Abuse allegations taint Southern Baptist leader's legacy

The passing of time has not been kind to the architects of the so-called 'conservative resurgence,' SBC's Baptist Press reports

Paul Pressler has been the center of controversy for years, including when Southwestern Baptist Seminary installed stained glass in its chapel to honor him and other heroes of the conservative resurgence. The glass has since been removed.

Baptist Press

Paul Pressler is a study in contrasts. To many, he was a hero of the SBC’s Conservative Resurgence, a mastermind of the strategy that helped turn the nation’s largest Protestant denomination back to its conservative theological roots. He was rewarded for that accomplishment with an unopposed election as the Convention’s first vice president in 2002.

Pressler’s book about the Resurgence, “A Hill on Which to Die,” was published by Lifeway Christian Resources in 1999 and received broad dissemination. Former SBC president Adrian Rogers was among the book’s endorsers.

“No one can better tell the story [of the Conservative Resurgence] than Paul Pressler,” wrote Rogers, then-pastor of Bellevue Baptist Church in Cordova, Tenn. “Southern Baptists owe an incredible debt to this man.”

But hints of a darker side to Pressler, a former Texas state judge, began to emerge two decades ago. The church where he served as a deacon, Houston’s First Baptist Church, rebuked Pressler for being nude at his home with a young man from the congregation.

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