by Sandy » Wed Sep 21, 2016 12:59 pm
Well, I wasn't going to comment, but after leaving a note on his blog, and getting a "would like to respond but gotta go" reply, I decided to go ahead and post here.
I didn't have to cite Randal Balmer, or Molly Worthen, as sources to point out the fact that the lifelong Catholic, Phyllis Schlafly, was never involved in, nor cared about, the conservative resurgence in the Southern Baptist Convention. She spent most of her time focused on the work of Eagle Forum, which she developed to promote her women's agenda. She would have welcomed support from the conservative SBC leaders, but wouldn't have wasted her time or resources on a battle for control of a denomination to which she didn't belong.
Jesse Helms was indeed a Southern Baptist, and he was a cantankerous, loud, and often obnoxious member of the Senate. He was a rabid, extremist right winger who was often portrayed as a bigot and a hypocrite when it came to his Christian faith, because he didn't seem to hide genuine hatred for those with whom he disagreed, or with those he didn't like. But other than sharing an extremist right wing political ideology with some of the SBC's conservative leaders, that's about it. A lot of Southern Baptists, whether they are calvinist or non-calvinist, moderate, liberal, conservative or fundamentalist in their theology, are political conservatives. A lot of Southern Baptists in North Carolina are moderates, with the state convention there having about a third of all the churches affiliated with CBF. Helms attended and taught Sunday School in the Hayes-Barton Baptist Church, affiliated with CBF, and was a graduate of Wingate College and Wake Forest, both on the "A" list of moderate Baptist supported institutions. I can find no evidence that he ever served as a messenger to the SBC, though if he'd come from Hayes Barton, he'd have likely been opposed to conservative resurgence leadership.
If I had any further interest in reading yet another book about the conservative resurgence/alleged "takeover" of the SBC, it wouldn't come from an outside source like Randall Balmer or Molly Worthen. It would come from someone who was there, and was a Southern Baptist, which makes them instantly more credible than a non-SBC sociologist observation from well outside the ring.