Two faces of Southern Baptists

Two men from Georgia rose to national prominence at the same time—one as a politician, the other as a pastor. In 1977 as the politician was sworn in as 39th President of the United States, the pastor took his local televised church service nationwide. And the politician and the pastor became regular viewing—one on the nightly news and the other from his pulpit to millions watching on Sunday night cable TV.

Two Georgians, contemporaries at the time, became the new faces of Southern Baptists for the rest of the nation. From their national platforms, they did it in very different ways, but between them, these men challenged assumptions about being Baptist and exemplified faithful living under that calling.

As they leave the stage, the time is right to consider the enduring contributions of Jimmy Carter and Charles Stanley

“When cable TV came to Lake City, Arkansas, Charles Stanley entered my home. When I started to collect books as a teenaged preacher, he entered my library. I saw him lead our Convention as SBC president. I heard him preach in chapel at Southwestern Seminary. Is there any part of the SBC that does not bear the mark of his influence?”

– Bart Barber, SBC President

“There are few places in the world where Charles Stanley cannot be heard and seen through In Touch ministries. He was truly the world’s pastor.”

– Jimmy Draper, former Lifeway CEO

“Dr. Stanley stepped forward as a candidate for the presidency of the Southern Baptist Convention at a most pivotal time in the life and history of our denomination. His election to that post in 1984 was a decisive turning point, moving the SBC further down the road of theological recovery.”

– Jason K. Allen, president, Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary

“His practice of preaching profound truths with simple clarity was a gift to the church and an example to preachers today.”

– Jeff Iorg, president, Gateway Seminary

“His fervency in prayer, alone with his Lord was profoundly experienced by all who knew him well. Who will take the place of my friend Charles on his prayer rug before God?”

– Paige Patterson, former president Southwestern Seminary

“He said, “I don’t want to talk to you very long on the phone. I just want to ask you one question. Why don’t you give Jesus another try?’”

– Matthew Broderson, 29, remembers his grandfather Charles’s frequent calls, especially the one that turned him from addiction and depression and back to his faith in Christ

The pastor to a nation

harles Stanley was a reluctant president of the SBC. He responded to the need of the hour and the requests of God’s people,” recalls Paige Patterson, one the architects of the conservative resurgence in the Southern Baptist Convention. Stanley would have preferred to stay in prayer in his study and in his pulpit, but his national television ministry had made him one of the lynchpins in the movement to establish the SBC on the groundwork of biblical inerrancy.

“My election infuriated the opposition,” Stanley wrote in his autobiography, Courageous Faith, “and ultimately revealed many of the underlying problems that had existed in the Convention for a long time but had either been ignored or denied.” Even so, “I knew I was in the center of His will, so I never felt anxious or angry even when the conflicts were at their very worst.”

First elected in Kansas City in 1984, Stanley beat two candidates in a single balloting the next year and saw conservatives consolidate to win a similar victory the year after that. Stanley presided over the two largest annual meetings in SBC history—45,531 messengers in 1985 in Dallas and 40,987 in 1986 in Atlanta—when conservatives faced their most pronounced opposition.

At the time of Stanley’s death on April 18 at age 90, Southern Seminary president Al Mohler wrote Stanley’s election as SBC President “constituted a major turning point in our denomina- tional history. His re-election at the largest SBC annual meeting of all time in 1985 was the most decisive Convention vote in more than a generation.

“He had not been particularly active in denominational affairs until that time, but his vast television platform gave him unparalleled influence with messengers,” Mohler said. “Given his life and ministry circumstances, Charles Stanley was the least conventional of the Conservative Resurgence presidents. [However] he will be remembered as one of the most recognized Christian leaders of his age.”

Born in Dry Fork, Virginia, in 1932, Stanley was raised by a prayerful Pentecostal widow and the man she married to give Charles a stepfather. He was abusive.

The trouble at home drove Stanley to church and to a relationship with a heavenly father. It “increased my prayer life exponentially because I spent a lot of time alone with God,” Stanley wrote. He made a profession of faith at age 11 when the preaching of a Mrs. Wilson during a revival service “struck me to the core” about “how far I was from the Father because of my sin…. When she gave the invitation, I was the first one down the aisle and on my knees” to have “a real, eternal relationship with my heavenly Father and Creator.”

As a teenager, Stanley had joined a Baptist church in Danville, Va., and the pastor arranged a four-year scholarship for him at the University of Richmond. He confronted disbelief in Christ’s deity and criticism of Christianity in that setting, and he asked, “What in the world is this heresy?”

Stanley would later confront the issue as chair of The Peace Committee. In 1987 the Committee produced a 6,450-word report concluding that “the great number of Southern Baptists” believe the Bible “speaks truth in all realms of reality and to all fields of knowledge. The Bible, which properly interpreted, is authoritative to all of life.”

Stanley earned degrees from Southwestern Seminary and Luther Rice Seminary. He served churches in Florida, Ohio, and North Carolina, before he was called as associate pastor of First

Baptist Church of Atlanta in 1969. Conflict there turned ugly when the senior pastor resigned and Stanley began serving as interim pastor.

The young pastor was voted in as senior pastor by a motion arising during a 1971 business meeting. At a subsequent business meeting, one of Stanley’s opponents struck him in the jaw, prompting an uproar among the members that led to the faction leaving the church. But from then, the church grew under his leadership. Stanley developed an extensive television and radio audience through his In Touch Ministries and was inducted into the National Religious Broadcasters’ Hall of Fame in 1988.

Over 50 years, Stanley’s messages were prolific and ubiquitous—translated into 50 languages and broadcast in 150 countries on 2,600 radio stations—as were the 60 books he wrote.

More than any other SBC president, Art Toalston wrote in a Baptist Press obituary, Stanley’s personal life had been on public display, beginning when his wife, Anna, filed for divorce in 1993. After a period of reconciliation, a divorce ensued in 2000 after 44 years of marriage. Anna Stanley died in 2014 of pneumonia and other health issues at age 83.

In his autobiography, Stanley wrote, “Losing Annie was the worst heartache of my life,” yet it helped him reach those who say, “I thought you couldn’t possibly comprehend what I was going through. But now I know you’ve been there, too, and really understand how I feel.”

The marital distress included a ruptured relationship with his son, Andy, who was on First Baptist’s staff and felt his father should resign to let the church decide whether he should remain in the pulpit. Stanley disagreed, and his son subsequently resigned and started the non-denominational North Point Community Church, whose ministry has eight Atlanta-area locations and a worldwide influence of its own today.

Stanley and his son eventually found reconciliation. “I asked Andy to go to counseling with me and invited him to breakfast and lunch as often as I could. And I prayed for him constantly,” the elder Stanley wrote. “I am exceedingly proud of him. From the first time I heard him preach, I knew God would use him in a powerful way—and he has.”

Stanley repeated to his son how proud he was in his last days, the younger man reported. In their last meeting after months of illness, Charles prayed for his son one more time.

In the foreword to his father’s autobiography, Andy wrote of its contents: “Triumph, tragedy, love, marriage, divorce, poverty, prosperity, opportunity—all lived out under the canopy of God’s promises and faithfulness…. In my personal life and ministry, my takeaway from having Dr. Charles Stanley as my father was that everyone can trust God with every outcome.”

In addition to his son, Stanley is survived by daughter Becky Stanley Brodersen, six grandchildren, three great-grandchildren and a half-sister. He is also survived by 15 million Southern Baptists who are indebted to him for five decades years of exemplary biblical teaching and the willingness to lead from his knees.

“It was my privilege to meet Dr. Stanley…at the funeral for Billy Graham; he was warm and gracious,” evangelist Greg Laurie said after Stanley’s passing. “No doubt, he has already heard Jesus say, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant. Enter into the joy of your Lord.’

“Charles Stanley will be greatly missed.”

– IB staff, with reporting from Baptist Press