Charles Jones

DAYTON, Tenn. (BP) – The setting for the “Trial of the Century” was the small county-seat town of Dayton, 40 miles north of Chattanooga. Better known as the “Scopes Monkey Trial,” it took place July 10-21, 1925.

The Baptist Faith and Message, when adopted in 1925, was not intended to be the last word on SBC beliefs. Confessions of faith are periodically revised in response to changes in culture or theological challenges from without and within. Following its adoption, the subject of denominational beliefs was not revised for nearly 40 years.  

Sanford Miller Brown Jr. was a Baptist preacher’s son from Kansas City and a recent graduate of Missouri State University. He was beginning a career in business.

The rural South was struggling in 1925. The boll weevil had invaded cotton fields, wreaking economic havoc and misery across the region. During those difficult days, one of the people’s most cherished sources of hope, their faith, came under attack by another institution they had come to trust – science. The Baptist Faith and Message was a response to those attacks and a defiant defense of their faith. It was not a hastily composed statement; it was the thoughtful product of years of work.

The Southern Baptist Convention messengers arriving in Memphis in May 1925 came with a sense of urgency. The entire nation had been caught off guard, two weeks earlier, when it was announced that a trial challenging a Tennessee law against teaching evolution in the public schools had been set for July. The so-called “Scopes Monkey Trial” would pit science against religion in the courts of law and public opinion. Messengers felt a need to respond and adopting a confession of faith would be their answer.

Baptists seldom go through the effort of preparing a confession of faith unless pressured or prodded, which may explain why the SBC waited 80 years to adopt one. In the mid-19th century, pressure began mounting which developed into what became known as the Modernist Fundamentalist Controversy in the early 20th century. This was the environment which prodded Southern Baptists to prepare and adopt the Baptist Faith in Message in 1925.

Nearly a century has passed since the Southern Baptist Convention adopted the Baptist Faith and Message (BF&M) in May of 1925. Its debate and adoption was the most passionate, time-consuming issue of that year’s SBC meeting in Memphis. By comparison there was relatively little debate and far less media coverage of the adoption of what became the Cooperative Program at the same convention.

On a winter Sunday morning in February 1779, the sound of gunfire broke the silence along the marshy bottom at the juncture of two small creeks in Wilkes County, Georgia, as men engaged in a life and death struggle. The Battle of Kettle Creek, a pivotal battle and one of the few patriot victories in Georgia, had begun.

WESTFIELD, Ind. (BP) – The following was posted by Baptist Press on Feb. 18, 1966. Under the heading, “Navy Seeks Ministers as Chaplains”:

HULL, Ga. – A government-issue tombstone stands as a silent sentinel over Pvt. Harry L. Spratlin, a World War I soldier killed in action on Oct. 15, 1918, only weeks before the signing of the armistice that brought an end to the hostilities.