20th Century Baptists
US politics of the 20th Century reflected a global trend toward conservatism. These policies were both economic and social. Some Americans expressed their discontent with the character of modern life in the 1920s by focusing on family and religion, as an increasingly urban, secular society came into conflict with older rural traditions. Fundamentalist preachers such as Billy Sunday provided an outlet for many who yearned for a return to a simpler past.
During the 1920s, the United States sharply restricted foreign immigration for the first time in its history. Large inflows of foreigners long had created a certain amount of social tension, but most had been of Northern European stock and, if not quickly assimilated, at least possessed a certain commonality with most Americans. By the end of the 19th century, however, the flow was predominantly from southern and Eastern Europe. Halted by the Great War, mass immigration resumed in 1919, but quickly ran into determined opposition from groups as varied as the American Federation of Labor and the reorganized Ku Klux Klan. Millions of old-stock Americans who belonged to neither organization accepted commonly held assumptions about the inferiority of non-Nordics and backed restrictions.
In 1925, the state of Tennessee passed the Butler Law, prohibiting teachers “to teach any theory that denies the story of the Divine Creation of man as taught in the Bible, and to teach instead that man has descended from a lower order of animals.” Many other Southern states passed similar laws. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) initiated a court case in the summer of that same year, to test the constitutionality of the law. In a Tennessee courtroom, John T. Scopes, a young high-school biology teacher charged with illegally teaching that man originates from monkeys. This trial, later known as the Scopes Monkey Trial and the first ever US trial to be broadcast live on national radio, ended with a guilty verdict for Scopes, although this was reversed in 1927 by the Supreme Court of Tennessee, albeit on technical grounds.?
In 1968, ruling in the case Epperson v. Arkansas, the United States Supreme Court struck down all remaining state anti-evolution laws as being in violation of the Establishment Clause in the Bill of Rights. Conservative policies were viewed by many as an antidote to the “liberal excesses of the 1960s and 1970s” and a reaction against the policies of both Presidents Franklin Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson. Intense partisanship, regional differences, and conservative and evangelical movements were part of that trend.
Before the Supreme Court’s decision in Engel v. Vitale (1962), which said that the state of New York could not write a prayer that had to be said in every school in New York every day, school prayer seemed as American as apple pie. Subsequently, some families have been frustrated to see their children denied even the most private forms of religious expression in public schools. These Americans feel that instead of celebrating their love for God in public, they’re being forced to hide their faith behind closed doors.
Conservative goals of this era included restoring balance between state and federal governments; lowering taxes for individuals and businesses; increasing defense capabilities; and cutting regulation. Evangelicals were part of the conservative movement which worked to elect conservative politicians. Goals of the evangelicals included restoring Christian values to society; following dictates of the Bible; and reviving traditional values that they believed had strengthened the country in the past.
The year 1979 marked the conservative resurgence within the Southern Baptist Convention. The 1979 SBC annual meeting was held in Houston, and the major architects of the movement, Paige Patterson and Paul Pressler, and perhaps one of the main spiritual leaders, W.A. Criswell, were Texans. Southern Baptists honored those who led the Southern Baptist Convention back to its original foundations, rooted in and committed to Jesus Christ and to the Scriptures as the inspired and inerrant Word of God. Rank and file Southern Baptists had become alarmed because the church seemed to be sliding toward liberalism, and they embarked upon a course correction. In 1977 Paul Pressler had discovered that Baylor University was teaching "higher critical" theology, which he had run into as a student at Princeton and found to be out of line with his understanding of the Bible.
President Ronald Reagan headed a movement against “big government” and promoted the return of some power to the states. One of the Religious Right's major tenets is that schools belong to the people and that parents are the most knowledgeable about students' needs. The religious right uses parents' strong emotions to further its cause and is suspicious of educational innovations. The religious right was politically successful in forging an active opposition among women to the Equal Rights Amendment; female ERA opponents tended to be financially dependent on a man, less well-educated, and frequent churchgoers.
In the case Edwards v. Aguillard, on 19 June 1987 the United States Supreme Court barred the inclusion of creation science in public school curricula as a violation of the Establishment Clause in the Bill of Rights. But in 1990, the Discovery Institute, a leading force in the “Intelligent Design” movement, is founded in Seattle, Washington. Components of the religious right, represented most prominently in recent months by the Discovery Institute, to undermine the teaching of evolution in high school science classes. Indeed, hardly a day goes by without a prominent article in our leading papers about one of the battlegrounds or about the resurgence of creationism masquerading under the pretentious name of "intelligent design" (or ID).
The Religious Right movement maintains that only sexual activity open to reproduction is morally acceptable, and that violating this imperative violates God's will. Religious progressives and secular humanists deny these positions, arguing instead that the moral quality of sex is determined by how its participants treat each other. The boundaries between religion and state have become increasingly blurred for several years, to the point at which the growing political force of evangelical Christians, often known as the "religious right," is affecting science (stem cell policy), the teaching of science (intelligent design), and public health (opposition to Plan B, opposition to the use of condoms in HIV prevention strategies, and, coming soon, opposition to the use of human papilloma virus vaccines to prevent cervical cancer).
On 09 March 2004, the Ohio Board of Education approved a creationist-promoted 22-page biology lesson plan called “Critical Analysis of Evolution” and, teachers in Ohio were allowed to introduce creationist materials into the classroom. There is no constitutional requirement that public school students be taught the truth. The Discovery Institute called it a victory for students, academic freedom, and common sense. "The board's decision is a significant victory for students and their academic freedom to study all sides of current scientific debates over evolutionary theory," said Bruce Chapman, president of Discovery Institute. "It's also a victory for common sense against the scientific dogmatism of those who think evolution should be protected from any critical examination."
On 08 November 2005 the fiercely divided Kansas Board of Education voted 6 to 4 to adopt new science standards that were the most far-reaching in the nation in challenging Darwin's theory of evolution in the classroom. The standards moved beyond the broad mandate for critical analysis of evolution that four other states - Minnesota, New Mexico, Ohio and Pennsylvania - had established in recent years. Effective 01 October 2004 the Southern Baptist Convention decided not to make further contributions to the Baptist World Alliance, which had distanced itself from the biblical beliefs of most Southern Baptists and embrace causes and connections that were increasingly liberal. The Southern Baptist Convention then sought to establish an even closer bond of fellowship with conservative evangelical Christians around the world. The SBC initiative began with a July 2005 gathering in Warsaw, Poland, which a contingent of nine SBC leaders met with a dozen Baptist representatives from eastern European countries and Germany to explore ways to partner more effectively in evangelism, church planting, and theological education.
Religious interest groups seldom engage in direct campaign contributions in the manner associated with political action committees. But in other respects, religious interest groups do what is called “grass roots” lobbying. They encourage their members to communicate with public officials. They host demonstrations and public information campaigns. They secure professional lobbyists to represent their point of view. Religious interest groups may take the position that “if you fail to support me on this issue, you are obstructing the will of God.” They can associate a particular program of political action with a divine mandate.
In the early 1980s these groups first began to have a political presence in Washington, notably the Moral Majority and the Religious Roundtable. These groups were engaged in particular with this style of lobbying — withcoming into legislators’ offices and saying that God’s will is that we pass a certain piece of legislation, a balanced budget amendment, or an anti-abortion amendment, or something of this nature. Later, the Christian Coalition had a much shrewder and more sensitive approach to religious lobbying. There emerged a tendency to argue not that this is God’s will, but that this is our humble attempt to understand the insights of our tradition as it applies to this issue or policy. And there was much more talk about the religious freedom of students to pray, rather than talking about school prayer.
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