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”
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.