CHURCH HISTORY II CHURCH HISTORY II Lesson 34Lesson 34

A Big Body of Baptists

The Southern Baptist Convention: It’s origin, history and present condition

I. Review of Baptists in America

New England

Middle Colonies

1688 Lower Dublin

July 21, 1707 Philadelphia Baptist Association

South

1751 Charleston Association

1758 Sandy Creek Association

1814 “General Missionary Convention of the Baptist Denomination in the United States of America for Foreign Missions”

Triennial Convention

1832 American Home Missionary Society

May 1845 Southern Baptist Convention: Augusta Georgia

“Evangelical Calvinists”

W. B. Johnson 1845-1851R. B. C. Howell 1851-1859

1859-1863 Richard Fuller

Jesse Mercer

John L Dagg 1794-1881

P. H. Mell

Southern Baptist Theological Seminary

1859 Greenville, SC

Basil Manly, SrBasil Manly, Jr

James Petigru Boyce John A Broadus

Abstract of Theology

How did the SBC fare in the 20th Century?

Programs vs Doctrine

1905 1,900,000

1920 3,150,000

1935 4,480,000

1950 7,080,000

1965 10,780,000

1980 13,700,000

1995 15,400,000

2000 15,900,000

2005 16,300,000

“Were these regenerate church members?”

Last Half of Nineteenth Century

Liberalism / Modernism

“A movement who’s adherents were seeking to reshape the Christian faith into a form which would be acceptable to modern man”

Fatherhood of God

Brotherhood of Man

How did Modernism invade the church?

Dr. George Marsden Fundamentalism and the American Culture

• SOCIETAL

• POLITICAL/ECONOMIC

• PHILOSPHICAL/SCIENTIFIC

• THEOLOGICAL/PRACTICAL

SOCIETAL: Settlement of the West

Flood of immigrants in the East

POLITICAL/ECONOMIC:

Democracy+Capitalism=extreme individualism

American way!

PHILOSOPHICAL/SCIENTIFIC FACTORS

Philosophy “A search for truth through logical reasoning rather than factual observation”

Webster, p 635

Fosdick (1878-1969)

1926 “What Christian Liberals are Driving At”

Philosophical Influences:

•Empiricism

•Rationalism

•Romanticism

Scientific Influences:

•The Hypothesis of Evolution

RESULT: FOUNDATION FOR THE SOCIAL GOSPEL

THEOLOGICAL/PRACTICAL FACTORS

Higher Criticism

Man centered Arminian theology

Denominational structures

Push for unity for evangelism & missions

Para church organizations

Independent mission boards

Dispensationalism

REACTION TO MODERNISM

Dr. Jack Arnold

Questioning Attitude

Indifferent Attitude

Fighting Attitude

Bible Conferences

Bible Colleges

Two Movements:

Recovery of Conservative Principals

Recovery of Doctrines of Grace

Paige Patterson (1942-) Paul Pressler

Anatomy of a Reformation

Recovery of the Doctrines of Grace

Earnest Reisinger

“The Southern Baptist Conference on the Faith of our Founders”

Memphis, July 1983

Our purpose is to encourage pastors, students and church leaders to recover the gospel of God's grace and work for the spiritual health and reformation of local churches. Our abiding concerns:

We desire to be orthodox without being obnoxious. We want to be confessional, yet contemporary. We are Southern Baptist, though not sectarian. Our goal is to be doctrinally and devotionally balanced.

R Albert Mohler (1954-)