“Semper Reformanda” and the Southern Baptist Convention: Mohler discusses the Conservative (on-going) Resurgence

*This article originally appeared in the June / July 2014 issue of Towers. You can read the full issue here.

Southern Baptists should view their convention’s conservative movement of the late 20th century as a reformational movement, said R. Albert Mohler Jr. during a recent conversation about the Conservative Resurgence. And, like the Protestant Reformation, the conservative movement set a course for continuing reform.

Mohler grew up in an era when Southern Baptists were “basically conservative, unquestionably cooperative and evangelistic and missions-minded.” And he attended a Southern Baptist college and eventually earned two degrees from Southern Seminary — the flagship Southern Baptist seminary.

Just before Mohler graduated from college, Memphis, Tenn., pastor Adrian Rogers became president of the Southern Baptist Convention, which signaled a shift in the denomination and served as an unofficial launching of a concentrated, organized conservative movement to reclaim the SBC’s doctrinal purity.

On the surface, the conservative resurgence appeared concerned with mere intellectual differences of two opposing views of the culture. But, according to Mohler, the motive behind the movement was far deeper.

“The Great Commission was anime and cause and the great motivating issue for the thousands of Southern Baptists who showed up to vote was not just the inerrancy of Scripture,” he said in a recent conversation about the movement of the 1970s and 1980s, “but it was the inerrancy of Scripture for the furtherance of the gospel. … The purpose of this was not just to make sure we articulated all the right doctrines, but that we were driven by the right passions.”

In seminary, as Mohler studied some of the various theological controversies in history of the church — such as the Nicene and pelagian controversies — he recognized a pattern into which this Southern Baptist controversy fit.

“This is the way truth is vindicated, this is the way error is exposed.” he said. “And I felt like, ‘Okay, I’m living in one of those very epics now.’ That’s what’s happening. The truth is being vindicated, the false teaching is being exposed.”

Still, Mohler realized that the need for renewal in the convention was “underestimated,” even by conservative leaders. The problems, he said, were “infinitely greater than even the conservatives understood.”

“By the time I graduated from Southern Seminary, it would have been impossible for someone who was neo-orthodox to have been elected to the faculty at Southern Seminary,” he said. “They would have been far too conservative — neo-orthodoxy would have been far too conservative.”

Usually, left-ward denominations continuing on that trajectory — as with mainline protestantism in the United States, which Mohler called an “unmitigated disaster.” He emphasized that “unmoored from any kind of creed or confession, and not to mention biblical authority, [denominations] simply shift further and further to the left.”

But the Southern Baptist Convention, after longer than a decade of struggle, did turn around. And that nothing like it ever happened before. That turn-around, at least for Mohler, was essential for the future of the denomination.

“We wouldn’t be where we are … if the Southern Baptist Convention had not experienced the Conservative Resurgence,” he said.

The resurgence, according to Mohler, was and is reformational movement, even as “necessary and as painful as was the Reformation in the 16th century.” And, just as with the Protestant Reformation, the conservative movement represented more than a single moment in history. Rather, it aimed to ensure reform in the future, too.

“By an incredibly high price, we bought an opportunity to continue a reformation,” he said.

Mohler continued: “It’s never over. You buy an opportunity to continue it.”

One of those continuing effects, Mohler said, is the growing popularity and acceptance of Calvinism with the denomination.

“I think the resurgence of Calvinism in the SBC is a logical product of the Conservative Resurgence,” he said, “because once you make inerrancy of Scripture the issue, then people who take the Bible seriously will be led in the direction of affirming what they believe clearly to be revealed in Scripture concerning the sovereignty of God and how this relates to our salvation and the accomplishment of God’s purposes and the fulfillment of God’s promises.

“I’m not saying that all serious readers of Scripture get there, and not all inerrantists will get there. And I’m not saying that Calvinism now or at any point has characterized all of the Southern Baptist Convention, but it’s always been an important part,” he said.

Mohler said further that the “Conservative Resurgence basically, in terms of buying an opportunity for a further reformation, opened the door for Calvinist resurgence as well.”

He noted that the leaders of the Conservative Resurgence found friends in Calvinists, particularly in the area of  biblical inerrancy — “the Calvinists were bold defenders and definers of biblical inerrancy,” he said.

Still, Mohler acknowledged that Calvinism is a “tension point” in the Southern Baptist Convention. And he emphasized the need to approach the issue with “great sensitivity as a matter of stewardship and brotherly love and affection.”

Mohler emphasized, too, that if current and future generations want to preserve the denomination from another theological drift, they require “constant awareness” that culture constantly draws all truth claims into ambiguity.

“We’re not paranoid,” he said. “We’re not insecure. But we are aware of the fact that opportunities for the loss of the faith — bit by bit, step by step, decision by decision — looms before us all the time. And that is very clear in the New Testament.”

But even looking forward, Mohler recognized that Southern Baptists today can only continue the denominational reformation because of the price paid and opportunity bought during the conservative movement of the 1970s and 1980s.

“We owe a tremendous debt to a generation of courageous Southern Baptists who put their lives and ministries on the line for this Conservative Resurgence,” he said. “People like Paige Patterson, Paul Pressler, Adrian Rogers, Jerry Vines, you can go down the long list. They put themselves on the line, and we’ll be forever grateful for them.”