Southern Baptist leaders were functionally atheological and rallied around gender politics instead

Evidence

The issue of inerrancy did rally conservatives, but when it turned out that large numbers of Southern Baptists—even denominational officials—lacked any real theological prowess and were in fact functionally atheological, concerns over inerrancy gave way to a newly politicized commitment to female submission and to related culture wars issues. — Kristin Kobes Du Mez, Jesus and John Wayne, 250

Categorization

• XREF: Evidence for the reader’s framing of the book’s method: theology was surface, gender was substance — supports evaluating whether this strand IS white evangelicalism or a dominant strand within it. — connects to: A leading Southern Baptist fundamentalist publicly supported Roe v. Wade in 1973 — Randall Balmer, Bad Faith: Race and the Rise of the…, 91
• QUESTION: If even denominational officials were ‘functionally atheological,’ how much weight can a theology-centered account of evangelicalism carry? Worth pressing in the critique.