No Errors?

The Baptists and the Bible

As president of the nation's biggest Protestant group, the 13.2 million-member Southern Baptist Convention, Texas Pastor Jimmy Allen promoted a gargantuan vision of reaching the entire globe for Christ by A.D. 2000. So overwhelming is that task, said he, that "we don't have time nor need to debate the authority and accuracy of the Bible." But at this month's Houston convention, where tempers were as hot as the fiery furnace, the Baptists elected as Allen's successor a man who could not disagree more.

The new president is Adrian Rogers, 48, pastor of an 11,000-member Memphis church and uncompromising champion of biblical "inerrancy." The term means that the Bible's every word was God-inspired, so that as originally written the books were error-free in every detail. The standard summary of Southern Baptist verities, the 1925 "Baptist Faith and Message," declares that the Bible "has God for its author, salvation for its end, and truth, without any mixture of error, for its matter."

Even so, various Southern Baptist seminary professors have criticized the inerrancy theory and entertained the possibility that, for example, Adam and Eve might be symbols for primordial mankind rather than the first human beings.

That was bad enough, but conservatives also feared that questions about things like Adam and Eve would lead to loss of faith in biblical accounts of Jesus Christ. One author cites a 1976 survey at the seminary in Louisville in which nearly one-fourth of the students polled thought it was probably or definitely not true that Jesus walked on water or was virgin-born.

In 1973 the inerrancy militants organized the Baptist Faith and Message Fellowship to turn things around. Adrian Rogers was the group's most prominent founding father and served on its board until last month. Besides that, his Memphis church gives $36,000 a year to the adjacent Mid-America Baptist Seminary, established by those who think the six official Southern Baptist seminaries are soft on Scripture.

Rogers' victory is an example of organized grass-roots resistance to liberal trends in current religious thought and behavior. Conservatives campaigned in 15 states to draw the inerrancy voters to Houston. Rogers will enjoy wide influence and has indirect power over the appointment of seminary board members. He is already on record as being interested in the idea of investigating the seminaries and what they teach.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.