Southern White Fundamentalism

2019 ◽  
pp. 259-286
Author(s):  
Angie Maxwell ◽  
Todd Shields
Keyword(s):  
Southern Baptist ◽  
Republican Party ◽  
Political Action ◽  
White Supremacy ◽  
Southern Baptist Convention ◽  
Gay Marriage ◽  
Social Changes ◽  
Religious Doctrine ◽  
Inferior Status ◽  
Biblical Inerrancy

The fundamentalist takeover of the Southern Baptist Convention that began in 1979 provided the GOP the opportunity to close the deal with white southern voters. Fundamentalist members, anxious over social changes, successfully executed a decades-long plan to seize control of reshape the SBC to reflect their extremist views. They exiled moderates from the denomination almost entirely and re-codified the inferior status of women in the church; biblical inerrancy and absolutism triumphed over interpretation and compromise. The absolutism in terms of religious doctrine gave way to an absolutism in public policy, hyper-partisanship, and demand for political action. In order to court southern evangelical voters, the Republican Party took increasingly hardline stances on issues like gay marriage and abortion under the banner of family values, a slogan cribbed from the anti-feminists who had been propping up white supremacy in the South for generations.

The Long Southern Strategy

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Angie Maxwell ◽  
Todd Shields
Keyword(s):  
Republican Party ◽  
Southern Baptist Convention ◽  
Social Changes ◽  
Equal Rights ◽  
Way Of Life ◽  
The South ◽  
White Southerners ◽  
Traditional Gender Roles ◽  
The Media ◽  
The American South

Beginning with Barry Goldwater’s Operation Dixie in 1964, the Republican Party targeted disaffected white voters in the Democratic stronghold of the American South. To realign these voters with the GOP, the party capitalized on white racial angst that threatened southern white control. However—and this is critical—that decision was but one in a series of decisions the GOP made not just on race, but on feminism and religion as well, in what is called here the “Long Southern Strategy.” In the wake of Second-Wave Feminism, the GOP dropped the Equal Rights Amendment from its platform and promoted traditional gender roles in an effort to appeal to anti-feminist white southerners, and it politicized evangelical fundamentalist Christianity as represented by the Southern Baptist Convention. All three of those decisions were necessary for the South to turn from blue to red. To make inroads in the South, however, GOP politicians not only had to take these positions, but they also had to sell them with a southern “accent.” Republicans had to mirror southern white culture by emphasizing an “us vs. them” outlook, preaching absolutes, accusing the media of bias, prioritizing identity over the economy, depicting one’s way of life as under attack, encouraging defensiveness toward social changes, and championing a politics of vengeance. Over time, that made the party southern, not in terms of place, but in its vision, in its demands, in its rhetoric, and in its spirit. In doing so, it nationalized southern white identity, and that has changed American politics.

The Spectrum of Inerrancy: An Exploration of David S. Dockery’s Typological Contributions to the Inerrancy Debate in Evangelicalism

2021 ◽  
Vol 66 (1) ◽  
pp. 69-96
Author(s):  
Gabriel A. Desjardins
Keyword(s):  
Present Article ◽  
Southern Baptist ◽  
Southern Baptist Convention ◽  
Biblical Authority ◽  
Vital Component ◽  
International University ◽  
Biblical Inerrancy

"The present article explores the typological contributions to the inerrancy debate of David S. Dockery, the Chancellor of Trinity International University. Resulting from controversies in the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) during the 1970s and 80s, Dockery provided a valuable typological framework for identifying a spectrum of positions in the inerrancy debate. Dockery’s frameworks provide a helpful lens for understanding the complexity of inerrancy. Some positions are more conservative and deductivist, and other positions are more liberal and inductivist. These distinctions often create a barrier, a presuppositional divide, which is difficult to cross in a debate context. Dockery’s variations provide a means of at least understanding the divide and the positions that differ from one’s own. To that aim, I present Dockery’s variations as a vital component for all attempts at dialogue in the inerrancy debate. Keywords: evangelicalism, biblical inerrancy, David S. Dockery, biblical authority, hermeneutics "

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 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

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.

Uncertain Combinations

2018 ◽  
pp. 73-101
Author(s):  
David A. Bateman ◽  
Ira Katznelson ◽  
John S. Lapinski
Keyword(s):  
Republican Party ◽  
Democratic Party ◽  
White Supremacy ◽  
State Legislatures ◽  
Detailed Examination ◽  
Political Conflict ◽  
The Core ◽  
National Representation ◽  
Democratic Parties ◽  
Democrats And Republicans

This chapter visits the internal tensions within the various southern Democratic parties, which successfully united competing factions around the cause of white supremacy but whose unity was always tense and insecure. It begins by detailing the process of “redemption,” in which the Democratic Party across the South wrested control of state legislatures and national representation from biracial coalitions organized primarily within the Republican Party. It then examines the structure of political conflict in Congress, the site where southern diversity was transformed into regional solidarity, to show that the familiar story of the Black Belt as the core of southern solidarity must be revised. Turning to the substantive bases for southern unity and diversity, the chapter identifies the issue areas that implicated distinctively southern priorities and arrayed the region's members in diverse coalitions with northern Democrats and Republicans. From this set, it selects for detailed examination legislation that reflected competing intraregional priorities.

Southern Catholics and Desegregation in Denominational Perspective, 1945–1971

2018 ◽  
pp. 201-236
Author(s):  
Mark Newman
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Southern Baptist ◽  
Catholic Church ◽  
The United States ◽  
Southern Baptist Convention ◽  
Deep South ◽  
The South ◽  
Methodist Church ◽  
Presbyterian Church ◽  
American Baptist

The chapter compares the response of the Catholic Church in the South to desegregation with that of the region’s larger white denominations: the Southern Baptist Convention, the Methodist Church, the Presbyterian Church in the United States, the Protestant Episcopal Church, and the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America. It also makes comparisons with Catholics outside the South and with southern Jews, a minority, like Catholics, subject to suspicion and even hostility from the Protestant majority, and with the Northern (later American) Baptist Convention and the Disciples of Christ, both of which had a substantial African American membership. The comparison suggests that white lay sensibilities, more than polity or theology, influenced the implementation of desegregation in the South by the major white religious bodies. Like the major white Protestant denominations, Catholic prelates and clergy took a more progressive approach to desegregation in the peripheral than the Deep South.

Baldwin’s Individualism and Critique of Property

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jack Turner
Keyword(s):  
African Americans ◽  
Political Action ◽  
White Supremacy ◽  
White Supremacist ◽  
Religious Thought ◽  
American Liberalism ◽  
Refusal To Participate ◽  
The Individual

This chapter cements the notion that Baldwin’s primary tool in combating white supremacy is recognizing the power of the individual to self-create and reshape systems and institutions. Jack Turner’s work is consistent with Baldwin’s challenging of the myths of American liberalism and brings Baldwin into conversation with some of the American Founders. Turner argues that Baldwin is in favor of individuals divesting from white supremacist institutions and ideology because participating in a racist economy implicates one in an unjust society. Voluntary dispossession is a political move par excellence according to Turner, signifying a refusal to participate in the impoverishment of African Americans. Turner’s work ties together Baldwin’s views on political action, religious thought, and individualism.

Introduction

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-36
Author(s):  
Angie Maxwell ◽  
Todd Shields
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Republican Party ◽  
Christian Right ◽  
Family Values ◽  
Policy Position ◽  
Social Changes ◽  
The South ◽  
Southern Identity ◽  
Racial Hierarchy ◽  
Playing Field

The GOP’s Southern Strategy initiated the realignment of the South with the Republican Party by exploiting white racial anxiety about social changes to the southern racial hierarchy. However, the GOP’s success was not solely the result of its policy position on civil rights. Rather, that decision was part of a series of decisions the party made on feminism and religion as well, in what is called here the “Long Southern Strategy.” White resentment toward a more level racial playing field, for example, was intensified by the threat of a level gender playing field, and the promotion of “family values” by anti-feminists paved the way for the Christian Right. Moreover, Republican candidates did not just campaign down South, they became “southern.” Throughout realignment, the power of southern identity was rarely taken into consideration, but for whites who proclaim themselves to be southern, that has been the only party that really mattered.

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