CRCDS Historian Nails the ABC Crisis in a Loss of Associational Power and a National Body "Too Large to Be an Effectively Deliberative Body"

Few Baptist historians have had as much influence as Dr. Winthrop Still Hudson. With CRDS connections, he hardly qualifies as a flaming fundamentalist. But notice how appropriate his observations are to our current denominational crisis. Thanks to my dear friend and Baptist historian extraordinaire, Dr. Howard Stewart, for the quote.

"Thus the machinations of a small group of men have left us a two-fold legacy--one organizational and the other ideological. The organizational disorder among Baptists of the North is most apparent at the national level where it has thus far defied all attempts to make the national structure and efficient and responsible instrument of the churches. A more serious consequence has been the bypassing of the local Association, which is the most important unit in the whole denominational structure.

All significant functions of the Associations have been taken away, and they have been left to eke out a bootless existence. Equally serious has been the abandonment of the proposal to extend the associational principle through the state conventions to the national convention. This has meant on the one hand, that most of the churches have been effectively disfranchised; on the other hand, it has meant that the national convention has been too large to be an effectively deliberative body."

[His Barking Dog thanks Dr. Howard Stewart again for the quote. He may possibly be the last real Baptist in the ABC!]