Finished and Sent Away

I’ll never forget the feeling, years ago, of sending my daughter to kindergarten on the first day. It was a milestone, to be sure, and her mother and I anticipated that she would flourish in school. It was also a bit of a heartbreak, knowing that we were withdrawing our direct supervision and permitting others to play a significant role in her development. For the first time we understood the appeal of home schooling.

Nearly twenty years later we repeated the experience on a larger scale. Our daughter had lived in our home and attended our church all the way through university. She was now ready to go to graduate school in a distant city outside of the United States. Driving her there took two days. Driving away without her was one of the hardest things that her mother and I have ever done. My parents, who had been through the experience multiple times, made the trip with us and offered both encouragement and counsel on the way home.

What words can describe the experience? Pleasure in the advancement of one’s child, certainly. But with it, anxiety—not exactly over the future, but over whether one has adequately prepared one’s child to face the tests that will come with the new situation. And perhaps with everything else, a sense of loss, a knowledge that things will not be as they were before, and an uncertainty as to whether the future can be as good as the past (for us, it is better!).

This morning I’ve experienced some of those same feelings again. To a lesser degree, but still very real, the same expectancy and anxiety, the mixture of pleasure and uncertainty are with me today. No, I’ve not sent a child away. I’ve sent a book to the publisher.

Actually, it is not just my book. The project began about three years ago when Robert Delnay approached the people at Regular Baptist Press with a brief history of the Conservative Baptist movement. The folks at RBP wanted to broaden the subject. They knew that I had written in the area of Baptist fundamentalism (especially on the Regular Baptist movement) and that Delnay and I were friends. They wondered whether I might be willing to work with him to produce a volume on the history of Baptist fundamentalism in the North.

A chance to work with Delnay? On Baptist fundamentalism? Of course I was willing. In fact, I was eager. This was one of the things that I’d wanted to write for years.

We began by aiming for a popular history. The general plan was that I would take Delnay’s work as the core of the book, then write around it, supplement it, and edit everything for consistency of style. That seemed straightforward enough. Some research would have to be done, and I estimated that the whole project would take about two years.

Hardly had we begun, however, when the thing began to grow. The first growth spurt came when it occurred to me that, to understand fundamentalism, readers would have to know what the fundamentalists were reacting against. At least some responsible summary of liberal theology seemed necessary. Consequently, I spent some months reading the old liberals—particularly those who did their work among Northern Baptists.

That led to the question of how the liberals managed to get control of the Northern Baptist machinery. On this question, I was helped enormously by the doctoral dissertation of my colleague, Jeff Straub. This was exactly the question that he answered in his work, and I relied heavily on his leads as I tracked down the sources and became more familiar with Baptist life during the latter half of the 19th century. Jeff now has a verbal agreement with a publisher for his dissertation, and it ought to make a significant contribution.

The next challenge was to detail the opposition to liberalism before the actual fundamentalist movement emerged in 1920. For fifty years, Baptists had spoken and written against the new theology. In some cases they had actually taken action against it. Here I had some good sources at my disposal, particularly with reference to the Grand River Valley Baptist Association. Founded in 1909, that association was perhaps the best prototype of what fundamentalism would become.

Up to this point, the narrative was one that had seldom or never appeared in print. Beginning with the battles of the 1920s, however, we faced the opposite situation. This is the part of the story that has been told often—the Fundamentalist Fellowship, the Baptist Bible Union, and Des Moines University. I doubt that we made any new contribution here, except perhaps in trying to fit this story into the broader narrative.

What comes next, however, is an account that has never appeared in print. It deals with how the Baptist Bible Union was transformed into the General Association of Regular Baptist Churches, and how the GARBC became the first branch of Baptist fundamentalism to achieve full organization. Because of the interaction of J. Frank Norris, it also introduces a Southern version of Baptist fundamentalism into the story.

By this point in the writing, certain things were becoming clear. First, the amount of detail went beyond the usual, popular history. Second, our commitment to document the sources rose as we wrote, though the final product still should not be considered a scholarly history. Third, the role of Southern Baptist fundamentalism was going to play a larger role in the account than we had anticipated. Fourth, the whole thing was going to be longer than we had projected. At this point, we made the decision to divide the history into two volumes. The first—the one that went to the publisher this morning—chronicles the events down through about 1950, with some neglect of events that began during the early 1940s and some spillover for events that occurred later in the 1950s.

As it stands, the book tells how Southern Baptist fundamentalism was torn apart, largely by Norris’s egotism and lack of ethics. It tells how the relocation of John R. Rice to Wheaton, Illinois, marks the beginning of another branch of Baptist fundamentalism, related to but distinguishable from the Norris organizations. It includes a more complete account of the rise of the Conservative Baptist movement, down through its full organization in 1950.

What the book deliberately excludes is an account of the beginning of neoevangelicalism. This first volume focuses on the battle with liberalism. The new evangelicalism only emerged at the end of that story, and, in fact, began another story. That is the story that we hope to tell in the second volume.

As of this morning, I’ve sent a child away. I’m feeling the relief and the reluctance, the expectancy and the anxiety, the pleasure and the uncertainty, of sending this offspring of my mind onward and into the next stage of its life. My hope is the hope of every parent: that one’s child will make a genuine and recognizable contribution.

Editor’s note: On February 11, Kevin Bauder delivered the annual MacDonald Lectures at Central Seminary. His series title is “Standing Firm: A History of Early Baptist Fundamentalism.” The audio and slides from these presentations are available now on Central Seminary’s website. The lectures cover the very topic of the book mentioned in this essay.

This essay is by Kevin T. Bauder, Research Professor of Historical and Systematic Theology at Central Baptist Theological Seminary. Not every one of the professors, students, or alumni of Central Seminary necessarily agrees with every opinion that it expresses.

The Lord My Pasture Shall Prepare
Joseph Addison (1672–1719)

The Lord my pasture shall prepare
And feed me with a shepherd’s care;
His presence shall my wants supply
And guard me with a watchful eye;
My noonday walks He shall attend
And all my midnight hours defend.

When in the sultry glebe I faint
Or on the thirsty mountain pant,
To fertile vales and dewy meads
My weary, wandering steps He leads,
Where peaceful rivers, soft and slow,
Amid the verdant landscape flow.

Though in a bare and rugged way,
Through devious lonely wilds, I stray,
Thy bounty shall my pains beguile;
The barren wilderness shall smile,
With sudden greens and herbage crowned,
And streams shall murmur all around.

Though in the paths of death I tread,
With gloomy horrors overspread,
My steadfast heart shall fear no ill,
For Thou, O Lord, art with me still;
Thy friendly crook shall give me aid
And guide me through the dreadful shade.