Frank Stagg (theologian)

Frank Stagg, Ph.D., (1911–2001) was a Southern Baptist theologian, seminary professor, author, and pastor over a 50-year ministry career. He taught New Testament interpretation and Greek at New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary from 1945 until 1964 and at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky from 1964 until 1978. His publications, recognitions and honors earned him distinction as one of the eminent theologians of the past century. Other eminent theologians have honored him as a "Teaching Prophet."

No one...has ever taken the New Testament more seriously than Frank Stagg, who spent his entire life wrestling with it, paying the price in sweat and hours in an unrelenting quest to hear the message expressed in a language no longer spoken and directed toward a cultural context so foreign to the modern reader.

Dr. Frank Stagg was born October 20, 1911, on his grandfather's rice farm near the small community of Eunice, Louisiana. Although the family name comes from an English ancestor, the Stagg family was of French Catholic descent, commonly called Cajuns. His grandfather and his uncle were the first of the Staggs to become Evangelical Christians. His uncle became a preacher who ministered in the native "Cajun" dialect. Frank was proud of his Louisiana French heritage and of his upbringing in the home of a Baptist deacon and Sunday School teacher.

In his junior year at Louisiana College, Frank met the person who was to become such an integral part of his life and work, Evelyn Owen from Ruston, Louisiana. They married in 1935 and raised three children—Ted, Bob and Ginger.

Frank and Evelyn together wrote and edited Woman in the World of Jesus. The book is divided into three parts:

Counted among the "best-known progressive activists," Stagg addressed a variety of contemporary issues. These included civil rights, gender equity, Vietnam, the First Gulf War, ecumenism and aging. He also argued for the Bible's relevance. "The Bible is relevant," Stagg said. "We don't have to make it relevant." He said that the First Gulf War presented the ideal opportunity for Southern Baptists to "reassess and reject" the just war doctrine and embrace pacifism as the appropriate Christian response to all wars. He opposed Reformed points of doctrine such as predestination and other Calvinist beliefs in Southern Baptist life.

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