Baptist History and Denominational Development — Unit 8: Twentieth-Century Battles: Fundamentalists, Modernists, and the Conservative Resurgence

Key Verse

"Beloved, while I was very diligent to write to you concerning our common salvation, I found it necessary to write to you exhorting you to contend earnestly for the faith which was once for all delivered to the saints." (Jude 3, NKJV)

Learning Objectives

When you finish this unit, you should be able to:

1. Explain what "modernism" and "fundamentalism" meant in the early twentieth century and why the controversy reached Baptist churches.

2. Describe the Downgrade Controversy of 1887 to 1888 and the Northern Baptist conflict of the 1920s, including the divisions that followed.

3. Name the Baptist Faith and Message statements of 1925, 1963 and 2000 and say what led to each revision.

4. Describe the Conservative Resurgence in the Southern Baptist Convention from 1979 onward, and state how supporters and critics have described it.

5. Explain what Baptists mean by biblical inerrancy, state the main objections to the doctrine, and give the Baptist answer from Scripture.

The Voice of This Course

This course is written from inside the Baptist tradition, for Baptist students. It is theologically conservative. When it says "we," it means Baptists who hold that the Bible is the inspired and authoritative Word of God. This unit deals with painful arguments among Baptists. We describe them fairly, give the Baptist answer we believe Scripture supports, and admit where our own side has been harsh. Scripture says we must speak "the truth in love" (Ephesians 4:15).

The Background: A Changing World

The nineteenth century ended with great confidence in human progress. Science was advancing quickly. In universities and seminaries in Europe and North America, many scholars began to study the Bible with new methods. Some were faithful believers who defended the text. Others began from the idea that miracles cannot happen. They taught that the Bible is a record of human religious ideas that grew over time, and not the Word of God given by inspiration.

Those who adopted these ideas were called modernists or liberals. They said they were saving Christianity for the modern age. Their opponents answered that they were changing the faith itself.

Not every concern of the movement was wrong. A Baptist, Walter Rauschenbusch, a professor at Rochester Theological Seminary, wrote about the "social gospel." He had served among poor families in New York City and he wanted the church to care about poverty, hunger and unjust working conditions. Scripture does command us to care for the poor (James 1:27). Conservative Baptists agree with that concern. Where they disagreed was the direction: critics feared that the social gospel made the salvation of society the center of the message and pushed aside the cross, the new birth and the authority of the Bible. This is a fair statement of the debate. Faithful Baptists want both: a gospel that saves sinners and a love that serves the needy.

An Early Warning: The Downgrade Controversy

The trouble began in Britain before the new century. Charles Haddon Spurgeon, the famous London Baptist preacher, became deeply concerned in the 1880s. He saw ministers in the Baptist Union who were weakening their teaching on Scripture, on the atonement and on the future judgment. In 1887 he withdrew from the Baptist Union. In 1888 the Union formally disapproved of his action. This is known as the Downgrade Controversy.

Spurgeon's critics said that he was too strict and that the Union was a fellowship of churches, not a doctrinal test. Spurgeon's answer was that fellowship in the gospel must rest on the gospel. Amos 3:3 asks, "Can two walk together, unless they are agreed?" He believed that cooperation without doctrinal agreement was not real unity. Some Baptists think he should have stayed and fought from within. Baptists still debate that question.

The Fundamentalist Movement

In the United States the same questions arose in the early 1900s. Between 1910 and 1915 a series of twelve small volumes called The Fundamentals was published and sent widely to pastors and Christian workers. Two businessmen financed the project. Its writers came from several denominations, and they defended central Christian teachings, including the authority of the Bible, the deity and virgin birth of Christ, His atoning death and His bodily resurrection.

In 1920 a Northern Baptist editor, Curtis Lee Laws, used the word fundamentalist for those prepared to do battle for these fundamentals. The word was first a badge of honor. Later it became, for many, a word of insult, because some who used the label were harsh and quarrelsome. In this course we use "fundamentalist" in its early meaning: a believer who defends the basic truths of the faith. To defend the Bible is not to be anti-intellectual, and many leading defenders were serious scholars.

The Northern Baptist Conflict

The Northern Baptist Convention, formed in 1907, was torn in the early 1920s by arguments over the teaching of missionaries and professors. Conservatives wanted a clear confession of faith. Others replied that Baptists have no creed and that a binding confession would violate soul liberty and the freedom of each church.

A famous moment came in 1922. Harry Emerson Fosdick, a Baptist minister preaching in a Presbyterian church in New York City, delivered a sermon called "Shall the Fundamentalists Win?" He argued for a broad, tolerant church. Conservatives replied that tolerance of every view cannot be the basis of a church that is built on the truth. Their reply is the one Baptists have usually given: freedom of conscience means that no one may force a person to believe, but it does not mean that a church or a convention must pay for the teaching of what it believes to be false.

In the end the conservatives did not win control of the Northern Baptist Convention. Over the following decades many left. Some formed new bodies. The General Association of Regular Baptist Churches began in 1932, and the Conservative Baptist Association of America began in 1947. Unit 9 will place these groups in the larger Baptist family. The Northern Baptist Convention later took the name American Baptist Convention in 1950 and then American Baptist Churches in the USA in 1972.

The Southern Baptists and the Baptist Faith and Message

Southern Baptists faced the same pressures, but the controversy took a different course. Most of the churches in the South were more conservative, and the convention was more tightly joined by its common mission work.

In 1925 the Southern Baptist Convention adopted a confession called The Baptist Faith and Message. It was based on the New Hampshire Confession of 1833, with additions to meet the questions of that day. E. Y. Mullins, a seminary president and respected theologian, led the committee that prepared it. Like earlier Baptist confessions, it stated that it was not a creed binding the conscience.

The statement was revised in 1963. A controversy over a professor's book on Genesis at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary (Ralph Elliott, 1961) led to the revision, and Herschel Hobbs, a respected pastor, chaired the committee. Later, conservatives came to believe that some of its wording on the Bible was not clear enough to prevent the teaching of error.

The statement was revised again in 2000. It added stress on the truthfulness and trustworthiness of Scripture, and, as we shall see, it included a clear statement on the pastoral office (Article VI). The convention had also added an article on the family in 1998.

The Conservative Resurgence

By the 1960s and 1970s a number of Southern Baptist pastors and laypeople were troubled by what they heard from some seminary classrooms, publications and denominational leaders. They reported that some professors denied the historical truth of parts of the Bible, doubted miracles or questioned the authority of the text. Others replied that most of these concerns were exaggerated and that the convention was healthy.

In 1979, at the annual meeting in Houston, Adrian Rogers, a pastor from Memphis, was elected president of the convention. Two men, Paul Pressler, a judge, and Paige Patterson, a theologian and educator, had helped to organize conservative pastors for this purpose. The convention elects its president each year by the votes of messengers sent by the churches. The president appoints a committee that names the members of the committees that choose the trustees of the seminaries and agencies. Conservatives understood that if successive presidents were conservative, then in time the governing boards would change. In the years that followed, conservative presidents were elected again and again. By the 1990s the trustees of all the Southern Baptist seminaries and agencies had conservative majorities, and the faculties changed.

In 1985 a peace committee was formed to try to heal the conflict, and it did not end the dispute. Many moderate Southern Baptists left or were pushed out of positions of leadership. Some formed the Alliance of Baptists in 1987, and others formed the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship in 1991.

How the two sides describe it

Those who led the movement call it the Conservative Resurgence. They say it was a return of the convention to the beliefs of the churches that paid for the work. The pastors in the pews believed that the Bible is true, and they wanted the seminaries they supported to teach that. They won, they say, by the ordinary democratic method of Baptists: the vote of messengers.

Those who opposed it often call it a fundamentalist takeover. They say it was a political campaign that put loyalty to a particular doctrine of Scripture above the freedom of conscience, the priesthood of all believers and the Baptist tradition of cooperation across differences. Some on the conservative side also admit that there were harsh words and unfair accusations from their own side, and that the controversy caused real pain.

We believe the central issue was not politics but whether the churches would keep the Bible as their final authority. Paul told Timothy to guard "that good thing which was committed to you" (2 Timothy 1:14). Yet a Baptist must not cheer when brothers are hurt. A person can be right about doctrine and wrong in manner.

What Baptists Mean by Inerrancy

The word inerrancy was at the center of this struggle. Because the word is easily misunderstood, we should explain what Baptists mean.

By inspiration we mean what Paul wrote: "All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness" (2 Timothy 3:16). The words of the Bible are God-breathed. By inerrancy we mean that the Bible, in its original writings, is without error in all that it teaches, because God does not lie and cannot err. Jesus said, "the Scripture cannot be broken" (John 10:35). In 1978 evangelical scholars from several denominations produced the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy to explain the doctrine. Baptists who hold this view do not claim that the Bible is a science textbook. The Bible uses ordinary language, poetry, parables and round numbers, and reading according to the author's intention is part of honest interpretation.

Objections stated fairly

Objection 1: Baptists have no creed, so inerrancy cannot be a test. Critics say that Baptists have always said "no creed but the Bible," and that to require agreement with a statement like the Baptist Faith and Message goes against soul liberty.

Our answer. Baptists have always written confessions, such as those of 1644, 1689 and 1833. A confession is a statement of what a group of churches believe, offered to others. It is not forced on any person's conscience. No one is compelled to join a Baptist church or to teach in a Baptist school. But a church or convention has every right to ask those it pays to teach in its name to hold what it believes.

Objection 2: The Bible does not claim to be inerrant, and the word is not in the Bible. Some Baptists say that the Bible is "infallible" in matters of faith and practice, but that it may contain mistakes in matters of history or science.

Our answer. The word "Trinity" is not in the Bible either, but the teaching is. The Bible teaches that God's word is true and cannot fail. Jesus treated the Old Testament as fully trustworthy, and He said that not the smallest letter would pass away from the Law until all is fulfilled (Matthew 5:18). If the Bible could be wrong where we can check it, we would have little reason to trust it where we cannot. A limited view leaves each reader to decide which parts to believe, and so puts the reader above the text. This is the reason many Baptists think the words "infallible" and "inerrant" should be kept together.

Objection 3: Inerrancy puts a doctrine of the Bible ahead of Christ. Some say that Baptists should center on Jesus, not on a theory of Scripture.

Our answer. We do center on Christ. But we know Christ through the Scriptures. Jesus Himself affirmed them, and the apostles taught that His own words and works come to us in the written Word. To hold a high view of Scripture is to follow the example of Christ, not to compete with Him.

Lessons for Baptists Today

Doctrine matters, because a denomination that loses its hold on the Bible soon weakens its missions and preaching. How we contend matters too: Peter tells us to give an answer "with meekness and fear" (1 Peter 3:15). Finally, there remain secondary matters on which faithful Baptists differ, and Unit 9 shows some of them.

Pastoral Application

A pastor in a mid-sized town leads a Baptist church that belongs to a national convention. A visiting preacher gives out a pamphlet saying that the convention's seminary teaches error and that the church should leave. A deacon asks the pastor after the service, "Is this true? Should we leave the convention? And what is this word, inerrancy, that the preacher kept using?"

First, the pastor thanks the deacon for asking and promises to study the matter openly.

Second, he checks the facts himself. He reads the convention's confession and its seminary's statement of faith, and he writes to the seminary to ask what it teaches.

Third, he teaches the church what the word means from 2 Timothy 3:16 and John 10:35, in simple words.

Fourth, he reminds the church that it governs itself and will decide by vote, after prayer.

Fifth, he speaks of the visiting preacher with respect.

Summary

Modernist teaching spread through many denominations in the early twentieth century, and Baptists were caught up in the conflict. Spurgeon withdrew from the Baptist Union in 1887 in the Downgrade Controversy. In the United States, The Fundamentals appeared between 1910 and 1915, Curtis Lee Laws named the fundamentalists in 1920, and Fosdick preached his sermon in 1922. Conservatives did not win the Northern Baptist Convention, and new bodies formed, including the General Association of Regular Baptist Churches (1932) and the Conservative Baptist Association of America (1947). Southern Baptists adopted the Baptist Faith and Message in 1925 and revised it in 1963 and 2000. The Conservative Resurgence began in 1979 with the election of Adrian Rogers; supporters called it a return to the churches' beliefs, and opponents called it a takeover. Moderates formed the Alliance of Baptists (1987) and the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship (1991). Baptists who hold inerrancy teach that the Bible, in its original writings, is without error in all that it affirms, and we contend for it in love.

Further Reading

• H. Leon McBeth, The Baptist Heritage (1987).

• Anthony L. Chute, Nathan A. Finn and Michael A. G. Haykin, The Baptist Story (2015).

• David Bebbington, Baptists Through the Centuries (2010).

• Herschel H. Hobbs, The Baptist Faith and Message (1971).

• E. Y. Mullins, The Axioms of Religion (1908).

• The Fundamentals: A Testimony to the Truth (1910-1915), a primary source.

• Walter Rauschenbusch, Christianity and the Social Crisis (1907), a primary source.

• C. H. Spurgeon, The Sword and the Trowel (1887-1888), a primary source.

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