Holy War Ends

The Southern Baptist Convention went into last week's decisive annual meeting as one big unhappy family. Big for sure: 14.9 million souls in 37,800 congregations; 7,600 missionaries in the U.S. and 116 foreign lands; $4.6 billion a year in receipts. Unhappy too because of the divisions caused by a populist drive to enforce belief in the inerrancy of the Bible, from Adam and Eve to Paul's authorship of the New Testament epistles bearing his name.

Meeting in the appropriately outsize New Orleans Superdome, delegates blessed the Fundamentalists, voting in as S.B.C. president the Rev. Morris Chapman of Wichita Falls, Texas. He outpolled an Atlanta moderate, the Rev. Daniel Vestal, 21,471 to 15,753. Like all presidents since 1979, Chapman will use his nominating powers to consolidate inerrantist control of S.B.C. schools and agencies. The meeting also gutted funding for a Washington office representing various Baptist denominations in favor of an S.B.C. lobby that will buttress the religious right on such matters as abortion and school prayer.

Chapman's win amounted to a binding referendum on the future course of America's largest Protestant body, since the anti-Fundamentalists have now lost all hope of turning the tide. When computers had counted the ballot cards, editor Jack U. Harwell of the moderate monthly SBC Today remarked that "the holy war is over. The Fundamentalists have won. We're fixing to enter the darkest period in our history." But Chapman believes the Bible battle has been settled once and for all, and that the S.B.C. "will become an explosive force for Christ around the world."

For now, however, explosions will occur closer to home. Though Chapman's party says it plans no purges, it will systematically install inerrantists as moderates retire. The seminary in North Carolina has already been torn apart over this effort, and the one in Kentucky will doubtless be next. Meanwhile, desperate anti-Fundamentalis ts are labeling the rival force as power mad and "demonic." A schism does not appear imminent, but as the conflict moves to the state and local level, anti-Fundamentalists may carry out a de facto split, diverting money from the national denomination into their own causes.