Southern Baptist Convention conservative resurgence

Beginning in 1960, the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) experienced an intense struggle for control of the organization. Its initiators called it the Conservative Resurgence while its detractors labeled it the Fundamentalist Takeover. It was launched with the charge that the seminaries and denominational agencies were dominated by liberals. The movement was primarily aimed at reorienting the denomination away from a liberal trajectory and towards an unambiguous affirmation of biblical inerrancy.

It was achieved by the systematic election, beginning in 1979, of conservative individuals to lead the Southern Baptist Convention. Theologically moderate and liberal leaders were voted out of office. Though some senior employees were fired from their jobs, most were replaced through attrition. Conversely, moderate and liberal presidents, professors, and department heads of Southern Baptist seminaries, mission groups and other convention-owned institutions were replaced with conservatives. The resurgence was the most serious controversy ever to occur within the Southern Baptist Convention, the largest Protestant denomination in the United States. One of its chief architects, Albert Mohler, later described it as a "reformation…achieved at an incredibly high cost." A part of that cost was the departure of 1900 churches from the convention, which broke away in 1990 to form the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, a moderate Baptist group which affirms women in ordained ministry and continues the Baptist principles of the autonomy of the local church, the priesthood of all believers, and soul liberty.

Throughout the 20th century, controversy had flared up sporadically among Southern Baptists over the nature of biblical authority and how to interpret the Bible. In the 1920s, Baptist pastor J. Frank Norris, described as "one of the most controversial and flamboyant figures in the history of fundamentalism, " led a series of attacks upon the Southern Baptist Convention ("SBC"), particularly against Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth and Baylor University in Waco, Texas. In 1925, the SBC adopted its first formal confession of faith, the Baptist Faith and Message, largely in response to the Norris controversy. Prior to this development, Southern Baptists had looked to two earlier and more general baptistic confessions of faith produced in the United States: The Philadelphia Confession of Faith (1742) and the New Hampshire Baptist Confession of Faith of 1833.

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