Adrian Rogers

Adrian Rogers was the resurgence's first victory. In 1979, Patterson and Pressler's network mobilized voters to elect Rogers as SBC president on the first ballot — an unusual show of coordinated force. His election signaled that the strategy worked. Rogers was not a behind-the-scenes operative; he was a gifted preacher with enormous personal authority and a congregation of thousands at Bellevue Baptist Church in Memphis. He gave the resurgence a face that was compelling and pastoral rather than nakedly political. He served as SBC president three times (1979, 1986, 1987) and chaired the committee that drafted the 2000 Baptist Faith and Message, which retained the 1998 language that a wife 'is to submit herself graciously to the servant leadership of her husband.' Rogers openly taught that biblical inerrancy required this conclusion — that the submission framework was not a cultural preference but an eternal divine order. Rogers represented the theological case that gender hierarchy was not imposed on the text but found in it — a reading egalitarian scholars dispute.

Themes this entry appears in

• Christian Nationalism
• Patriarchy
• Gender & Patriarchy

Connections to Adrian Rogers

• SBC Conservative Resurgence influenced (1979) — The Patterson-Pressler network elected Rogers as SBC president in 1979, the first proof that their coordinated strategy could deliver results.

Sources

• Jesus and John Wayne — Kristin Kobes Du Mez (2020), pp. 148-155