A Review of the Firestorm Chat With Judge Paul Pressler

Editor’s Note: The following is a summary of the details of the key elements of the takeover strategy described by Pressler in this interview. For a copy of the tape contact the TBC office.

1. Pressler says that he spotted a weakness in the SBC structure which makes such a takeover possible. Convention rules allow one person — the SBC president — to appoint the critical SBC committees, thus he could pack the SBC structure with a single faction.

2. Pressler tells how he and Paige Patterson set out to accomplish exactly that: to elect presidents to load SBC positions with persons sympathetic to their views. As Pressler put it, “Paige and I make a good team because he is the theologian and I am more the legal analyst of how the system works.”

3. He revealed how he and a few others began in the 1970s to build a political organization within the SBC to carry out the plan. “About 1978 we really came up with knowing how it could be done,” he said.

4. By controlling the elections for a number of years (as Pressler put it, having “a series of presidents who know what is coming off ”), eventually the entire SBC would be controlled. Paul Pressler then revealed his extensive efforts to get his voters to go to the convention and to vote with him.

5. Gary North: “How did you get them (your voters) out?”

Pressler: “I started speaking and Paige started speaking…to people all over the country.”

North: “How many churches did you speak… say in ’78, how many churches did you have to speak at…?”

Pressler: “I can remember one trip I took which was fairly typical. I was gone from Houston six days and during that six days I spoke at least six or seven times a day… last year (1985) between January and June I spoke over 200 times in 16 states…the largest group I spoke to where it was an evening meeting, that they came only to hear Adrian Rogers and me speak…”

In response to the question of how he earned a living while traveling across the country to build the voting power, Pressler explained that, as an appellate judge, he is required to be in his office only one day a week, for “the oral arguments which my panel heard on Thursday afternoon. So my rule would be to leave Thursday night, get home the following Wednesday night, and… if I was as current as any other judge in the Texas appellate system, nobody had any gripe coming.”

6. Pressler now had the campaigning underway and the organization building. The results quickly followed in SBC events.

North: “Who is the first president elected by your efforts…in sympathy with your efforts? Who was your first man?”

Pressler: “In the Houston convention of 1979 there were six candidates…some of the others were very conservative, but our people all supported Adrian Rogers (and he) was elected with over 50 percent on the first ballot which really had never happened… before.”

North: “Now, Adrian Rogers comes in in general sympathy with your efforts.”

Pressler: “Complete sympathy.”

North: “Now let’s get to the real nittygritty. What did Adrian Rogers do to tell you…the war was now coming in your direction?”

Pressler: “Adrian appointed an absolutely superb Committee on Committees and an absolutely superb Resolutions Committee. And the other appointments he made were very good but those are the two crucial committees…he is the first one that probably made his appointments from a viewpoint of, how can I effectuate change by making these appointments?”

North: “All right. That to me is the key. It is not that he was conservative, it is not that he was a Bible believer, but he saw the nature of the struggle?”

Pressler: “Yes.”

As the interview continued, Pressler explained how his get-out-the-vote strategy resulted in a succession of presidents elected with his support.

7. Future Intentions: Following the discussion of the mechanics of organization and control, North began asking Pressler what his group intended in the way of changes in the SBC. Pressler, who consistently calls his group “conservatives” and everyone else “liberals,” recited a list of current and planned changes:

“…by the dominance of conservatives on the board, some of the ‘liberal’ institutional heads have kept their mouths shut this year… Baptist Press has started behaving better… the head of one of our seminaries has just resigned…there will be others…who will be replaced…the head of the Christian Life Commission has to retire within a couple of years, so we will see these vacancies created… I think within the next few years we will see “liberal” leadership gone from most of our institutions.”

North: “…are you in a program of training up competent replacements who will be acceptable…?” “The colleges are creations of the state conventions and we have to do the same thing in the states we are doing nationally.”

Pressler: “No question about it. We do.”

North: “Where did you get them?”

Pressler: “Because there are—”

North: “No, no. Not why. Where?”

Pressler answered that the replacements for SBC agencies and institutions would come, in part, from “many independent institutions,” and he specifically named three institutions “not supported by Cooperative Program funds: Mid-America Seminary in Memphis, Tennessee; Criswell Center for Biblical Studies in Dallas, Texas; and Luther Rice Seminary in Jacksonville, Florida, all of who are preparing excellent people.”

Having revealed these plans for the wholesale altering of the SBC Pressler then revealed his remaining strategy for state conventions.

In response to North’s question about institutions “such as Baylor (Baylor University in Waco, Texas),” Pressler replied, “All right. The colleges are creations of the state conventions and we have to do the same thing in the states we are doing nationally.”

September 1998