“Thou Shalt Meet Thy Sexual Needs in Marriage”: Southern Baptists and Marital Sex in the Postwar Era

2020 ◽  
Vol 89 (1) ◽  
pp. 125-147
Author(s):  
Sarah Potter
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Southern Baptist ◽  
Religious Right ◽  
Southern Baptist Convention ◽  
Southern Baptists ◽  
Sexual Morality ◽  
The 1950S ◽  
Sexual Conservatism ◽  
Marital Sexuality ◽  
Marital Sex

This article traces the changing sexual politics of the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) from the 1950s through the 1980s. It argues that the moderates who led the denomination in the 1950s, 1960s, and early 1970s joined other supporters of “sexual containment” during the early Cold War to develop a theology about the salvific power of marital sex—and the personal, social, and national harm created by extramarital sex—which undergirded the sexual conservatism of the denomination's fundamentalist leadership who rose to power during the 1970s and 1980s. This analysis reframes our understanding of Southern Baptists within the broader religious right coalition as it reveals how the SBC's commitment to marital sexuality, which was forged during the early Cold War, informed its approach to later hot-button issues like abortion and homosexuality. Rather than simply reacting against the loosening sexual mores of the 1970s and 1980s or in favor of the rising visibility of other politically engaged Christians on issues of sexual morality, the SBC instead drew on longer traditions within the denomination to engage with a changing political and sexual landscape.

Southern Baptists and Evangelical Dissent

2019 ◽  
pp. 194-215
Author(s):  
Bill J. Leonard
Keyword(s):  
Southern Baptist ◽  
Southern Baptist Convention ◽  
Southern Baptists ◽  
Religious Dissent ◽  
Protestant Denomination ◽  
The Us ◽  
History Of

This chapter surveys the history of the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) from its origins out of the slavery controversy in 1845, through various approaches to social and religious dissent that evolved within varying subgroups of America’s largest Protestant denomination. Particular attention is given to the nature of Southern Baptists’ understanding of evangelicalism, their own denominational approaches to and differences about that that subject, and the varying relationships that the SBC has developed or avoided with other Evangelicals in the US.

Sponsoring Castro’s Refugees

2021 ◽  
pp. 26-59
Author(s):  
Ulrike Elisabeth Stockhausen
Keyword(s):  
Southern Baptist ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
English Language ◽  
Southern Baptist Convention ◽  
Spiritual Needs ◽  
Southern Baptists ◽  
Missionary Zeal ◽  
Evangelical Churches ◽  
Language Classes ◽  
Us Government

This chapter covers evangelical churches’ responses to Cuban refugees between 1959 and 1965, which constituted the first large-scale refugee resettlement initiative by a large evangelical denomination, as well as a well-established public-private partnership between the US government and evangelical churches. Evangelicals, particularly Southern Baptists, provided relief for and sponsored Cuban refugees as an outgrowth of their anticommunism as much as out of their religiously motivated missionary zeal. The Southern Baptist Convention—the nation’s largest Protestant denomination—resettled more than a thousand Cuban refugees. Southern Baptist refugee sponsors provided a roof to sleep under, furnished refugees’ new homes with blankets and kitchen appliances, secured employment for the families’ breadwinners, and enrolled Cuban children in school and the adults in English language classes. While not involved in resettlement, the Pentecostal Assemblies of God shared the Southern Baptists’ missionary zeal and catered to Cuban refugees’ material and spiritual needs.

The Ideal of Professionalism and the White Southern Baptist Ministry, 1870-1920

1995 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 99-123
Author(s):  
Paul Harvey
Keyword(s):  
North Carolina ◽  
Southern Baptist ◽  
Southern Baptist Convention ◽  
The Ideal

In 1917, a Baptist minister in Henderson, North Carolina, wrote to a Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) worker of the frustrations pastors encountered in teaching their parishioners a “progressive” religious ethic appropriate for the age:Nearly all of us are driven by the force of circumstances to be a bit more conservative than it is in our hearts to be. I am frank to say to you that I have found it out of the question to move people in the mass at all, unless you go with a slowness that sometimes seems painful; and I have settled down to the conviction that it is better to lead people slowly than not at all.

The Lattimore case

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Angela Penrose
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Internal Security ◽  
Johns Hopkins University ◽  
The Usa ◽  
The 1950S ◽  
Witch Hunt

Edith’s career and collaboration with Fritz Machlup at Johns Hopkins University flourished and she began work on the growth of the firm, and studied the Hercules Powder Company. As Cold War tensions increased during the 1950s she and Penrose became involved in the defence of their friend and colleague Owen Lattimore who was named as the top Soviet spy by Senator McCarthy. The chapter covers the persecution of Lattimore, his trials, the role of Judge Luther Youngdahl, and the operation of his defence fund. Other friends of E. F. Penrose became victims of the anti-communist ‘witch hunt’, he grew increasingly disillusioned with the USA, and determined he must leave. In 1953 Edith and Penrose testified before the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee. They were also investigated by the FBI. After five years the case against Lattimore was dropped. Edith’s father died and her brother Harvey was killed in an air accident.

scholarly journals Saints on Stage: Popular Hagiography in Post-WWII Italy

Religions ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 216
Author(s):  
Daniela Cavallaro
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Young People ◽  
Educational Goal ◽  
The 1950S ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Lives Of The Saints

This article brings to light several examples of the hagiographic plays staged in Italy during the 1950s and early 1960s in parishes, schools, and oratories. The article begins with a brief introduction to the continued tradition of staging the lives of the saints for educational purposes, which focuses on the origins, aims, and main characteristics of theatre for young people of the Salesians, the order founded by Don Bosco in 1859. Next, it offers a brief panorama of the pervasive presence of the lives of the saints in post-WWII Italy. The main discussion of the article concerns the hagiographic plays created for the Salesian educational stages in the years between 1950 and 1965, especially those regarding the lives of young saints Agnes and Domenico Savio. The article concludes that the Salesian plays on the lives of the saints, far from constituting a mere exercise in hagiography, had a definite educational goal which applied to both performers and audiences in the specific times of Italy’s reconstruction and the cold war.

The Southern Baptist Convention and Its People, 1607-1972.

1975 ◽  
Vol 41 (2) ◽  
pp. 277
Author(s):  
William A. Poe ◽  
Robert A. Baker
Keyword(s):  
Southern Baptist ◽  
Southern Baptist Convention

In the Service of World Revolution: Vietnamese Communists’ Radical Ambitions through the Three Indochina Wars

2019 ◽  
Vol 21 (4) ◽  
pp. 4-30
Author(s):  
Tuong Vu
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Southeast Asia ◽  
Local Politics ◽  
International System ◽  
The North ◽  
Local Actors ◽  
The 1950S

The terms “decolonization” and “Cold War” refer to specific processes and periods in the international system, but they do not capture the full agency of local actors such as Vietnamese Communists. Based on recently available archival materials from Hanoi, this article maps those terms onto Vietnamese Communist thinking through four specific cases. The declassified materials underscore the North Vietnamese leaders’ deep commitment to a radical worldview and their occasional willingness to challenge Moscow and Beijing for leadership of world revolution. The article illuminates the connections (or lack thereof) between global, regional, and local politics and offers a more nuanced picture of how decolonization in Southeast Asia in the 1950s–1980s sparked not only a Cold War confrontation but also a regional war.

Broadening the Picture of Nineteenth-Century Baptists: How Battles with Catholicism Moved Baptists Toward Separationism

2009 ◽  
Vol 25 (2) ◽  
pp. 453-486
Author(s):  
Marty McMahone
Keyword(s):  
Southern Baptist ◽  
First Amendment ◽  
Church And State ◽  
The United States ◽  
Southern Baptist Convention ◽  
Religious Liberty ◽  
The Other ◽  
Biblical Authority ◽  
American Experience ◽  
American Society

Discussions about the historical meaning of religious liberty in the United States often generate more heat than light. This has been true in the broad discussion of the meaning of the First Amendment in American life. The debate between “separationists” and “accommodationists” is often contentious and seldom satisfying. Both sides tend to believe that a few choice quotes that seem to disprove the other side's position prove their own. Each side is tempted to miss the more nuanced story that is reflected in the American experience. In recent years, this division has been reflected among those who call themselves Baptists. One group, best represented by the work of the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty, tends to argue that the Baptist heritage is clearly steeped in the separation of church and state. The other group, probably best represented by the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, tends to reject the term separation and sees value in promoting an American society that “affirms and practices Judeo-Christian values rooted in biblical authority.” This group tends to reject the separationist perspective as a way of defending religious liberty. They argue that Baptists have defended religious liberty without moving to the hostility toward religion that they see in separationism. Much like the broad story of America, the Baptist story is considerably more complicated than either side makes it appear.

“Heading for the Gun”: Skills and Sophistication in an African Guerrilla War

2009 ◽  
Vol 51 (2) ◽  
pp. 236-259 ◽  
Author(s):  
Luise White
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Sierra Leone ◽  
Young Men ◽  
Southern Sudan ◽  
Mau Mau ◽  
Guerrilla War ◽  
The 1950S ◽  
Liberation Struggle ◽  
Shooting Ranges

For much of the last seventy-five years African combatants, especially in wars of their own making, have not been seen as masters of the guns they shoot. In Kenya in the 1950s, for example, captured Mau Mau were humiliated: they were taken to shooting ranges where they failed to hit a target with their guns. More recently, rebels in southern Sudan considered guns poor, if effective substitutes for more embodied weapons like spears, while young men in Sierra Leone fought with the weapons at hand such as knives or machetes, because they were too poor to obtain guns. When the armies of Ethiopia and Eritrea fought well and hard with sophisticated weapons, it was said to be the result of Cold War rivalries or national agendas gone berserk. Rhodesia's bush war, Zimbabweans' liberation struggle, suggests something else, a space shaped by technology and clientelism in which guns, most especially guns in guerrilla hands, exemplify very specific European ideas about Africans, that they are skilled and sophisticated.

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