I am not kidding you: The head of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Midwestern Seminary says that, thanks to the cleansing of the seminaries during the Fundamentalist Takeover of that denomination, the SBC has entered a Golden Age of theological education.
By 1979, when the Patterson-Pressler coalition formally launched what has come to be known as the Conservative Resurgence by mustering enough votes to elect Adrian Rogers as SBC president, there was undeniable dissonance between Southern Baptist seminaries and the vast majority of SBC churches.
What began in 1979 took nearly three decades to play out: electing conservative SBC presidents, appointing conservative trustees, securing conservative seminary presidents and building conservative faculties. The culmination of the Conservative Resurgence was the SBC’s adoption of the Baptist Faith & Message 2000.
So now in 2015, theological education in the SBC is in many ways where it started in 1859, with uniformly conservative seminaries serving the convention’s churches. And that is, in part, why I believe we are now enjoying the golden era of theological education in the SBC.
They’re graduating ignoramuses who believe Adam and Eve were real, actual people, deceived by a talking snake. The obliviousness is stunning.