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 "

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.

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 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

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.

In the Name of the Father: The Rhetoric of the New Southern Baptist Convention

2001 ◽  
Vol 67 (1) ◽  
pp. 216
Author(s):  
Bill J. Leonard ◽  
Carl L. Kell ◽  
L. Raymond Camp
Keyword(s):  
Southern Baptist ◽  
Southern Baptist Convention
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