0.11 3.1 sending the light: the organizing of texas baptist women  (Page 7/11)

Some of these controversies originated in the wider world of Southern Baptists and touched Texas only peripherally; for instance, when the threat of modern biblical scholarship caused a disruption at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky, and resulted in the resignation of President W. H. Whitsett in 1898, leading Texas Baptists supported his departure. Although Whitsett confirmed his own belief in the biblical correctness of baptism by immersion, his scholarship led him to question the historical continuity of Baptists' practice of that mode of baptism, a heretical notion to those committed to the purity and uniformity of Baptist doctrine from apostolic times, specifically "Landmark" Baptist followers of J. R. Graves. They supported the position that New Testament authority had been perpetuated with historical continuity through local congregations rather than bishops. See John Lee Eighmy, Churches in Cultural Captivity (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1972), pp. 18-19, 74-76. State religious newspapers also disparaged the appearance of "higher criticism" at the University of Chicago, condoned by its Baptist president, W. R. Harper, but the taint of that "literary rehash from German cook shops" Baptist Standard (Waco), December 13, 1894, p. 1. Hereinafter in these notes this publication will be referred to as "BS." The place of publication from inception until February 3, 1898, was Waco, Texas; from that date it was published in Dallas, Texas. did not spread to the faculties of Texas Baptist schools. Their commitment to the inerrancy of Scripture as the bedrock of Baptist faith remained a constant in a world of increasing inconstancy. The Bible was reinterpreted and new emphases made, but the truthfulness of its literal interpretation was not questioned.

Disagreement did occur in Texas, however, over interpretation of Scripture—such arguments were standard in the free-church tradition—but because of their widened range of interaction and attempts to work in concert, Baptists had to come to a resolution on such issues. Cooperation, therefore, necessitated greater uniformity of doctrine and concrete ways for dealing with variants and detractors. Two examples of such controversies took place in the early 1890s over the unorthodox teachings of M. T. Martin on "absolute assurance" and George M. Fortune on the doctrine of atonement. They so threatened the tenuous unity of state churches that the men ultimately met with disciplinary action by local churches and condemnation in the convention. Proceedings of the BGCT, 1895, p. 8. Originating outside Texas, but also potentially disruptive to Texas Baptist cooperative societies, was the agitation reintroduced in the SBC by T. P. Crawford, a missionary to China who denied the biblical authority for supporting missionaries through cooperative boards instead of sending money directly from local churches. No convention action was taken in Texas in this case, but the credibility of the Foreign Mission Board of SBC (and of its state equivalents) was seriously questioned by many churches and funds withheld.