Described as a "theological interpretation," Ralph H. Elliott's volume advanced what some considered unacceptable views of inspiration. Opposition was immediate and severe. K. Owen White, pastor of First Baptist Church of Houston, initiated the debate in his militant article, "Death in the Pot," which was printed in a number of Baptist papers. White cited selected statements from the book, concluding, "The book from which I have quoted is liberalism, pure and simple. . . . The book in question is poison."

At first the Sunday School Board defended its right to publish books with differing views but later agreed not to publish a second edition. For over a year the Midwestern trustees defended Elliott; but in late 1962, they yielded to mounting pressures to dismiss him. The capitulation of the Sunday School Board and the Midwestern trustees represented a victory for ultraconservative forces in the SBC, and no doubt encouraged them to continue their agitation. Leon McBeth, The Baptist Heritage (Broadman) 1987. p. 680

With this controversy, the fundamentalists began the move to become the dominant force in Southern Baptist life. Morbid fear began to spread through the SBC like wildfire. They viewed Elliott’s book as “death in the pot .” In their minds, the book contained enough poison to convert Southern Baptists wholesale to liberalism of the worst sort. Chicken Little had nothing on fundamentalists Paul Pressler, K. Owen White, and W. A. Criswell. My mentors warned me not to purchase or read the book because it was said to be filled with heresy. They apparently didn’t want to see my tender mind tarnished by reading heresy. I heeded their warning and didn’t read the “banned” book until in the early 1990’s. When I finally did read it, I failed to see the “heresy” about which they spoke. I now own a first-edition copy of the book and have used it on numerous occasions. In my opinion, it’s an excellent book. Primarily, because it does not contain the skewed fundamentalist interpretation so commonly accepted by today’s SBC leaders.

In 1969, the Sunday School Board released Volume 1 of The Broadman Bible Commentary. The book was written by G. Henton Davies, an English writer. In general, the volume took account of the JEDP documentary hypothesis and used historical-critical methods of interpretation. Almost immediately after the commentaries hit the bookstores, controversy was brewing. Again, the fundamentalists were up in arms because they believed this was yet another example of how the theological sky was falling in on Southern Baptists. Fear was everywhere across the convention. I was not yet in the ministry when Elliott’s book appeared, but I had been in ministry for some five years when the commentary controversy blew into hurricane force. I was studying at Baptist Bible Institute (now Florida Baptist Theological College) when the messengers voted to recall the volume at the 1970 convention in Denver. Although my BBI Old Testament professor, Dr. R. T. Blackstock, commented very little on the volume in class, my fellow students were caught up in strong support of the fundamentalist side of the issue. At the time, I did not know enough about Genesis to really know what the controversy was all about.

The Sunday School Board published the replacement volume in 1973. By then, I was pastor of the Indian Baptist Church in Canton, Oklahoma. In 1974, a church in Texas sent me a set of the Broadman Commentaries as a gift. The set contained Clyde T. Francisco’s version of Volume 1. I now own a copy of the “banned Volume 1 of the Broadman Commentary. I purchased it two years ago from Eric Mason. [ I’m not telling anyone how much I paid for the book... That secret belongs to Eric and me... :-) ] When I compare the two volumes, I much prefer the banned volume. In my opinion it’s a much more scholarly interpretation of Genesis.

The two controversies over the Book of Genesis provided the fundamentalists with plenty of steam to persuade the rank and file of Southern Baptists that “liberalism” was taking over the convention like communism took over Russia. The liberalism they saw behind every tree and under every rock was little more than the figment of their imaginations. The primary location of the evil liberals was in the seminaries. They saw the seminaries as being the incubators of liberalism in the lives of students. Students were losing their conservatism while sitting at the feet of liberal professors.

The fundamentalists possessed the morbid fear that as long as liberal professors remained in the seminaries, they would turn out liberal seminary graduates. The fundamentalist Chicken Little types, believing the seminaries were filled with liberals, began to identify liberal professors in the seminaries by the score. The firing of Ralph Elliott gave the fundamentalists the taste blood. Banning the first-edition of Volume 1 of the Broadman Commentary gave them further boldness. Fundamentalist newspapers and journals sprang up and spread misinformation across the convention. Numerous books were written to combat the problem. Rabid, glory-seeking fundamentalist students went after professors with tape recorders in hand. Bad professor stories sprang up everywhere. Seminary professors began to fear for their careers. Many were forced out or fired. Certainly, there were a few moderate professors on faculties in the SBC seminaries. But there has never been, to my knowledge, a single Southern Baptist professor who was convicted of being a classic liberal. Nor was there ever one found who did not fall within the theological parameters of orthodox Southern Baptist Theology.

During the years between 1973-79, the fundamentalists conducted a massive campaign to rid the convention of a brand of liberalism that never existed. Thoughtless and uninformed Southern Baptists were duped by the fundamentalist leaders. The rank and file of Southern Baptists believed the fundamentalist propaganda hook, line, and sinker. By 1979, the leaders had convinced enough of the messengers that liberalism had to be stopped in its tracks. So at the convention that year, they began the formal plan to take full dominance over the convention. Recent history provides the rest of the story.

By 1990, the fundamentalists believed they had stopped the liberal sky from falling on Southern Baptists. By then the takeover was complete and total dominance was in theirs. As total dominance took effect, they saw themselves as being responsible to guarantee that all Southern Baptists held proper beliefs. Proper beliefs being those held by takeover leaders. It was an attitude without latitude. They believed no Southern Baptist should hold views not held in common by the top denominational leaders. Those who did not hold the views of the leadership were deemed to “not believe the Bible.” Fellow Oklahoman, Vernon Johnson, of Sand Springs, wrote a letter to the editor, which appears in the October 2003 issue of Baptists Today. Here is an excerpt from that letter.

...The problem is that Christian orthodoxy is much larger than the narrowed doctrinal, social and ethical viewpoints of strict fundamentalism.

SBC leaders, fitting into the fundamentalism pattern, apparently are afraid to let each Baptist individual and church form their own beliefs. They fear they may form the wrong beliefs, and they see themselves as responsible to guarantee that all are in agreement with proper beliefs. Of course, these proper beliefs are the ones they believe and think everyone else should believe. They are willing to reward those who confess compliance with these proper beliefs, as they have defined and continue to define them, and to punish those who do not with terminations of jobs, forced retirements, refused tenures and other actions of control.

These Baptist leaders, therefore, are doing what Baptists in the past have fought to free themselves from - all the bloodshed, fighting and persecution that is engendered by persons who want to force their own beliefs upon everyone else.

I can’t add much to that. What I can say, however, is that the “liberal” sky that never existed, and never fell. How could it have fallen? There was never a genuine “liberal” sky to fall on the SBC. It was all a figment of the minds of the radical SBC fundamentalists...

- October 10, 2003

 (This article was written for  BaptistLife.Com Discussion Forums)