Southern Baptist Convention conservative resurgence

The Southern Baptist Convention experienced an intense struggle that began around 1960 for control of the resources and ideological direction of the sixteen million member denomination. The theological/political campaign was launched with the charge that the seminaries and denominational agencies were dominated by liberals. Its initiators called it a Conservative Resurgence movement; its detractors said it was a "Fundamentalist Takeover." The "conservative resurgence" movement was primarily aimed at rescuing the denomination from a perceived liberal drift. More recently the purpose was said to have been to position the SBC to ascribe to biblical inerrancy.

It was achieved by the systematic election, beginning in 1979, of conservative individuals to lead the Southern Baptist Convention. Theologically moderate and liberal leaders were voted out of office. Senior employees were fired from their jobs. All moderate and liberal presidents, professors, department heads, etc., of Southern Baptist seminaries, mission groups and other convention-owned institutions were replaced with conservatives. The Takeover/Resurgence was the most serious controversy ever to occur within the Southern Baptist Convention—the largest Protestant denomination in the United States. One of its chief architects later described it as a "reformation…achieved at an incredibly high cost."

Earlier 20th century controversies

Throughout the 20th century, controversy had flared up sporadically among Southern Baptists over the nature of biblical authority and how to interpret the Bible. In the 1920s, Baptist pastor J. Frank Norris, described as "one of the most controversial and flamboyant figures in the history of fundamentalism," led a series of attacks upon the Southern Baptist Convention ("SBC"), particularly against Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth and Baylor University in Waco, Texas. In 1925, the SBC adopted its first formal confession of faith, the Baptist Faith and Message, largely in response to the Norris controversy. Prior to this development, Southern Baptists had looked to two earlier and more general baptistic confessions of faith produced in the United States: The Philadelphia Confession of Faith (1742) and the New Hampshire Baptist Confession of Faith of 1833.

Background

The famed Southern Baptist unity in the past has been more functional than theological. Southern Baptists have banded together to minister in missions, evangelism, and Christian education. So long as they emphasize functional ministry, the “rope of sand,” as one called it, holds; when they switch from function to doctrine, unity is threatened.

— Baptist historian, H. Leon McBeth

The unity of the SBC since its founding in 1845 has been basically functional rather than doctrinal. The founders wrote: “We have constructed for our basis no new creed; acting in this matter upon a Baptist aversion for all creeds but the Bible.” Baptists have generally avoided authoritative statements of doctrinal belief (creeds). The creed becomes a list of beliefs one must subscribe to in order to belong. Instead, Baptists historically have used “confessions of faith” arrived at by group consensus instead of imposed by higher authorities. “The new denomination was not to be united by theological uniformity.” The unifying reality “was missionary, not doctrinal, in nature.”

A conflicting vision was announced by Takeover movement leaders from 1979 to 1987. In a formal statement, they declared their commitment to “doctrinal unity in functional diversity,” placing an emphasis on strict doctrinal uniformity.

Early Southern Baptists agreed on basic doctrinal issues, such as the authority of Scripture and the virgin birth of Jesus Christ. By the 1970s, many of these doctrines had come under attack in schools owned and operated by Southern Baptists, so conservatives felt it was necessary to act.

What was the real issue?

...the takeover issue was never whether Baptists believed the Bible. The issue is and has always been Creedalism and Fundamentalism. Baptists have always been basically conservative, believing the Bible to be true, trustworthy, and authoritative. There have been individuals who deviated from that mindset but they did not last long among us. They went on to other movements in the Christian family.

— Jimmy R. Allen (President, SBC, 1978-79)

The essence of the struggle among Southern Baptists since 1979 has been the collision of the two visions discussed in the previous section. The contrasting views have been described as "control versus freedom" and "conformity versus liberty." Yet, even thirty years (2009) after the commencement of the battle, there is no agreement as to how much of the issue was politically driven compared to being theologically innervated.

• On one side of the struggle is the tendency to use narrow tests of orthodoxy in a militant fashion. The conservatives, called fundamentalists by many sources, argued for stricter controls in the face of what they believed was too much freedom that had issued false teachings. They argued that the original manuscripts of the Bible, although none still exist, contained no scientific, historical, geographical, or theological errors. They insisted on commitment to “doctrinal unity in functional diversity,” placing an emphasis on strict doctrinal uniformity. Today, the Takeover leadership comprising the "New SBC" now make a particular human view of the Bible a prerequisite for anyone who would assume a leadership role within the SBC.

• On the other side of the conflict, Southern Baptist moderate traditionalists lobbied for freedom in the face of what they thought was a "nonbaptistic," paralyzing control. They were interested in liberty of conscience and denominational diversity, and were struggling to preserve what they called the historical Baptist heritage that refrains from imposing narrow doctrinal tests (although most historic Baptist statements uphold a high view of the authority of Scripture). They contended for authority of scripture for "faith and practice" but not as an inerrant historical and scientific book. Moderates saw this inerrancy emphasis as bibliolatry, "an unnecessary flirting with idolatry since only God is without error." Moderates interpreted the Bible as allowing for symbolic interpretation of Adam and Eve.

The initiators of the resurgence/takeover charged that the SBC seminaries and denominational agencies were being dominated by "liberals." However, few of them fit the usual definition of a religious liberal as being an individual who:

• Does not believe in the divine inspiration or spiritual truth value of the Bible.
• Does not believe in the divinity of Jesus.
• Does not believe in salvation by grace through faith in Christ.

Theologically the groups differed markedly over the role of women and pastoral authority. Conservatives believed that the Bible prohibited women from serving as pastors, and some believed the Bible prohibited them from being deacons. Moderates were more egalitarian in their outlook and advocated equality between men and women, saying both could be ordained. Conservatives were accused (with little documentation) of elevating pastoral authority to the extent that the pastor was to "rule" the church. Moderates rejected such notions as contrary to biblical and Baptist heritage, citing the historic Baptist emphases on the "priesthood of every believer."

Press reports have written that the SBC was saved from the liberalism of those who do not believe the Bible. They have also claimed that the idea of soul freedom comes from liberals affected by the Enlightenment philosophy in the first half of the 20th century.

Events leading up to the controversy

Several twentieth century events in the SBC helped set the stage for this conflict. Some cautious conservatives and fundamentalists interpreted these as harbingers of liberalism at one extreme, and "neo-orthodoxy" at the other, creeping into the historically conservative denomination.

The "Genesis" controversy

In July 1961, Prof. Ralph Elliott, an Old Testament scholar at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Kansas City, published a book entitled The Message of Genesis containing his interpretation of the first book of the Bible. Elliott considered his book a "very moderate" volume, though this is vastly disputed. Some prominent Southern Baptists, however, saw the book in a different light and took issue with Elliot's use of historical-critical methodology, his portrayal of Genesis 1-11 as mythological literature and his speculation that Melchizedek was a priest of Baal and not, as generally believed, of Yahweh.

The "Genesis Controversy" quickly pervaded the entire SBC. In strong reaction to the controversy, the 1962 SBC meeting elected as its president Rev. K. Owen White, pastor of First Baptist Church Houston, who had written a prominent criticism of Elliott’s views. This began what has become an ongoing trend for SBC presidents to be elected on the basis of their theology. Broadman Press, the publishing arm of the Baptist Sunday School Board in Nashville, was immediately criticized and their other materials, including Sunday School quarterlies, became suspect. Elliott's book was withdrawn from publication, and he was later dismissed from Midwestern for insubordination.

1963 Baptist Faith and Message revision

In 1963, the SBC adopted the first-ever revision of the Baptist Faith and Message, amending it to include confessional positions even more conservative than contained in the original. However, it was not without its critics: one of the takeover architects described it as "having been infected with neo-orthodox theology."

Broadman Bible Commentary

Also in the 1960s, the Sunday School Board, in its most ambitious publishing project, produced the 10-volume Broadman Bible Commentary. Its first volume, covering Genesis and Exodus, came out in 1969. In addition to providing further fuel for the controversy surrounding the Creation account in Genesis, a section written by G. Henton Davies, an English Baptist, questioned the reliability of the biblical episode in which God commands Abraham to sacrifice his son, Isaac, on the grounds that such an event was morally troubling. This new publication immediately stirred a new phase of the ongoing controversy. Some argued that the Convention was trying to stifle dissent. Others pointed out that since Broadman Press was owned by the SBC, its publications should not stray so far from the beliefs of most Southern Baptists.

Seminary issues

Conservative Southern Baptists of this time also bemoaned what they claimed was the growing presence of liberal ideology within the SBC's own seminaries.

Clark H. Pinnock, an advocate of open theism, taught at the New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary in the late 60s and early 70s. Pinnock is said to have been much more conservative in those days, at which time he argued that liberal professors should be dismissed. He did not embrace more liberal views until later. Ironically, he was a great influence on future conservative leaders, including Paige Patterson.

In 1976, a Southern Baptist Theological Seminary (SBTS) masters' degree student, Noel Wesley Hollyfield, Jr., presented survey results that revealed an inverse correlation between length of attendance at SBTS and Christian orthodoxy. While 87% of first year Master of Divinity students at SBTS reporting believing "Jesus is the Divine Son of God and I have no doubts about it," only 63% of final year graduate students made that claim, according to Hollyfield's analysis. In 1981, redacted information from Hollyfield's thesis was put into tract form and distributed by conservatives as evidence of the need for reform from apostasy within SBC agencies.

A hostile meeting

The 1970 SBC meeting in Denver, under the leadership of then-President W.A. Criswell, was marked by hostilities. The Denver convention was characterized as one of the most hostile ever held. Controversy erupted over a number of explosive issues. At least seventeen Baptist state papers questioned editorially the "unchristian," "bitter," "vitriolic," "arrogant," "militant" spirit and attitude of some of the messengers.

The messengers refused to hear an explanation about the Broadman Bible Commentary from the head of the Sunday School Board. Messengers actually booed ("hooted and hollered at...") Herschel H. Hobbs, the respected elder statesman and former president of the SBC, when he urged restraint.

The conservative strategy

In the early 1970s, William Powell, at the time an SBC employee, developed a rather simple strategy to take control of the SBC: elect the SBC president for ten consecutive years. The SBC president appoints the committees that name other committees that nominate trustees for the denomination's institutions, including the seminaries. Trustees of institutions served five years and were eligible for reelection once. Therefore, by occupying the presidency for ten years one could ensure that all appointments, nominations and new seminary hires stood in a line of succession trailing back to the president. Further details are included in Endnotes.

Controversy chronology

• 1976. Paul Pressler, a Houston judge, and Paige Patterson, then president of Criswell College in Dallas, met in New Orleans and planned the political strategy to elect like-minded conservative/fundamentalist Convention presidents and in turn members of SBC boards. The strategy was extremely successful.

• 1978. W.A. Criswell and Adrian Rogers (both now deceased), along with Judge Pressler and Paige Patterson, met with a group of determined pastors and laymen at a hotel near the Atlanta airport to launch the resurgence/takeover. They understood William Powell's contention that electing the president of the Southern Baptist Convention was the key to redirecting the entirety of the denomination. The Atlanta group determined to elect Adrian Rogers, pastor of Bellevue Baptist Church in Memphis, Tennessee, as the first Conservative Resurgence president of the Convention.

• The 1979 Houston convention. The 1979 SBC meeting in Houston, Texas, produced two important developments:

1. The concept of Inerrancy. Southern Baptists applied a new word, "inerrancy," to their understanding of Scripture. Since 1650 the adjective most used by Baptists to describe their view of the Bible had been "infallible"; however, the term "inerrancy" had been implied in the 1833 New Hampshire Baptist Confession of Faith ("truth without any mixture of error") in wording that, by this time, had already been incorporated into the 1925 and 1963 editions of the Baptist Faith and Message. The word "inerrancy" was also used by the prominent Southern Baptist scholar A.T. Robertson in the late nineteenth century. Some Reformed theologians in Europe had utilized the term "inerrancy" in the same way that North American theologians used "infallibility." Many conservative leaders championed the word "inerrancy" in this phase of the ongoing controversy—a phase that would later become known as the "inerrancy controversy."
2. Orchestration from the sky boxes. Also coming out of the 1979 Houston Convention was a well-organized political campaign, using precinct style politics, to wrest control of the SBC. Judge Pressler and theologian Patterson were accused of directing the affairs of the 1979 meeting from sky boxes high above the Astrodome where the SBC was meeting. Pressler said such accusations were false.

The election on the first ballot of the more conservative pastor Adrian Rogers began the ten-year process. Ever since that meeting, the right wing of the denomination has controlled the SBC elections. There has been an unbroken succession of conservative-fundamentalist presidents. Each has appointed more conservative individuals, who in turn appointed others, who nominated the trustees, who elected the agency heads and institutional presidents, including those of the seminaries. Throughout the 1980s, Conservative Resurgence advocates gained control over the SBC leadership at every level from the administration to key faculty at their seminaries and slowly turned the SBC towards more conservative positions on many social issues. By early 1989 nearly every one of the SBC boards had a majority of Takeover people on it.

The book entitled The Fundamentalist Takeover in the Southern Baptist Convention cites the following as further key events in the Resurgence/Takeover:

• 1984: The SBC voted in Kansas City to adopt a strongly worded resolution against women in church leadership roles. The rationale cited was that "man was first in creation and the woman was first in the Edenic (Garden of Eden) fall."

• 1987: The president of Southeastern Seminary in Wake Forest, North Carolina, resigned after the trustees voted to hire only faculty members who follow the Baptist Faith and Message.

• 1987: The SBC voted in St. Louis to adopt a report from “The Peace Committee” that had been set up in 1985.

• 1988: At the SBC Convention in San Antonio, a resolution was passed critical of the liberal interpretation of the “priesthood of the believer” and “soul competency”. Moderates and liberals accused conservatives of elevating the pastor to the position of authority in the church he serves.

• 1990: Roy Honeycutt, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, was accused by a twenty-five-year-old new trustee of “not believing the Bible.” The trustee cited some of Honeycutt's own writings to prove his point. A new president, Al Mohler, was appointed in 1993 and hailed as “a hero of SBC Fundamentalism.”

• 1990: Al Shackleford and Dan Martin of the Baptist Press, the official news service of the SBC, were fired for "persecuting” the Fundamentalists in their news coverage. Don McGregor, editor of the Baptist Record of Mississippi, wrote: “Today we have seen the final destruction of freedom of the press among Southern Baptists.” Immediately the Associated Baptist Press was established to offer the moderate/liberal perspective.

• 1991: At their October meeting, the Foreign Mission Board trustees voted to defund the Baptist Theological Seminary in Ruschlikon, Switzerland, thus breaking a contract the SBC had with the seminary.

• 1992: Keith Parks, president of the Foreign Mission Board, retired. In his thirteen years as president, missionaries entered forty new countries with a total of 3,918 missionaries.

• 1992: Lloyd Elder, president of the Sunday School Board, resigned under pressure and was replaced by former SBC president Jimmy Draper, a staunch conservative. A total of 159 employees retired (voluntarily or involuntarily) in November 1992 alone.

• 1994: Russell Dilday, president of Southwestern Seminary in Fort Worth for fifteen years, was fired abruptly and trustees changed the locks on the president's office immediately, thus denying him access. The day before, these same trustees gave Dilday a favorable job performance evaluation. These trustees sent 40,000 letters to pastors and directors of missions to explain their reason for firing Dilday. They said he failed to support the Takeover in the Convention and that he "held liberal views of the scripture.” The Seminary faculty refuted all these charges against Dilday.

• 1997: In October a forty-year staff member was fired at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary for writing a private letter to the President of the SBC disagreeing with a statement he had made while speaking in chapel. Also in October 1997, a professor of systematic theology at Southwestern Theological Seminary was relieved of his teaching duties because he “voiced dissent about actions of the administration of the institution.” Obviously there is still no room for diversity or disagreement.

• 1998: In June, Paige Patterson was elected president of the SBC without opposition. The man who helped plot the conservative resurgence of the Southern Baptist Convention was now its leader. Jerry Falwell, who had criticized Southern Baptists in the days of moderate/liberal rule, attended his first SBC Convention as a messenger along with others from his church in Lynchburg, Virginia. Also the SBC amended the Baptist Faith and Message statement by adding a patriarchal statement about marriage: a wife is to “submit herself graciously to the servant leadership of her husband." In response to its critics, SBC leaders pointed out that the amendment also contained lengthy descriptions of a husband's duty to love his wife unconditionally.

• 2000: The SBC adopted a new Baptist Faith and Message statement. It eliminated the preamble that had been part of the 1963 statement. This version, used as a creedal statement by SBC agencies, elevates the Bible to a position above that of Jesus himself and downplays the doctrines of priesthood of each believer and local church autonomy. It is now used as a creedal statement by SBC agencies.

• 2002: Jerry Rankin and the IMB trustees undermined missionary morale by requiring them to sign the 2000 Baptist Faith and Message.

• 2004: SBC withdrew as a member of the Baptist World Alliance.

• 2005: The Baptist World Alliance celebrated its 100th Anniversary in Birmingham, England, with 13,000 Baptists from throughout the world. Absent was its former largest member group, the SBC. BWA leaders prayed “that unity may one day be restored.”

Liberal and moderate reactions

As the more conservative movement grew in strength, a number of liberal congregations split away in 1987 to form the Alliance of Baptists. In 1990, as the conservative movement continued to gain ground and define the SBC's theology and practice in increasingly more narrow terms, another schism occurred in which several moderate congregations also left to form the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship (CBF), originally organized as a "convention within the convention" to support causes not controlled by the majority within the SBC.

The exodus of these dissenting elements allowed for additional changes to the convention which culminated in yet another round of significant changes to the Baptist Faith and Message at the 2000 SBC Annual Meeting.

In addition to the groups mentioned above, additional new entities have come into existence to champion what liberals and some old-line leaders believe to be historic Baptist principles and cooperative spirit abandoned by SBC leaders. These include the Baptist Center for Ethics, Baptist Women in Ministry (BWIM), the national news journal Baptists Today, the Associated Baptist Press, Smyth & Helwys Publishers, some fourteen new Baptist seminaries and divinity schools, and other entities.

State conventions react

Because each level of Baptist life is autonomous, changes at the national level do not require approval or endorsement by the state conventions or local associations. The majority of state conventions have continued to cooperate with the SBC. However, the state conventions in Texas and Virginia openly challenged the new directions and announced a "dual affiliation" with contributions to both the SBC's Cooperative Program and the CBF.

The Baptist General Convention of Texas (BGCT), the largest of the Southern Baptist state conventions, did not vote in 1998 to align itself with the CBF, despite some reports to the contrary. The BGCT did allow individual churches to designate their missions dollars to a number of different missions organizations, including the Southern Baptist Convention and the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship. One of the stated reasons for doing so was their objection to proposed changes in the 2000 revision of the Baptist Faith and Message, which the BGCT said made the document sound like a "creed," in violation of historic Baptist tradition which opposed the use of creeds.

In a reversal from the national convention (where the liberals left and the conservative resurgents stayed), many Texas conservatives (fundamentalists) formed their own state convention, the Southern Baptists of Texas Convention. Local congregations either disassociated completely from BGCT or sought "dual alignment" with both groups. Yet, other congregations (the vast majority conservative but not fundamentalist) solely align themselves with the BGCT. The BGCT is the much larger of the two state conventions, and universities such as Baylor only receive money from the BGCT. Similarly, fundamentalist-conservative Baptists in Virginia formed the Southern Baptist Conservatives of Virginia.

In Missouri, the exact opposite took place. The Missouri Baptist Convention (the existing state body) came under the control of the more conservative group which subsequently attempted to take over the boards of the state's agencies and institutions and reshape them along the theological lines of the current SBC. In 2002, some congregations withdrew and affiliated with a new convention called Baptist General Convention of Missouri. Five of the old Missouri Baptist Convention agencies changed their charters in 2000 and 2001 to elect their own trustees instead of allowing them to be appointed by the Missouri Baptist Convention. Leaders of the Missouri Baptist Convention saw this as a blatant violation of convention bylaws. When the trustees of the agencies refused to settle the matter out of court, the Missouri Baptist Convention filed suit against them.

The Virginia and Texas SBC Executive Committees receive and distribute funds from two conventions—one liberal and one conservative. The Missouri SBC Executive Committee declined to receive money from the new more moderate Missouri group. They said it was not in Southern Baptists' best interest to cooperate with another group opposed to the conservative leadership of the Missouri Baptist Convention. Individual churches in the newer convention may contribute to the SBC directly.

Assessments

The American denominational landscape has experienced significant shifts in recent times, but one major story stands out among them all—the massive redirection of the Southern Baptist Convention. America's largest evangelical denomination, the Southern Baptist Convention was reshaped, reformed, and restructured over the last three decades, and at an incredibly high cost.

— Albert Mohler, an architect of the Conservative Resurgence>

Critics of the takeover faction assert that the "civil war" among Southern Baptists has been about power, lust and right-wing secular politics. Dr. Russell H. Dilday, president of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary from 1978 to 1994, has analogized what he calls "the carnage of the past quarter century of denominational strife in our Baptist family" to "friendly fire" where casualties come as a result of the actions of fellow Baptists, not at the hands of the enemy. He writes that "Some of it has been accidental," but that “some has been intentional." He characterizes the struggle as being "far more serious than a controversy," but rather a "self-destructive, contentious, one-sided feud that at times took on combative characteristics."

Former president of the SBC Jimmy R. Allen writes that the takeover leaders searched for a battle cry to which Baptists would respond. They found it in the fear that we were not "believing the Bible." They focused on the few who interpreted the Bible more liberally and exaggerated that fact. Allen's assessment is that "It was like hunting rabbits with howitzers. They destroyed more than they accomplished."

A spokesman for the new leadership of the SBC, Dr. Morris Chapman, claims that the root of the controversy has been about theology. He maintains that the controversy has "returned the Southern Baptist Convention to its historic commitments." Speaking as president of the "new" SBC's Executive Committee, Chapman cites as examples some of the Conservative Resurgency's claims:

• Baptist colleges and seminaries were producing more and more liberalism in writing, proclamation, and publication
• The adoption of a hermeneutic of suspicion which elevates human reason above the clear statements of the Bible
• The continued influence of many teachers and leaders who did not hold to a high view of Scripture.

While takeover architect Paige Patterson believes the controversy has achieved its objective of returning the SBC from an alleged "leftward drift" to a more conservative stance, he admits to having some regrets. Patterson points to vocational disruption, hurt, sorrow, and disrupted friendships as evidence of the price that the controversy has exacted. "Friendships and sometimes family relationships have been marred. Churches have sometimes been damaged even though local church life has proceeded for the most part above the fray and often remains largely oblivious to it. No one seriously confessing the name of Jesus can rejoice in these sorrows," Patterson writes. "I confess that I often second guess my own actions and agonize over those who have suffered on both sides, including my own family."

Other references

Ammerman, Nancy Tatom. Baptist Battles: Social Change and Religious Conflict in the Southern Baptist Convention. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1990. (Sociological study of the controversy.)

Ammerman, Nancy Tatom. Southern Baptists Observed: Multiple Perspectives on a Changing Denomination. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1993. (Sociological study.)

Baugh, John G. The Battle For Baptist Integrity. Austin, TX: Battle for Baptist Integrity, Inc., 1995. (Observations of a longtime, involved Southern Baptist layman.)

Cothen, Grady C. What Happened to the Southern Baptist Convention? A Memoir of the Controversy. Macon, GA: Smyth & Helwys Publishing, Inc., 1993.

Cothen, Grady C. The New SBC: Fundamentalism’s Impact On The Southern Baptist Convention. Macon, GA: Smyth & Helwys Publishing, Inc., 1995.

Durso, Pamela R. A Short History of the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship. Brentwood, TN: Baptist History and Heritage Society, 2006.

Ferguson, Robert U. Amidst Babel, Speak Truth: Reflections on the Southern Baptist Struggle. Macon, GA: Smyth & Helwys Publishing, Inc., 1993. (Articles on various aspects of the controversy, written by a variety of moderate scholars.)

Gourley, Bruce T. The GodMakers: A Legacy of the Southern Baptist Convention? Franklin, TN: Providence House Publishers, 1996.

Hankins, Barry. Uneasy in Zion: Southern Baptist Conservatives and American Culture. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2003.

Hefley, James C. The Truth in Crisis." Hannibal Books, ISBN 9780929292113. ("a typical Southern Baptist pastor who was destined to live through the entire history as reporter for the prestigious Christianity Today.) A series.

Humphreys, Fisher, editor. "The Controversy in the Southern Baptist Convention." A Special Issue of the Theological Educator. New Orleans: New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary, 1985. (A compendium of articles and interviews by persons on differing sides of the conflict.)

Humphreys, Fisher, editor. "Polarities in the Southern Baptist Convention:" A Special Issue of the Theological Educator. New Orleans: New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary, 1988. (Additional articles and interviews with major personalities on different sides of the controversy.)

Humphreys, Fisher. The Way We Were: How Southern Baptist Theology Has Changed and What It Means To Us All. Macon, GA: Smyth & Helwys Publishing, Inc., 2002.

Kell, Carl L., editor. Exiled: Voices of the Southern Baptist Holy War. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2006.

Leonard, Bill J. God’s Last and Only Hope: The Fragmentation of the Southern Baptist Convention. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1990.

May, Lynn E., editor. “The Southern Baptist Convention, 1979-1993: What Happened and Why?” Baptist History and Heritage 28 (October 1993). (Entire issue is devoted to the controversy, including essays from persons on both sides.)

Merritt, John W. The Betrayal: The Hostile Takeover of the Southern Baptist Convention and a Missionary’s Fight for Freedom in Christ. Asheville, NC: R. Brent and Company, 2005. (The personal experiences and observations of a former Southern Baptist missionary.)

Morgan, David T. The New Crusades, The New Holy Land: Conflict in the Southern Baptist Convention, 1968-1991. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1996. (Historical analysis; includes interviews with major players.)

Pool, Jeff B. Against Returning to Egypt: Exposing and Resisting Creedalism in the Southern Baptist Convention. Macon: Mercer University Press, 1998. (Analysis of the 1994 “Report of the Presidential Theological Study Committee.”)

Pressler, Paul. A Hill on Which to Die: One Southern Baptist's Journey. B&H Publishing Group, 2002. ISBN 978-0805426342. (Pressler was an architect of the Takeover/Resurgence. ("Succinct, accurate portrayals of complex circumstances -- a readable, journalistic summary that caught the flavor as well as the facts.")

Robison, James B., editor. The Unfettered Word: Confronting the Authority–Inerrancy Question. Macon, GA: Smyth & Helwys Publishing, Inc., 1994. (Various articles on the issue of Biblical authority and Biblical inerrancy.)

Rosenberg, Ellen M. The Southern Baptists: A Subculture in Transition. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1989. (Sociological study.)

Shurden, Walter B. and Randy Sheply, editors. Going for the Jugular: A Documentary History of the SBC Holy War. Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 1996. (A chronology of the controversy, along with the publication of articles dealing with the events of the controversy as they occurred.)

Shurden, Walter B., editor. The Struggle for the Soul of the SBC: Moderate Responses to the Fundamentalist Movement. Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 1993. (Moderate leaders tell their stories about the moderate political response to the Fundamentalist Takeover and the creation of new Baptist communities in the light of the Takeover’s final victories.)

Shurden, Walter B. Not a Silent People: Controversies that Have Shaped Southern Baptists. Macon, GA: Smyth & Helwys Publishing, Inc., 1995. (A historical overview of several disputes that have changed Baptist life, with the story of the Fundamentalist Takeover added at the end.)

Sutton, Jerry. The Baptist Reformation: The Conservative Resurgence in the Southern Baptist Convention. Broadman & Holman Publishers, 2000. ISBN 978-0805440911. (Reexamines the twenty-year struggle "in gratitude to those who worked to bring about the Baptist Reformation.)