Exiled: Voices of the Southern Baptist Convention Holy War (review)

If history is a tale told by the victors, then Carl Kell's Exiled provides its readers with the rare opportunity of "hearing" the voices of the vanquished. Positioned as a collection of first person accounts of those on the losing side of one of America's most vitriolic religious battles, this book is a follow-up to Kell's coauthored book with Raymond Camp, In the Name of the Father: The Rhetoric of the New Southern Baptist Convention. Kell worked on Exiled with the blessing and prompting of many of the Moderate Baptists' exiled leadership. To aid his efforts to tell the story of the displaced and disgraced leaders, administrators, and pastors of the Moderate cause, the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship provided Kell with over 200 names of possible contributors, and Kell chose to offer invitations to his potential contributors to tell their stories of exile in their own voice.

Unlike countless other books on the Southern Baptist Holy War that focus on its sociological and ideological genesis, Exiled pushes the reader to look behind the media-friendly battle lines. Here readers encounter the darkness that surrounds the spiritual graveyard where the religious vanquished wander in search of their lost identities. The 29 personal narratives that appear in these pages reflect the mass destruction left in the wake of the Fundamentalist takeover of America's largest religious denomination. Therefore, like unwilling spectators of a massive traffic accident, readers are propelled through these pages of emotional gore by a morbid fascination that is fueled by the vivid, passionate recollections of those whose lives and careers were destroyed in the name of God.

The contributors come from all walks of denominational life, and yet they are not the usual cast of characters that students of the Southern Baptist drama would expect to find. Instead, these are the stories of lifelong Baptists who were not household names, but instead the unknown pastors, professors, and administrators who held the SBC together. Some contributors, such as Pascal Hovis, tell their story of exile with analytical and dispassionate precision: "My own conclusion to disassociate from the SBC was greatly influenced by Dr. Herschel H. Hobbs in his book, My Faith and Message, as well as the actions of the SBC since 1979" (129). Yet more often than not, the contributors of this book detail their experiences in ways that make it clear that their wounds remain painfully inflamed. Consequently, the very personal nature of the prose within Exiled makes the reader feel as if she has stumbled into a private therapy session.

One of the more troubling stories found in Exiled is that of Dr. Paul Simmons. A professor of Christian ethics at one of the SBC's crown academic jewels, Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, Simmons was a noted bioethicist who argued for the idea of personal choice in matters of health care. Simmons taught that in issues of life and death, "Whether it is a problem pregnancy, or an ugly prolonged death . . . no one should stand between the believer and God" (109). Such pro-choice views placed Simmons in tension with the beliefs of the emerging conservative majority on his university's board of trustees. Despite the growing tension, Simmons relied on the SBC's historical commitment to academic freedom and his own status as tenured professor to protect him. Therefore, when summoned in 1990 to discuss his teaching, Simmons openly scoffed at the attempt to quiet him by the board. "He [the trustee] wanted me to take two year's severance and walk away quietly. I insisted I had every right to be there and felt no call from God to leave. . . . After this meeting the only questions were just how and when I would be sent into exile" (111). Enduring three years of constant investigations, harassment, and trustee threats, Simmons finally resigned in 1993 in protest. Despite finding gainful employment at the University of Louisville's Medical School...