The Journal of Baptist Studies 7 (2015)
Editorial by Anthony Chute It has been nearly forty years since Newsweek magazine published its “Year of the Evangelical” issue. The year was 1976, Jimmy Carter was president, and the words “born again” were just being introduced into the mainstream media vocabulary. Although President Carter was a member of a Southern Baptist Church, some in his own denomination were more reluctant to be identified with the larger evangelical movement. Foy Valentine, speaking on behalf of the Christian Life Commission of the SBC, famously dismissed the evangelical connection in part because of its geographical guiltby-association: “We are not evangelicals,” he declared in the Newsweek interview, “That’s a Yankee word.” Times have certainly changed since then. In 1980, Ronald Reagan siphoned the evangelical vote to defeat President Carter; and in 2012, nearly 80 years after its first issue, Newsweek became a fully digital magazine after losing its print readership to the new media. During that same period, Southern Baptists became increasingly more prominent in evangelical life. One example that is relevant to this edition of the Journal of Baptist Studies is the growing influence of Southern Baptists as members of the Evangelical Theological Society (ETS). A recent Baptist Press article noted that there were perhaps three Southern Baptist members of ETS in 1975. By contrast, Southern Baptist seminary representatives delivered approximately 15 percent of the 612 papers delivered at the 2014 ETS meeting in San Diego, California. This percentage actually understates their presence since it does not include presentations from other SBC entities or those from colleges and universities.1 Indeed, Tom Schreiner, professor at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, served as President of ETS this past term (2014), and B&H Academic increasingly has one of the largest footprints in the ETS convention hall. A Baptist Studies Session is also in place that will provide a platform for discussing broad topics from an explicitly Baptist perspective. The articles in this edition were originally presented during that session. Chris Morgan’s “Baptists and the Unity of the Church” explores the multiple ways in which unity is expressed through Baptist confessions. He demonstrates the multifaceted ways that unity has been understood, assumed and expressed; he also notes the glaring absence of welldeveloped statements on unity in recent confessions. Ray Van Neste’s article on “Baptists and the Holiness of the Church” clarifies the meaning of holiness as it applies to 1
David Roach, “ETS Meeting: ‘Southern Baptists Everywhere.” http://bpnews.net/43787/ets-meetingsouthern-baptists-everywhere . Accessed 2/11/2015.
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