Letter: SBC presidential nominees

RE: SBC presidential nominees

I’ve been through enough “move the SBC more to the right” campaigns then I could wish for. I remember sitting in Dr. Ray Summers New Testament class at Baylor, attending First Baptist Church in Waco with his daughters, and finding out how he ended up at Baylor with the seminary “purge” of 1958.

I graduated from Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in 1976 following the retirement of Dr. Duke McCall and watched how Al Mohler ascended to the presidency there, only to watch him and other conservative men—such as Paige Patterson and Paul Pressler—swing the Southern Baptist Convention back to the right in the 1980s and ’90s, and cap off their campaign with the Baptist Faith and Message 2000.

We don’t need another “white knight” to lead us in a swing to the right because he and others think the SBC is getting too liberal. Do what those who formed the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship did and form your own group. What a great way to siphon off Cooperative Program funds to meet your own personal agenda.

I hope the messengers at the 2024 SBC annual meeting will thwart these folks again and not vote them into any positions of leadership. Deny them the platform they seek, and maybe they’ll go back into the woodwork.

Rev. Bob Gillchrest
San Diego, Calif.