Chronology of Major Events in the Controversy
by: Charles McLaughlin
Associate Coordinator, TBC

1967 - Seminary Doctoral student Paige Patterson and Judge Paul Pressler meet at Cafe du Monde in New Orleans and discuss a long term strategy for fundamentalist domination of the Southern Baptist Convention.

1974 - The Baptist Faith and Message Fellowship identifies inerrancy of the Bible as the issue to be used in their struggle against moderates and liberals in the SBC.

1979 - Patterson, Pressler and others run a "get out the vote" campaign in 15 states prior to the Convention, urging a defeat of 'liberalism' in the SBC.

Voters are bussed to the convention in mass numbers but leave after the vote for president.

Fundamentalist pastor Adrian Rogers is elected president.

1980 - Judge Pressler publicly announces the strategy of the fundamentalist takeover, which is to elect the SBC president a sufficient number of times to gain a fundamentalist majority on the boards and agencies of the Convention. This is to be accomplished through the president's power to make appointments. Pressler calls this, "Going for the jugular." [Trustee turnover is accomplished in 1989.]

Fundamentalists successfully elect all presidents of the SBC from 1979 to present.

1985 - The SBC forms a "Peace Committee" to investigate the growing conflict and make recommendations for conflict resolution. Dominated by fundamentalists the committee fails to approach reconciliation. Cecil Sherman resigns from the committee in 1985, followed by Winfred Moore in 1986 because he did not feel he could participate in a "police committee."

1986 - The Home Mission Board trustees become majority fundamentalist. The trustees bar women from receiving pastoral assistance in mission churches supported by HMB.

Seminary presidents attempt peace in the "Glorietta statement" but to no avail.

1987 - The Peace Committee report is adopted, recommending that hiring practices of boards and agencies reflect "the most commonly held beliefs" in the denomination. Moderates charge that Creedalism becomes official SBC policy through this action.

The Southeastern Board of Trustees becomes majority fundamentalist. They take the Faculty out of the process for hiring new instructors, and place this power solely in hands of the president, who must use the Peace Committee document as a doctrinal guide for hiring.

President of Southeastern Seminary, Randall Lolley, resigns in protest.

HMB votes to forbid missionary appointment to persons who speak in tongues and divorced persons, unless the divorce falls within strict "Biblical guidelines."

1988 - HMB uses the Peace Committee report to enforce creedalism in hiring practices.

The SBC meeting in San Antonio passes a resolution elevating strong pastoral authority and denigrating the priesthood of all believers by a vote of 10,950 to 9,050.

Richard Land, a fundamentalist leader, becomes President of the Christian Life Commission.

The Foreign Mission Board fires moderate missionary Michael Willett after a fundamentalist missionary reports on Willett's opinions.

1989 - Fundamentalist leaders give the Christian Life Commission greater responsibility for dealing with church/state issues, in order to circumvent working with the more moderate Baptist Joint Committee on Public Affairs.

1990 - Southern Seminary Board of Trustees becomes majority fundamentalist. Trustees give students permission to openly tape classes.

Trustee Jerry Johnson of Colorado accuses Southern Seminary President Roy Honeycutt and many faculty of heresy.

Baptist Press editors Al Shakleford and Dan Martin are fired by the SBC Executive Committee due to their reporting on the fundamentalist takeover effort and their refusal to cease writing such stories. Associated Baptist Press is formed in order to maintain a free press for Baptist news.

Daniel Vestal calls a national level meeting of moderate Baptists in Atlanta. 3000 people show up and vow to meet again the next year. This will be the birth of the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship.

1991 - Southeastern Seminary publishes new statement of purpose and the doctrine of Biblical inerrancy becomes official policy.

Moderate Sunday School Board President Lloyd Elder is forced to resign due to a hostile board of trustees. Fundamentalist leader Jimmy Draper becomes President of the Sunday School Board.

The Foreign Mission Board votes to defund Rushlikon Seminary in Europe because of liberal professors.

6000 Baptists in Atlanta formally organize the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship.

Moderates no longer offer an alternative candidate for President of the SBC.

1992 - Paige Patterson becomes President of Southeastern Seminary.

Career missionary and President of the Foreign Mission Board, Keith Parks, resigns in protest against a hostile fundamentalist board of trustees. Parks becomes missions director for the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship.

1993 - President of Southern Seminary, Roy Honeycutt, resigns due to a hostile fundamentalist board of trustees. Al Mohler, a leading fundamentalist, becomes President of Southern Seminary.

The SBC votes to cease giving funds to the Baptist Joint Committee for Public Affairs, because it will not cooperate with the fundamentalist agenda to restore publicly-led prayer in schools, government vouchers to attend religious schools and other right wing political/religious goals.

Fundamentalists attempt to refuse seating for messengers from the church where President Clinton has his church membership.

The Southern Baptist Convention affirms a report critical of membership in Freemasons.

Gary Leazer is fired from the Home Mission Board for explaining the meaning of that vote to Masons at a Masonic meeting.

1994 - SBC Executive Committee leaders command SBC Seminaries to cease hosting booths at Cooperative Baptist Fellowship meetings.

Moderate Professor Molly Marshall is forced to resign from Southern Seminary.

A Hostile board of fundamentalist trustees at Southwestern Seminary fire President Russell Dilday and change the locks on his office.

SBC meeting in Orlando votes to refuse CBF funds designated for Missionaries and other SBC agencies.

SBC Executive Committee requests that State Conventions cut all ties to CBF.

1995 - Diana Garland is fired as Dean of Carver School of Social work by seminary president, A1 Mohler.

FMB President Jerry Rankin sends a letter to 40,000 pastors and Women's Missionary Union Directors, urging them to pray that the National WMU would cease cooperating with the CBF.

John Jackson, then chair of the Board of Trustees for the FMB, compares the WMU's cooperation with the CBF with the acts of an adulterous woman.

1996 - Southern Baptist Conservatives of Virginia form into rival state convention, in protest at the moderate nature of the existing state Association (convention), which cooperates with the CBF and other moderate Baptists.

Southwestern Seminary president Ken Hemphill cancels edition of its theological journal, editor and professor Jeff B. Poole removed from teaching.

1997 - The Carver School of Social Work is cut from the curriculum at Southern Seminary and transferred to another college.

Paul Debusman, librarian at Southern for 35 years, is fired over the content of a personal letter to Tom Ellif, then the SBC President.

New Orleans seminary withdraws invitations to teach from two adjunct instructors due to their ties with the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship.

The 1997 SBC meeting in Dallas calls for a boycott of Disney Company and related companies, because of immorality in movies and business policies friendly to homosexuals.

1998 - There has been a 70% faculty turnover at Southern Seminary since 1991. Between 1992 and 1996, 42 employees had resigned, retired or were fired and three departments experienced complete turnover or loss of faculty.

Jerry Falwell attends SBC as a messenger for the first time and identifies SBC seminaries as "fundamentalist."

Fundamentalist Baptists in Texas formed Southern Baptists of Texas, to serve as a rival state convention in protest against the Baptist General Convention of Texas.

SBC passes a new article on the family as an amendment to the Baptist Faith and Message statement of 1963. The amendment emphasizes female submission to the husband.

Paige Patterson, early leader of the fundamentalist takeover, is elected President of the Southern Baptist Convention.

1999 - Southwestern Seminary professors Alan Brehm and Dan Kent resign after the seminary requires faculty to sign off on the SBC amendment of the Baptist Faith and Message emphasizing female submission.

SBC Messengers commission a panel to re-examine the Baptist Faith and Message Statement, with a view toward revising it to reflect "unambiguous" fundamentalist language.

Midwestern Seminary trustees fire fundamentalist Mark Coppenger for "misappropriate anger."

Reorganization of SBC from 19 organizations to 12 does not result in larger budget percentages for "frontline missions." Instead the money went to the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, the seminaries and the Executive Committee.

May 2000