Tom Ascol (@tomascol)

I attended my first annual meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) in 1979 in Houston, Texas. I was pastoring a church 90 miles from there & had just enrolled at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Ft. Worth. That was the year that the “Conservative Resurgence” took its first official step with the election of Adrian Rogers as SBC President. A couple of years after that, Cecil Sherman, who was then pastor of FBC of Asheville, NC, came to campus to speak for a week of chapel services. He took the opportunity to address the “debate over inerrancy” that was raging in the convention. Cecil and his brother, Bill, were strong proponents of the moderate/progressive faction of the SBC. They both became leaders in the moderate Cooperative Baptist Fellowship (CBF) that splintered away from the SBC in the early 1990s. Cecil was its founding coordinator. After listening to his second chapel address, I asked to meet with Dr. Sherman and he agreed. The next day we sat at a table in the student center and had a very candid conversation. Sherman said things with which I completely disagreed. He said that the God of the Old Testament is not the same as the God of the New Testament. He said that I would have to check my mind at the door if I believed in a literal six-day creation. He said that the Bible obviously has mistakes in it and that some parts are more inspired than others. Dr. Sherman also said that, yes, Southern Baptists must have boundaries that limit the extent of friendly cooperation among our churches but that inerrancy simply wasn’t the right boundary. Then he told me a story about his attempt to lead FBC Asheville to defund Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary because he was disturbed over things being done and taught there. However, his deacons overruled him and he lost that effort. I did not know what was going on at that time at Southeastern, but I remember thinking that if Cecil Sherman thought it was bad, it must really be bad. I walked away from that two-hour conversation (that ended with dozens of students and faculty surrounding our table, listening in) with three profound thoughts.... https://founders.org/2021/05/27/a-lesson-from-the-conservative-resurgence-in-the-sbc-the-need-for-honesty/