The American denominational landscape has experienced significant shifts in recent times, but one major story stands out among them all--the massive redirection of the Southern Baptist Convention. America's largest evangelical denomination, the Southern Baptist Convention was reshaped, reformed, and restructured over the last three decades, and at an incredibly high cost.
Was it worth it? That is one of the crucial questions addressed by Paige Patterson in his essay, Anatomy of a Reformation: The Southern Baptist Convention 1978-2004. Published in booklet form, Patterson's analysis offers an invaluable insider's perspective on the Southern Baptist controversy and its meaning. Patterson, now president of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, was one of the key architects of the plan to change the direction of the Convention. Born to Southern Baptist aristocracy, Patterson was the son of T. A. Patterson, a prominent Texas pastor who later became executive secretary of the Baptist General Convention of Texas. Surrounded from boyhood by Baptist preachers, theologians, and denominational leaders, Patterson quickly gained both an intuitive and an educated understanding of Baptist identity.
Later, Patterson was to attend New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary, from which he received a doctorate in theology. After serving as a pastor in Arkansas, he was elected president of the Criswell Institute for Biblical Studies, later the Criswell College. That college, closely identified with its namesake, Dr. W. A. Criswell, pastor of the First Baptist Church of Dallas, Texas, provided Patterson with a national platform and unquestioned Baptist credentials. Both of these would prove crucial in the ensuing conflict.
In Anatomy of a Reformation, Patterson tells the story from the vantage point of his own involvement. He dates his understanding of a need for denominational reformation to when he was a "nineteen-year-old Bible major at a state-operated Baptist university in West Texas."
An early signal of coming controversy was issued by Houston pastor K. Owen White, who as president-elect of the Southern Baptist Convention directed his attention at a recent book written by a professor at one of the Southern Baptist Convention's six seminaries. Ralph Elliott, a professor of Old Testament at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Kansas City, had written The Message of Genesis, a book that had been published by the denomination's official press. As Patterson explains, the book "had employed historical-critical assumptions, conclusions, and methodologies, which led the professor to question the historicity of some of the narrative portions of Genesis."
As an observant college student, Patterson was surprised that his Baptist religion professors supported Elliott and dismissed White's concerns. Patterson summarizes the faculty response: "First, educated and intelligent people virtually all had arrived at similar conclusions with Elliott. Second, in any event, if there were minor shifts away from orthodoxy, 'the Convention' (which in actuality was 'the bureaucracy') would make the necessary corrections. Third, having accepted the first two premises, the average Southern Baptist should trust the system, remain silent and give his tithe--a hefty portion of which would be passed along through the Cooperative Program lifeline to continue funding the bureaucracy."
To know Paige Patterson is to know that there is no way he could remain silent in the face of heterodoxy. Indeed, when Houston attorney Paul Pressler visited the campus of New Orleans Seminary in order to meet conservative students who could be supported through a new scholarship funded by Houston business leaders, he was directed to Paige Patterson. Their meeting would change history.
Pressler, whose organizational understanding and legal expertise led him to see a mechanism for recovering the denomination, and Patterson met for conversation at the Café du Monde in New Orleans and discussed their mutual hope for denominational reformation.
