0.11 3.1 sending the light: the organizing of texas baptist women  (Page 8/11)

The greatest clash—in fact, "the most virulent of all the quarrels Texas Baptists have ever known" Baker, p. 157. —was another based on the tension between the authority of local churches versus cooperative agencies, but in this case the integrity of officials of the state missionary board was disputed, as well as their right to act. S. A. Hayden, editor of the Texas Baptist and Herald, instigated the action against the executive board of the BGCT throughout the 1890s, but his most vicious attacks were reserved for J. B. Cranfill, corresponding secretary for missions from 1889 to 1892, and, beginning in 1892, editor of the Texas Baptist Standard. Hayden began by questioning Cranfill's use of missionary funds, but his accusations escalated until he envisioned the relationship between the board and its constituent churches in terms of a conspiracy, a struggle between "centralization and church autonomy, between the masses and the classes, between the Baptists many and bosses few, between economy and extravagance, between missionaries and visionaries." Proceedings of the BGCT, 1898, p. 11. Hayden capitalized on the ancient Baptist fear of centralized authority to promote his own interest in power.

In dealing with Hayden's assault on the convention, including an attempt to seat his own group as the authoritative body, the BGCT was forced to define its authority. That definition stated that the state convention was not composed of churches, but of messengers from churches, associations, and missionary societies who had no delegated power from those bodies. Proceedings of the BGCT, 1895, p. 36. In refusing to seat a delegate (as was the case with Hayden in 1897), therefore, the convention responded only to that individual and did not repudiate the sovereignty of the church that selected him as a messenger. Because the messenger acts solely as an individual and has no power to act on a church's behalf, the state convention holds no direct or explicit power over the local church. Those churches may enlist voluntarily in the convention's programs, but their autonomy is preserved. While this distinction appears to be a game of semantics and finesses the real, albeit informal, power that Baptist associative bodies exercise over the churches that participate in their activities, it is a definition whose internal contradictions have been held in tension or denied by Baptists until the present.

Hayden carried his case against the BGCT to the federal courts in 1898, filing a $100,000 suit against the convention leaders for denying him his seat and personal damage suits against Cranfill. The original decision went through several appeals, hung juries, and was reversed by the Supreme Court of Texas. Finally, in 1905, wanting to lay the matter to rest, Cranfill privately settled out of court with Hayden. Carroll, pp. 800-804. Hayden's followers seceded and formed their own convention, the Baptist Missionary Association, at Troup, Texas, in 1900, but their influence steadily declined. They joined with likeminded groups from other states to form a general body in 1905 and have resisted proposals of reconciliation. Robert A. Baker, The Southern Baptist Convention and Its People, 1609-1972 (Nashville: Broadman Press, 1974), p. 282.