The SBC& Aggressive Political Conservatism

     Interplay of culture, biblical inerrancy, as well as racial circumstances taking place in the 1960's moved the SBC aggressively pursue political conservatism, and would embrace in 1979 with an election of a new presiding officer for the church. For many decades the convention leaders cut slack to moderates on social themes ,if only to keep peace and continue to bring converts to Jesus. The peace was destroyed however, when liberals in the SBC began pushing increasingly controversial positions.
     Disagreements about evolution as well as racial desegregation was not regarded as a road the SBC wanted to travel. The conservatism in the church now felt the need to take back,and reorganize control.
     In 1997, South Carolina conservative Oran Smith in his 'The Rise of Baptist Republicanism', accused that the spreading of the gospel, which had been the priority  had been usurped by attention toward policy; "What began as natural loyalty and confidence had changed into a dangerous policy, and out of church-building megalomania and a belief that the SBC had a particular 'divine mission' came a certain presumption.
     over and above Civil War border states, SBC was in southern Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, southeastern Kansas, easter New Mexico, as well as rural counties in Nevada, Colorado, Wyoming, Idaho, and Alaska.  This expansion was of major benefit to the Republican party as leadership southernized and took up political partnership with the SBC.

During the period from 1894-1895, while the large denominational churches lost their members to Pentecostal and other sects. The SBC did not.  The turn-of-the-century SBC was rural, lost cause dedicated,(lose of the south in the Civil War), unsophisticated, revivalist,  and evangelical, but not as of yet, fundamentalist.  They put strength in the people of the ex-confederacy, and its role after the war, was sectional identity, and a mix of biblical conservatism and revivalism.  The SBC became the church of  back country South.

The beginning of the twentieth century, the SBC became THE fastest growing congregations and also became an important teaching ground for American fundamentalism. The crisis surrounding the Civil war was a scriptural one.  But they had nurtured biblical literalism.  In that first decade after world war 1 there was a conservative, biblical counter reaction to the new culture which produced radio, cars, short skirts, and the jazz age had come into being.  At this, the SBC spoke about anti modernism.

Southern Baptists were at the fore front in drafting "The Fundamentals". This way of thinking gave fundamentalism its name (1910-1915). Then in the 1920's the SBC promoted Prohibition, and the anti-evolution movement helped to convince state legislatures to ban the teaching of Darwin's theory in Florida, North Carolina Oklahoma, Texas, Tennessee, Mississippi Arkansas and Louisiana
Fundamentalism, historically, referenced to American protestants, who reacted harshly and negatively to science and were militantly against reading the bible any other way than absolute literal reading.
     TODAY, fundamentalism is applied to militant extremists who DEMAND ,others embrace their way or "hit the highway." By the year 1990 "southerners" were in Pennsylvania, New York, the Old Northwest, the Great Plains, California, Oregon, Washington and Alaska. 'Southern' no longer was a region ,but a culture ,evangelical culture. The tremendous size of the SBC represented a thrust in the direction of the 'southernization' of American religion as a whole". Journalist Applebome's book, 'Dixie Rising', contends that in 1942, when they had spread to California, they had set up churches in every state in the U.S. The ills of society, according to the SBC, were liberal sociology, and government social-welfare planning and programs and that these ways of thinking 'get in the way of individuals personal responsibility and salvation. All the answers lie in the bible and coming to Jesus. These attitudes maintained racial divisions.  The beliefs of the White southerners were unadaptive of the legislation that many southern blacks favored.

information gleened from 'American Theocracy'.    to be continued   more or less the recent new religious and political battlegrounds.