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44 chapter 4 ———————Glorieta While New Mexico Southern Baptists battled to establish themselves in the state, they also waged a struggle to elevate the importance of the West in the eyes of their own denomination. The Fortress Monroe Agreement with the Northern Baptists in 1894 had opened the door for Southern Baptist expansion, but early efforts outside the traditional boundaries of the South remained meager. Westerners felt detached and isolated. Distances between churches made it difficult for Western associations to function. A preacher could go for weeks, even months, without being able to talk to another member of the clergy. Evangelism encountered new difficulties. Many people in the West did not respond to Southern revivalist techniques, and it was apparent that ministers needed help in developing new approaches. In the 1920s, George W. Truett, pastor of First Baptist Church in Dallas, saw the value of a grand assembly as a means of addressing these challenges. He was convinced that ministers and their congregations needed encouragement, fellowship, training, and a sense of belonging that only such an encampment could provide. Site Selection Depression and World War II led to an exodus of Southern Baptists from the South. Many moved west, to search for jobs in the ranching, oil, and lumber industries. Military service and defense industry employment added to this westward migration. These transplanted Southerners longed for contact with their homeland, but to journey back to the Southern Baptist assembly in Ridgecrest, North Carolina, for fellowship and training proved impractical. Expansion also placed strains on the binding power of the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC). A Western encampment might help pull the two sections together, thus providing a center for the continuation of a Southern Baptist lifestyle in a “foreign environment.” During the war, pressure for a conference center continued to build. Texas Baptists were the first to take action. In conjunction with the annual state convention in 1945, an informal group met to discuss the steps necessary to launch an assembly. Representatives from New Mexico, Oklahoma, chapter 4 45 Louisiana, Arkansas, and Missouri caucused in a Dallas hotel room at the invitation of their Texas brethren. They saw a Western assembly as part of the growth of the West and crucial to the unity, or possible division, of the Southern Baptist Convention. Each representative wanted the conference grounds in his state. Harry Stagg, who attended along with W. J. Lites, immediately laid claim for New Mexico. A wealthy Baptist layperson offered $50,000 toward the establishment of the site at Paisano, Texas, where George W. Truett had long held his cowboy camp meetings. When Stagg inquired whether the offer would hold if the location were outside Texas, the answer was affirmative, but the benefactor’s untimely death precluded any further development.1 Meanwhile, representatives passed a resolution calling for the Southern Baptist Convention to appoint a committee to study the feasibility of another assembly at its next meeting in Miami. In 1946, the convention approved the request.2 Once Southern Baptists had committed to building another assembly, speculation became rampant as to its probable location. Texans immediately offered the Paisano site and in so doing touched off a debate over multiple assemblies. Recognizing the need for a long-range leadership-training program, the Miami convention specified that such a curriculum be established through the summer assemblies. Furthermore, the sites needed to be located as nearly as possible within a day’s automobile drive of those who would be likely to attend.3 In December 1946, the subcommittee of the Executive Committee of the Southern Baptist Convention recommended the acceptance of the Paisano encampment, which included 960 acres of land and $150,000 in cash. Duke McCall, executive secretary of the Executive Committee, found himself barraged with “opinions.” Three viewpoints emerged: (1) establish a facility in Texas and later another in California, (2) construct assemblies in Texas and the Ozarks, and (3) build several regional encampments throughout the West. Debate once again raised the sectional issue. T. W. Madearis, general superintendent of the Missouri Baptist General Association, felt that “It would be nothing less than a tragedy for Southern Baptists to set up an assembly at great financial outlay anywhere on the perimeter of the territory involved . . . when there are excellent sites central to vast aggregations of our Baptistpeople.”4 Even though Madearis’s letter typified the concern over the geographical expansion of the denomination, westward growth posed yet another problem. Floyd Looney, editor of The California Southern Baptist, favored regional assemblies...

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