Abstract

Southern Baptists have grown from a membership of 365,346 to 14 million since their organization in 1845. Yet they are a silent people on many issues. Patriots who supported the colonists during the American Revolutionary War, hawks in matters of national defense, crusaders in matters relating to personal morality, they have been largely silent on many social actions which excite other denominations. They led no peace marches during the sixties, waved no banners for women's rights in the seventies, and remain aloof from the liberation theologies of the eighties. Whence came this strange reticence to become involved in certain kinds of social political action? ;The answer to this question comes partly from the historical development of the Baptists in early seventeenth-century England where, as a result of religious persecution, they began to contend for the separation of church and state. Part of the answer arises from the development of the individualism necessary for survival on the American frontier. However, the thesis of this dissertation contends that the answer mainly comes from a theology which reflects individualism. Beginning with the concept of a God who demands personal righteousness and providing with a view of a depraved humanity in need of an individual, ontological change based on the substitutionary death of Christ and effected by the Holy Spirit in those who repent of their sins and trust Christ for personal salvation, Southern Baptists believe social change results when redeemed people apply Christian principles in society. Consequently, the local church qua church studiously avoids involvement in economic, political, and social issues except as these derive from, or impinge upon, personal righteousness