An Open Declaration to Texas Baptists
Dallas, Texas • February 26, 2002

Herbert H. Reynolds, president emeritus of Baylor University, delivered this stirring message in Dallas to the Texas Baptist Executive Board on Feb. 26, 2002, in the spirit of Baptist statesman George W. Truett. A dozen of the 18 Texas Baptists listed below stood at his side. The group announced after the reading of this statement that they would collectively pledge $1 million to launch the missionary transition fund voted by the executive board.

The individuals you see standing before you have come to this meeting to indicate our strong support for the action taken by you today to aid our missionaries that decide, as an act of personal integrity, that they cannot sign a creed. And we especially want to express our profound respect for any missionary who, with great courage and complete conviction, refuses to abdicate his or her commitment to serve under the Bible rather than serving under a creed developed by a small group of people— and now enforced in all segments of Southern Baptist life. These people, and many others who have already left the mission field because of the authoritarian rule of the International Mission Board, are acting in accord with beliefs that true Baptists have held for centuries.

It is clear that the International Mission Board mandate that all missionaries sign the 2000 Baptist Faith and Message puts our missionaries in a terrible dilemma. They feel that they must sign, whether they agree or not, or almost certainly soon lose their opportunity to serve as missionaries. Because we believe profoundly in the priesthood of every believer, we must respect every missionary’s decision.

George W. Truett, arguably the greatest Baptist statesman of the 20th Century, and always a forceful advocate of religious freedom, stated in the 1920s that:

“Baptists have one consistent record concerning religious liberty throughout their long and eventful history. They have never been a party to oppression of conscience. They have forever been the unwavering champions of liberty, both religious and civil.”

Truett went on to say:

“Ideas rule the word. A denomination is moulded by its ruling principles, just as a nation is thus moulded. Our essential principles have made our Baptist people, of all ages and all countries, to be the unyielding protagonists of religious liberty…and the student of history cannot fail to observe that…two ideas have been in endless antagonism: the idea of autocracy and the idea of democracy. The idea of autocracy is that supreme power is vested in a few who, in turn, delegate this power to the many. That was the dominant idea of the Roman Empire, and upon that idea the Caesars built their throne. Until the principle of democracy, rather than the principle of autocracy, becomes the ruling practice in the realm of religion, our mission shall be...unending. (Therefore) let us today and forever be highly resolved that the principle of religious liberty, please God, be preserved inviolate through all our days and the days of those who come after us.”

Until the 1960s, when two men, with the implicit encouragement of a third, began their crusade, Truett’s words served as a cornerstone in Baptist life. Then in 1979, at an annual meeting in Houston, Truett’s admonitions were thrown to the wind and a highly organized, politico-religious group of Fundamentalists within the Southern Baptist Convention launched what is now a 23 year agenda to control every aspect of Baptist life. In the 1979 Convention there was voting fraud, one prominent Fundamentalist possessed fraudulent credentials, and the rude and raucous behavior of the messengers was eclipsed by blatant dishonesties.

The Bible took over the role of a club in the hands of the Fundamentalist leadership and the term “liberal” was and has since been applied to anyone who disagreed with their destructive tactics. Experienced propagandists have long known that any lie, frequently repeated, will gradually gain acceptance. From the beginning of the Fundamentalist movement, the term “liberal” has been pinned on anyone who disagreed with the SBC agenda. This word became the Big Lie which, frequently repeated, was and is believed by Fundamentalist followers.

In 1985-87, when Dr. Paul Powell was president of the Baptist General Convention of Texas, he challenged Dr. Paige Patterson to allow him to review the “Heresy File,” to which Patterson referred constantly. Powell found a list of eight men in the “Heresy File.” Three were retired, leaving only five active in their work. And Powell said, “I am not saying that there were five liberals in the SBC, I am saying that they were on Patterson’s Heresy File list. They have spent ten years getting information, and I am assuming Patterson gave me his best. All of the so-called liberals could fit into a Volkswagen!”

Our people throughout Baptist life have been deceived for 23 years, and now the day has come that the President of the International Mission Board is requiring missionaries to sign the 2000 Baptist Faith and Message, which is labeled as an “instrument of doctrinal accountability.” Missionaries must sign not as a testimony of what one believes but what one must believe. One must believe what SBC leaders say about the Bible, not what one believes about the teachings of Jesus, whom the SBC has removed as the criterion for interpreting the Bible.

So this is, indeed, a defining moment in the history of our Baptist missionary endeavors. For those brave missionaries who choose to reject this creedalism in Baptist life, we pledge our prayers and our financial support through the Baptist General Convention of Texas.

April 2002