Higher Ground: A Call for Christian Civility
BOOK REVIEW
"Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed." Francis Bacon (d. 1626)
Reviewed by Burton H. Patterson, Southlake, TX.
Higher Ground: A Call for Christian Civility
Russell H. Dilday, Smyth & Helwys, Macon, 2007, $17.
Russell Dilday, the President of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary from 1978 to 1994, delivered the convention sermon to the Southern Baptist Convention in 1984, entitled Higher Ground. At the time he preached this sermon he was experiencing, from individuals with insatiable egotistic self–interests, a desire for forced uniformity. They were using significant political coercion to obtain what they considered biblical correctness. His sermon was a plea for traditional Baptist principles of autonomous individualism, uniformity reached solely through spiritual persuasion and Christlike humility. In this book Dr. Dilday took the basic points of his convention sermon and expanded them into chapters, fleshing them out by recounting a number of occurrences which transpired during the siege.
Those who lived through the carnage of that Southern Baptist denominational strife, resulting in the separation of fundamentalists from traditional Baptists, will recognize with pain the various events which are elucidated with great clarity by one who was in the middle of the conflict. The principle thesis of the book is a call to all Christians to treat their fellow believers, as they should treat all people, with civility which is perfectly expressed through agape love illustrated in the pages of scripture.
As president of what then was the largest seminary in the world, Dr. Dilday was in a unique position to evaluate the fundamentalists` claims of classroom liberalism, and from his personal knowledge he debunks the preposterous charges leveled at the convention`s seminaries explaining the reality of the situation. A strong response is leveled not only at the specious arguments used to promote the fundamentalist agendas but at the political schemes, called "worldly weapons," which were employed to circumvent and exploit traditional Baptist polity.
Recognizing the ruthless "take no prisoners" approach, followed by the convention takeover operators, Dr. Dilday calls for all Baptists to live in a Christlike spirit of humility, to reverse the absence of kindness, and to embody a world view where the burden of one`s fellow causes both lament and Christian action. An end to rancorous incivility, rude grandstanding, and ecclesiastical finger–pointing is posited as essential to any restoration of communication between the traditional and fundamentalist factions.
The book includes a complete chapter on "Biblical Forgiveness," which is a model for a semester`s ethics study in any seminary. The basic tenants of forgiveness are outlined explicitly and then fleshed out in terminology only a dunce could not grasp. Dilday`s review of how the current convention leadership treats traditional Baptists shows the very significant lack of any desire to terminate the divisive separation of fundamentalist Baptists from all other groups of traditional Baptists, which he names "Authenticus Baptistus" and groups together because of the freedom chromosomes they share deep in their DNA.
In the book`s conclusion, the world view of great American Baptist leaders, both from the centuries past to the present time, relating to the relationships between believers, is capsulated to illustrate that "carnal conservatism", to use Dilday`s expression, is not and should not be the norm. Under the heading of "Constructive Conservatism" Dilday suggests that "the day of huge, bureaucratic, national, denominational organizations is over," with the future of traditional Baptists being regional with greater emphasis on local congregations, associations and state conventions.
Traditional Baptists, who experienced first–hand the fundamentalist takeover of the Southern Baptist Convention, will recognize and appreciate the great accuracy of Dr. Dilday`s descriptions of the interpersonal conflicts which flowed through that period ending the golden years in which the Convention was Christ–centered with a single purpose of evangelizing the world. This book is very worthy of your purchase and your time in reading it. It is highly recommended for those who were on the periphery of the bloodshed and desire to gain-from the pen of one who experienced it firsthand-a greater in–depth knowledge of the controversy, as well as a constructive suggestion for a way forward.
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