On July 21, 2018, the Sullivan Tower in Nashville – former headquarters of LifeWay Resources, the Southern Baptist Convention’s (SBC) publishing arm – was imploded. In an article dated July 23, Baptist Press reporter ART TOALSTON covered the building’s demise and wrote about its namesake, Dr. JAMES L. SULLIVAN, longtime president of the Baptist Sunday School Board, predecessor to LifeWay.
Toalston included several quotes from JIMMY DRAPER, retired LifeWay president, praising Sullivan, including:
- “Sullivan was ‘one of the truly great leaders in our convention.’”
- “The SBC’s strength is ‘not only because of our devotion to the Scripture as the inerrant Word of God, but also because of spiritual giants [presumably referring to Sullivan] who literally saturate the years since 1845 when the SBC was born.’“
The article also mentions that “Draper acknowledged that he and Sullivan ‘differed on the need for the conservative resurgence’ in the SBC’s stance on Scripture . . . He believed that the culture of our SBC was like a football field. There were extremes in both end zones, but the majority of our convention was between the goal lines. . . . I felt strongly that we had drifted to the left toward liberalism and to a low view of Scripture . . .’”
What the article (and, presumably, Draper) failed to mention is that Sullivan exposed the absolute phoniness of what Draper calls “the conservative resurgence” and others of us know as “the Fundamentalist takeover.”
In an article published in the July-August 1986 issue of Facts & Trends, the journal of the Baptist Sunday School Board (still published today by LifeWay), Sullivan – who had retired in 1975 – told of a 1970 meeting in which he learned of a plan to seize control of the SBC (which would ultimately surface with the 1979 election of ADRIAN ROGERS as president):
“I came across this denominational problem in 1970. That was nine years before it surfaced and became public. I discovered that a man whom I knew quite well in a state on the Eastern Seaboard was an associate editor of a magazine publishing things that weren’t precisely true. I called him and asked for a conference and spent several hours in his presence to try and pick his mind and see how he was thinking. Among other things, he said, ‘We’re going to do whatever it takes to take over the state convention and the Southern Baptist Convention, and we intend to do it as quickly as it can be accomplished.’”
Sullivan wrote that the man then expressed anger with the system by which institutional trustees were elected and had attacked the institutions in order to “get at the trustees.” He named four of the leaders of their takeover effort; Sullivan wrote that one of those ultimately became a parliamentarian, and the other three became trustees of SBC boards and agencies.
“I asked him how he was going to accomplish his purpose, and he said, ‘We’re going to organize the losers of every election and cause of Southern Baptist history we can identify.’
“Next, I said, ‘Under what special issue are you going to fly a flag?’ He said, ‘We haven’t picked it yet, but when we pick it, it will be one that no one can give rebuttal to without hopelessly getting himself into controversy.’”
This makes it crystal clear (to pilfer a pet Paige Patterson phrase) that “inerrancy” – the issue that they ultimately “picked” – was nothing but a straw man, invented so as to create controversy and confusion AND fool the people in the pew into thinking that anyone who refused to call the Bible “inerrant” didn’t believe the Bible at all.
By the way, I wrote about Sullivan’s revelation – and made this same point – in the January 2001 issue of the Texas Baptists Committed Newsletter.
So, to Jimmy Draper, I say, yes, I agree, James L. Sullivan was “one of the truly great” SBC leaders, one of those “spiritual giants” to whom you refer. Oh yes, and, by the way, he didn’t just differ with you on “the need for the conservative resurgence” – he exposed the whole movement as a fraud from the beginning.
Why is this relevant in 2018? Because the SBC of 2018 was birthed by those who schemed in the 1970s & 1980s to take it over – it is their creation. The problems we see coming home to roost in the SBC today are what happens when unscrupulous people seize power, inventing issues for the sake of confusion, controversy, and control.
This is not about politics, it is not about theology, it is about a faithful witness to Christ. Only by acknowledging the hollowness of their supposed “conservative resurgence” can they begin to reclaim that faithful Baptist-Christian witness.
Preach!