The year conservatives consolidated control of the Southern Baptist Convention is the last year a key marker of denominational growth showed an overall upward trend, according to new annual data released by Lifeway Christian Resources. Even a slight rebound in…
What the SBC should do about its most famous accused sexual abuser
Thank God, Paul Pressler has lived to the ripe old age of 93. That’s long enough to expose the Southern Baptist Convention’s most malevolent hypocrite to the shame of his reported double life. Just before the end of the year,…
New court documents show First Baptist Houston leaders knew of allegations against Pressler in 2004
Leaders of First Baptist Church of Houston knew about Paul Pressler’s alleged inappropriate sexual activity with young men in 2004, according to correspondence from the church to Pressler obtained by the Texas Tribune. Journalist Robert Downen, writing for the Tribune,…
Thirty years later, no one has reshaped the SBC more than Albert Mohler
Gallons of ink — physical and digital — have been spilled writing about the transformation of the Southern Baptist Convention at the hands of Paul Pressler and Paige Patterson. While they were, indeed, the architects of the “takeover” of the…
Ralph Elliott, author of Genesis commentary that began the SBC’s battle for the Bible, dies
Ralph Elliott, the seminary professor whose commentary on Genesis became symbolic of the battle over biblical literalism in the Southern Baptist Convention, has died at age 97. Elliott died Sunday, Oct. 23, in Paoli, Pa. A family funeral service was…
Bill Self in 1984: ‘Babylonian Captivity of the Convention’
Editor’s note: In 1984, the Southern Baptist Convention met in Kansas City for what was the sixth year of the so-called “conservative resurgence” that in time captured the leadership structure of the SBC and turned it rightward. The next year,…
Randall Lolley, key figure in resisting SBC’s conservative shift, dies at 90
Editor’s note: This story will be updated as new information becomes available. Randall Lolley, one of the pivotal figures in the late-20th-century schism in the Southern Baptist Convention and an early leader in the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, died March 21…
Conservative Baptist Network launches attack on James Merritt for saying something nice about his son
One of the groups aiming to take the Southern Baptist Convention in a more conservative direction continues to sound the alarm about liberalism in the nation’s largest non-Catholic Christian denomination and now has attacked one of the icons of the…
A ‘heretic’ returns to a formative place that once was home – the campus of Southern Seminary
I wanted to view a display that chronicled the founding, theological drift, depths of heresy and resurgence of the seminary as interpreted by the current administration. Apparently, I figured prominently in the tableau as exemplar of the HEResy that required my dismissal.