preacher, he had been president of Auburn University, and in terms of organizational skills and vision, the best president the Home Board ever had. Therefore, he worked to align all the state bodies with the HMB. Ten years later, every home missionary to whites in the South was aligned with the HMB or its state conventions. They now aimed at evangelization of immigrants, Appalachia, urban areas, native whites, blacks, and Indians. Tichenor’s successes garnered him the epithet, “Father of Cooperation.”

After ten years of hard work, the HMB had overcome the rivalry with the ABHMS. Finally on September 12, 1894, a meeting was held at Fortress Monroe, VA, to define their mutual cooperation and territory. Earlier overtures by the Southern board had been ignored, but at that time the ABHMS agreed to meet on a basis of equality. The Northerners were looking for a way out of the South. They were overextended and needed to relinquish responsibilities with some dignity. With one million immigrants a year arriving from Ireland, China, and Southern Europe, they want to let the South go.

The Northern Society wanted to retain control of the black universities, and the Southern Board agreed to help fund them as well as cooperate in the training of black ministers in what became the New Era schools. Blacks resented the Northerners telling them what to do and wanted to lead themselves. As for other areas, the two groups agreed not to seek funding in areas where the other already had work in place. The net of the Fortress Monroe Conference? The Northern Baptists relinquished their responsibilities in the South, and the Southern Baptists got the Northerners out of their region.

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How the Southern Baptist Convention formed

Part of an ongoing series on Southern Baptist history . . . 

The sectionalism between North and South continued to gain intensity in the 1840s, both in politics and churches. Abolitionist Northerners touched off a bitter exchange among Northern and Southern Baptist newspapers in 1843 when an anonymous editorial in the New Hampshire Baptist Record asked whether or not it was true that James Huckins and William Tryon, HMS-approved missionaries to Texas who would later establish Baylor University, were in fact slaveholders.  That same year, a small group of abolitionist Northerners in the Convention worked to defund the two Texas missionaries because, they said, Huckins and Tryon were slaveholders. Only the charge was not exactly accurate. Huckins did not work for the Home Mission Society; he was appointed by the American Baptist Missionary Society of New York, and it was Tryon’s wife who owned slaves, not him. Regardless, Northern abolitionists continued an effort to defund all those connected with slavery.

Southerners, of whom only a small minority actually owned slaves, saw the situation in a different way, for good or ill. Many of their family members had moved to the wild and dangerous Republic of Texas which was in growing tension with the Mexican government. They took the Northern actions somewhat as a personal and cultural affront, wondering if at root the Northerners did not want to work in cooperation with Southerners. Viewing the Huckins-Tryon incident as an attack on their culture, Baptist newspapers in the South replied that there was no Convention policy written on it, and since the US Constitution didn’t outlaw it and the Triennial Convention constitution did not address it, they should stop their agitation.

Everyone knew a schism of Baptists in America was coming. In 1844 the Home Missions Society met following this Baptist newspaper war of words. In an effort to force the HMS to declare its position on slaveholding missionaries, abolitionist Samuel Adlam of Maine introduced a resolution stating that the HMS would appoint slaveholders, referring in his resolution to the Huckins-Tryon affair. He added that if North and South must part on this question, let it be done in peace. This handful of Northern abolitionists were trying to force the Southerners out of the HMS, and the society responded with a primary concern over separation or unity, not over slavery. Richard Fuller and J.B. Jeter motioned to amend Adlam's resolution that the Home Mission Society should not take sides. They did not defend slavery, but called it a disease that would soon die out. The motion to amend passed 131-61, but still a committee of eleven was formed to find a way to amicably dissolve the Home Mission Society. No one was happy. Nothing was settled.

Then in May 1844, Georgia Baptists nominated James Reeve as a home missionary for Georgia’s Tallapoosa Association as a test case. Several Georgians guaranteed his $20/ month salary, and without being asked by the Board, they volunteered information during Reeve's appointment process that he was a slaveholder. Since the Home Mission Society had gone on record as neutral on slavery, they reasoned, he should be approved. But the Radicals in the Convention wanted the issue settled and Southerners pushed out. Southerners just wanted to know what direction the Convention would take so that they could know themselves what to do. The HMS board had to make a decision, so on October 7, 1844, the board voted neither to appoint nor reject Reeve because they felt the Georgia Convention was using Reeve as a test case for slavery, and under HMS neutrality rules, slavery could not be discussed in their meetings. Rumors flew that three anti-slavery missionary societies were afoot.

Rumors then provoked the Alabama Baptist Convention in November 1844 to step into the fracas. Reports flew that HMS Board chairman Pattison was attempting to secure the resignation of a beloved Alabama missionary to the Indians because he was a slaveholder. The Alabama Baptists insisted to the General Convention that slavery should not be a factor in missionary appointments. The Convention board, which had long been anti-slavery, replied that they could not “be a party to any arrangement which would imply the approbation of slavery.”

When the Virginia Baptist Foreign Mission Society heard the Convention's response, they immediately cut off funds to the Triennial Convention and began to organize a call for a consultation for a Southern Convention of Baptists. Virginians Jeremiah Bell (J.B.) Jeterpictured) and William E. Hatcher soon issued a call to meet at First Baptist Church, Augusta, GA, in May 1845, to discuss what Southerners would do.

Both Northern and Southern Baptist papers called for separation. Even Adoniram Judson himself said the extent of the nation alone called for another mission organization. The April 1845 meeting of the Triennial Convention was a sad rerun of worn out pontifications, with few Southerners in attendance. The only resolution receiving unanimous support was that if division came, the North would retain the General Convention, and there would be amicable adjustments with those leaving. The elder Northern pragmatist Francis Wayland, president of the Triennial Convention, privately encouraged Southerners Jeter and Hatcher to leave and form a Southern Baptist Convention with Northern approval and earnest prayers.


Messengers from churches in Georgia, Virginia, and South Carolina were in the majority at First Baptist Church, Augusta, GA, (pictured) on May 8, 1845, but since spring planting was going on, the messengers in attendance were mostly the most wealthy. They agreed immediately to separate from the old Triennial Convention based on the Convention’s reply to Alabama Baptists, a response which the Southerners maintained was a violation of the Convention's own constitution.

J.B. Jeter read a letter from the Triennial Convention president Francis Wayland, which said in part, “You will separate of course. Your rights have been infringed. We have shown how Christians ought not to act. It remains for you to show us how they ought to act. Put away all violence, act with dignity and firmness, and the world will approve your course.” Before the meeting was over, they had formed the Southern Baptist Convention. Its constitution, written by William B. Johnson (1782-1862) (pictured) of South Carolina, moved from the society model to the convention model, putting all work under one banner with separate home and foreign boards to handle business between annual meetings. Johnson, who had been president of the Triennial Convention 1841-44 became the Southern Baptist Convention's first president, serving 1845-51.

Was there opposition to the formation of the SBC? Well, we’re talking about Baptists here. Of course there was opposition. Abolitionists were delighted at the separation but critical of the SBC. Some Baptist Southerners were upset that the Augusta meeting had done more than they expected, “You were sent to consult, not construct! You had no authority to form a new convention!” The SBC framers replied, “Are you with us or not? We’re just as good an option as any.” Some, like John Waller, said, “We shouldn’t leave the Northern church. We should stay in and make this vocal minority form their own societies and leave us. They are only a handful of abolitionists anyway.” But no one listened. The impending separation and new direction had come, not very pretty, but done. The Southern Baptist Convention had been formed.

Baptists and Missions: 1800-1845

William Carey

Part of an ongoing series on Southern Baptist history . . . 

William Carey (1761-1834) (pictured) was a friend of Andrew Fuller in Britain. He was a shoe cobbler, and he had a heart for missions. A short man with an unimpressive appearance, Carey was a poor preacher, so poor that after preaching all summer in the Baptist church in Olney, the congregation refused to recommend him for ordination, but considering his persistence and the fact that no one else was interested in pastoring their church, they reluctantly called him as pastor. He kept his cobbler business and while doing it learned Hebrew, Greek, Dutch, French, Latin, and several other languages. He also liked maps and as he drew them God burdened his heart with the world populations without Christ. It came to consume him.

In 1787 Carey attended the Ministers Fraternal of the Northampton Association, proposed for discussion “Whether the command given the apostles to teach all nations was not binding on all succeeding ministers to the end of the world.” The revered Dr. John Ryland, Sr., retorted, “Sit down young man. You are an enthusiast! When God pleases to convert the heathen, He will do it without consulting you or me.” Carey sat down, but missions burned in his heart. He would later in 1792 write the remarkable book, An Enquiry into the Obligations of Christians to use means for the Conversion of the Heathen. This book helped charter the modern missionary movement. Carey would later go to India for the rest of his life as a missionary.

Early post-Revolutionary America was seeing profound changes. Morality had hit a major low after the Revolution. Settlers were rushing to the frontier, and in response to prayer, the God sent the Second Great Awakening to America (~1798 – ~1803). Awakening fell on the Presbyterians first, and one of their leaders was James McGready who had been driven from North Carolina to Kentucky, and who returned in 1801 leading revivals. The problem was that the Presbyterians saw so many converts and their leadership structure and polity could not handle the influx of souls. The Baptists and Methodists had a polity to handle the revival, and they ended up with most of the harvest. Out of that revival came a hunger for international missions as well.

Adoniram Judson

Three New England Congregationalists (who believed in infant baptism) named Adoniram and Ann Judson (pictured) and Luther Rice[1] (1783-1836) committed to missions in Burma. Because they knew they would have to deal with the Baptist William Carey in India over the issue of baptism, so on their separate voyages they studied their Bibles on baptism to be ready for him, but they found themselves convinced that Carey was right. They needed Scriptural baptism. When they left New England they had been Congregationalists, but when they arrived, they were Biblically convinced Baptists and joined with William Carey.

Now the Judsons and Rice had an integrity issue. They could not be supported by Congregational churches having rejected covenant theology and infant baptism. Therefore, Luther Rice volunteered to return to the United States and raise support for all of them. The Judsons would remain in India and eventually Burma, and Rice promised to return as soon as he could. Rice sailed to America in 1813 to meet with the Philadelphia Association and told them, “If you would have us, we will be your missionaries.” He would never make it back to the mission field.

There was a need for some kind of structure to support American Baptist missionaries, so in May 1814, the General Missionary Convention of the Baptist Denomination in the United States of America for Foreign Missions was formed. It came to be known as the Triennial Convention because it met every three years. From the beginning, regional prejudices would underlie the Convention. First, the distance. The Convention was nearly always held in the North. Transportation was expensive, difficult, and dangerous. Southerners wondered why they met only twice in the South between 1814 and 1844, and even then the convention cities were Baltimore and Richmond. By the 1840s this would become a huge issue.

The second area of contention was the representation on the Mission Board. To be a board member, one had to give $100 per year. When travel costs for the convention were added, it was too expensive for Southerners to be very involved. Therefore, the Triennial Convention was centered in the North, dominated by Northerners, and Northerners dictated the agenda.  

The third problem was how to conduct business in the convention. New England had the town hall tradition which led to a Society Model for funding missions. Societies were directed at one specific need, such as orphan ministry, building a hospital, or funding a missionary family. Membership was based on who donated and how much they gave. 

Southerners had the rural County Court Days tradition where everyone would come to town once a week to meet and transact business. This tradition led to a Convention Model where all activity was done at one time for all ministry needs. Membership was based on geographic representation, so everyone was represented and had a say in where funds were directed.

Luther Rice

Luther Rice (silhouetted) kept his word to raise support for the Judsons among Baptist churches along the seaboard and rode thousands of miles raising monies for their mission in Burma. During one 11-month stretch, Rice traveled a total of 9,359 miles -- this coming mostly on horseback. He survived on a salary of $8, paid by the convention. Contributions by Baptists to foreign missions totaled $1,239.29 in 1814, but by 1816 the amount given was $12,236.84 -- almost a tenfold increase. 

His selfless work in preaching and casting the vision for missions transformed Baptists and unified them around the Great Commission and brought scattered churches together as a real, unified convention.

Unfortunately, Rice had a problem with administration, i.e., keeping up with the money he had raised. He was accused of thievery, but no malfeasance was ever found in him. He traveled on a strict budget, showed his expenses, but he would be gone so long that he gave an accounting only every six months. 

Ann Judson

The other thing that happened was that in 1821, Luther Rice founded and became president of the Baptist-affiliated Columbian College in D.C., what would become George Washington University. That job entailed raising funds, too, so it got tricky. Who exactly was he raising monies for? When Rice took up an offering in a church, there were questions. Who received that money? The school or the missionaries? Rice found himself in a bind. He was over obligated with no good way to extricate himself.

Last, there was an issue with the perception of his integrity. Rice was so busy raising funds to support missions and the college that he never fulfilled his promise to return to the mission field, even though Ann Judson (pictured) wrote him about it. When Rice made a request to the Triennial Convention's board to return to India, it was turned down because the board wanted him to stay in America to raise funds and cast vision.

Francis Wayland

Enter Francis Wayland (pictured). He was not happy with Rice and was determined to do something about him. Wayland was a former pastor and now the President of Brown University, a Baptist school in Rhode Island. He worked to remove Rice as a fund raiser for the Triennial Convention. He eventually was successful in separating the Convention from Columbian College, but some questioned whether this was really a battle between two schools for funding. How did Wayland do it? In 1826, he led the Triennial Convention to focus exclusively on foreign mission work, thereby turning the Convention into a Northern-style Society, and then he moved the Board to Boston. Wayland’s action caused a big reaction – the Anti-missionary movement.

The Anti-Missionary Movement

Alexander Campbell

Alexander Campbell (pictured) began as a Presbyterian, then became a Baptist where he became a thorn in the side of Baptists. He wanted to restore the ancient ways, the New Testament pattern. Jesus followers were not Baptists, he said. They were Christians, so he formed the Christian churches, leading many Baptists his way, and that way as Anti-Missionary. The Bible doesn’t say anything about a Convention or a Mission Board, he said. That is not New Testament. Was Paul under a board? No, he was sent out by churches.

Another anti-missionary leader was Daniel Parker was barely literate, having been taught to read by his mother. He was opposed to mission boards and societies, too. They are not in the New Testament. In 1820 in a General Address to the Baptist Society, Parker asked, “How can preachers be anything but preachers?” (i.e., no one should become a missionary). And “What mission board president is in the Bible?” But Parker kept heading into left field. About 1826 developed the heresy of Two-Seedism, a dualist idea that every person is born of the seed of the Woman (and therefore saved) or the seed of the Devil (and born to damnation). He would denounce his Baptist church membership. He becomes a case of “Consider the source.”

One anti-missionary leader stayed in the Baptist Convention named John Taylor. In his early years he had been persecuted as a Baptist in Virginia and moved to Kentucky. In his Thoughts on Missions written at age 69, Taylor said he smelled a New England rat. Who exactly is in control of what we’re doing in missions? You ask for money, he wrote, but there are no mission boards in the New Testament! What are you going to do with that money? Who is going to control it? You people are upsetting the customs of Baptists and committing a serious assault on Baptist traditions, he charged. “I’m not opposed to new institutions, but I am opposed to changing customs and tradition,” he said. Then he went after Luther Rice. “Does Luther Rice really have anyone at all on the mission field? We’re giving them everything we fought for in the Revolution,” he bemoaned. Taylor would set the tone for dissent among Baptists.

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[1] http://www.hmdb.org/Marker.asp?Marker=12973