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The Baptist General Convention of Texas (hereafter BGCT) rose in numbers and strength in the twentieth century to become the state’s largest Protestant denomination. The BGCT matched the growth of its parent Southern Baptist Convention (hereafter SBC), and the cultural differences of Texas Baptists never upset a denominational unity that spurred new churches, BGCT institutions, or mission programs that thrived in post–World War II conformity . Inherent in the BGCT’s success was the perceived inalienable right to worship freely—a religious freedom grounded in the denomination’s decentralized structure, conservative theology, and ardent defense of the separation of church and state. To Baptists, the Bible served as the final and only authority in theological belief for denominational executives, pastors, and church members. Through their freedom of interpreting Scripture, revered as the “priesthood of the believer,” Texas Baptists pursued individual salvation as their primary means of social reformation. Likewise, Texas Baptists rested all structural authority on the local autonomy of their churches. The decentralized structure allowed congregational votes in local churches to check pastors or denominational leaders attempting to motivate churches against perceived social threats of injustices. This democratic claim of church autonomy supported Baptists as a “non-creedal” people with a heavy reliance on the separation of church and state that distinguished them from other Protestant bodies. Perhaps as most representative of a moral stewardship of the public’s welfare in segregated Texas, a handful of Texas Baptist leaders applied their Bible-based theology to include the individual rights of black Texans in the spirit of integration. On May 17, 1954, the day the U.S. Supreme Court ordered public school desegregation in Brown v. Board of Education, Foy Valentine nervously concluded a workshop on race relations at First Baptist Church, Marshall, in David K. Chrisman the texas christian life commission and the call for racial reconciliation, 1954–68 ReligiousModeratesandRace chapter six 98 = religious moderates and race deeply segregated East Texas. As a BGCT representative and director of its Christian Life Commission (hereafter Texas CLC), Valentine appeared in part due to an invitation by Arthur Rutledge, the church’s pastor and the sitting chairman of the commission. Predicting the struggle to follow, the two Texas CLC members urged calm after the court’s decision, appealed to the congregation ’s civic responsibility and evangelical spirit, and called for improved education to combat racism. Valentine charged Rutledge with building a better acceptance of the Brown decision, but this placed the Marshall pastor in a perplexing situation, and he ultimately failed at the task. Rutledge left the church in 1958, and by 1961, deacons blocked students from nearby Bishop College, Marshall’s black Baptist school, and Wiley College from entering the sanctuary by locking arms at the church doors. When the congregation finally voted to accept blacks in their worship services in 1974, their vote came four years after the Marshall Independent School District fully integrated in compliance with a federal court order. The actions of First Baptist-Marshall suggest that race-conscious Baptist leaders like Valentine and Rutledge failed in overcoming their moral dilemma or in destroying the symbolic power of segregation on two fronts. Valentine appealed to the church’s evangelical mission to improve race relations, but the Brown v. Board of Education decision to integrate schools with all deliberate speed “out moralized” segregated BGCT churches. Valentine embodied the denomination’s spiritual dilemma. His convictions regarding the biblical mandates of justice and equality were handicapped by his denomination’s racist and segregated culture. Any attempts to breach this divide were frustrated by popular interpretations of Baptist polity, theology, and commitment to separation of church and state. Their call for improved race relations never registered a sense of urgency among most white Baptists, while their paternalistic relationship with black Baptists never offered a practical support of true racial equality. Even though some BGCT leaders proved more progressive than their congregations by working in support of civil rights, their loyalty to the denomination’s conservative theology and congregational structure forced them to develop a moderate strategy in calling for racial reformation. The moderate strategy of Texas Baptists leaders grew out of Southwestern Seminary in the 1930s, where T. B. Maston, a professor of Christian ethics , singled out race relations as the most critical social concern for Baptists. Heavily influenced by Gunner Myrdal’s manifesto for southern moderates, An American Dilemma, Maston taught a generation of students that the church served as one of many moral forces providing leadership...

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