Publication Date
Spring 2017
Advisor(s) - Committee Chair
Tamara Van Dyken (Director), Patricia Minter, and Carol Crowe-Carraco
Degree Program
Department of History
Degree Type
Master of Arts
Abstract
From the late 1970s through the early 1990s, a minority conservative faction took over the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC). This project seeks to answer the questions of how a fringe minority within the nation’s largest Protestant denomination could undertake such a feat and why they chose to do so. The framework through which this work analyzes these questions is one of competing worldviews that emerged within the SBC in response to decades of societal shifts and denominational transformations in the post-World War II era. To place the events of the Southern Baptist “crisis” within this framework, this study seeks to refute the prevailing notion put forth in earlier works that the takeover was an in-house event, driven purely by doctrinal disputes between conservative Southern Baptists and SBC leadership. Illustrating the differences between rhetoric and action on both sides of this intra-denominational conflict, this work seeks to provide perspective to the narrative of the Southern Baptist “crisis” by asserting that the worldviews guiding the opposing factions diverged not only on doctrine, but culture and politics as well. Placing the events of the “crisis” within the context of broader worldviews, this project highlights and examines the intertwined nature of religion, culture, and politics in modern American society.
Disciplines
Christianity | Cultural History | History of Religion | New Religious Movements
Recommended Citation
Biggs, Austin R., "The Southern Baptist Convention “Crisis” in Context: Southern Baptist Conservatism and the Rise of the Religious Right" (2017). Masters Theses & Specialist Projects. Paper 1967.
https://digitalcommons.wku.edu/theses/1967
Included in
Christianity Commons, Cultural History Commons, History of Religion Commons, New Religious Movements Commons