In 1925, the Southern Baptist Convention convened in Memphis, Tenn. At that momentous meeting, messengers made two decisions with far-reaching consequences. First, they adopted the Baptist Faith and Message. Second, they launched the Cooperative Program as a unified funding strategy for Southern Baptist ministries. In remarks to the SBC Executive Committee earlier this year, SBC President Clint Pressley rightly referred to the Baptist Faith and Message and the Cooperative Program as the “two rails” of the Southern Baptist Convention.
Our confession was born of controversy. For the first 80 years of SBC history, we had no Convention-wide confessional statement. The reason is not because Southern Baptists were not confessional. Most local churches had confessions. Most Baptist associations had confessions. Many state conventions had confessions. Our three seminaries at the time had confessions. Southern Baptists were clearly a confessional people, and had been since our founding.
There was little felt need for a denominational confession prior to the mid-1920s because we enjoyed widespread doctrinal consensus. The rise of modernist theology changed that. When some liberal pastors and professors began accommodating Darwinism, Southern Baptists responded by adopting a revised and expanded version of the New Hampshire Confession as the Baptist Faith and Message 1925.
Over the years, controversy has continued to result in revisions and amendments to the Baptist Faith and Message. In 1963, we revised the confession primarily in response to some seminary faculty teaching Neo-Orthodox views of Scripture. In 1998, we amended the confession to include a statement on the family that addressed progressive views that were becoming popular in American culture. In 2000, we again revised the confession to clarify our conservative theology on the other side of the Inerrancy Controversy. In 2023, a minor revision clarified that there is only one pastoral office in the New Testament, and that only men are biblically qualified to serve in that role.
Because of the historic relationship between controversy, confessionalism, and cooperation, it can be tempting to think of the Baptist Faith and Message 2000 primarily in those terms. But thousands of local churches have adopted the confession since the turn of the century. In some cases, that decision might have been mostly symbolic or perfunctory. But in an increasingly post-denominational age, our confession can play an important role in helping churches understand what it means to be a Southern Baptist.
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Nathan A. Finn is professor of faith and culture and executive director of the Institute for Transformational Leadership at North Greenville University. He is also the Recording Secretary of the Southern Baptist Convention.
