While today “the World” lies open at our fingertips, in 1979 our small town in Colorado was more concerned with local issues than problems outside of our community; denominational arguments did not concern our small Baptist church. When one retired member, who had gone to the mission field as a volunteer, wanted to attend the 1979 Convention in Houston, Texas, we all voted to send her; no one had ever asked to attend the Convention before. She wanted to go because of the rising debate over the literal interpretation of scripture. Even though she tried to explain the issues, most of us had no idea what was happening and really didn’t care much! That was the year conservatives in the Southern Baptist Convention organized and put into action a plan to placed conservatives into key positions within the denomination.
In 1993, our daughter and her husband attended Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. They arrived on campus at the very end of the conservative transition and saw the emotions that stirred those in the faculty affected by the changes. The period from 1979 until the early 90’s saw a big change in our denomination. In the early years, “The Abstract of Systematic Theology” by James Boyce was given out to students who would accept it. A conservative document, it swayed many of its readers. It is available on the Internet today.