The Courier-Journal Article about Mohler's Candidacy

Peter Smith, religion reporter for the Courier-Journal, has filed this report about Mohler's candidacy.

Mohler in line for larger role
He's urged to lead Baptist convention

By Peter Smith
psmith@courier-journal.com
The Courier-Journal

Southern Baptist Theological Seminary President Albert Mohler is being nominated for president of the Southern Baptist Convention -- a position that would ratify and expand his role as a spokesman for the denomination's conservative political and religious wing.

The vote on Mohler, 47, will take place this June in Indianapolis at the annual meeting of the nation's largest Protestant denomination.

Robert Jeffress, pastor of First Baptist Church in Dallas, said he urged Mohler to run and will nominate him.

He cited Mohler's outspoken defense in the media of conservative causes, and he lauded the way Mohler led the tumultuous rightward shift at Southern Seminary in the 1990s.

"When Southern Seminary seemed to be lost to liberalism and irrelevancy, Dr. Mohler put his life and ministry on the line for the truth of God's word and the urgency of sharing Christ with a lost world," Jeffress said in a statement.

"Since that time, he has led Southern Seminary to be a boot camp for young men and women training to take the Gospel to the nations -- whatever the cost."

Jeffress added in an interview that the "next occupant of the Oval Office may not share the values that evangelical Christians share," and he believes Mohler would be able to use the denomination's presidency to say, "Mr. President or Madam President, 'Thus saith the Lord.' "

If elected, Mohler would be in line to preside at the convention's 2009 gathering in Louisville, which coincides with Southern Seminary's 150th anniversary.

Southern Baptists elect presidents for one-year terms and often re-elect them for a second year.

"I really am not so much seeking the office as I've had several people over the last several years -- but more recently with urgency -- ask me to do this," Mohler said in an interview yesterday. "But there is also the sense in which I believe there is something I could contribute through serving as president of the Southern Baptist Convention. The timing seems to be right."

Mohler said Southern Baptists need to do a better job connecting with younger generations -- including its own younger pastors.

He cited his work at Southern Seminary as "evidence of an approach that does reach out to a younger generation and bring them in."

After seminary enrollment declined during the first few years of Mohler's presidency in the 1990s, it has since risen to one of the highest of any theological school in the nation.

Mohler has drawn wide support within the convention for his conservative views and for leading the seminary shift in the 1990s.

The school saw an almost complete turnover in faculty as Mohler implemented a doctrine that men should be in authority over women in churches and families and that the Bible is inerrant -- without error scientifically or historically as well as theologically.

Mohler has spawned controversy even among fellow conservatives over such issues as his support for a strict brand of Calvinism.

The most controversial part of that doctrine says that God has predestined some to be saved and others to be damned, which some Baptists say contradicts the denomination's mandate to preach the Gospel to all people.

But Mohler said he's never made that belief a litmus test for hiring and has always championed evangelistic efforts.

"I do not hope to be the Calvinist president of the Southern Baptist Convention," he said.

A supporter, Southern Seminary professor Hershael York, agreed.

"If it is a factor, it would be a shame, because frankly that has never been Al's rallying cry," said York, a former president of the Kentucky Baptist Convention. "The Southern Baptist Convention is big enough for people to disagree on that."

York added that there is "nobody more suited" to the job than Mohler, because being Southern Baptist president gives him a platform to speak in the media "with authority and biblical conviction."

But even an admirer of Mohler's cultural and theological outlook questions whether he should fulfill that role as president.

"I want Dr. Mohler at Southern Seminary and on CNN, but we need an SBC president who has led a local church, regularly participates in international mission trips, does not polarize the conversation, and is known as a 'unifier,' " said Jason Pettus, pastor of Living Hope Baptist Church in Bowling Green, in a blog post.

Robert Parham of the Nashville-based Baptist Center for Ethics, a frequent critic of the denomination's stances, said the presidency would give Mohler the chance to expand his influence.

He cited controversies such as Mohler's call for Christians to develop an "exit strategy" from public schools and Mohler's view that the Roman Catholic Church is a "false" church (on the grounds that, while individual Catholics can be Christians, its notion of church is unbiblical).

"Al Mohler leads the fundamentalist wing on the fundamentalist party of the SBC," Parham said. "His anti-public school, anti-working women, and anti-Catholic positions are well-received in the SBC. If he is elected president, the SBC will have padlocked closed the doors to the 19th-century cultural castle."

Bill Wagner, a former Southern Baptist missionary and president of Olivet University International in San Francisco, is the only other announced candidate for the presidency so far.

Reporter Peter Smith can be reached at (502) 582-4469.