0.11 3.1 sending the light: the organizing of texas baptist women  (Page 10/11)

The Baptist Standard played an indispensable role in publishing these reports, disseminating information from over the state, and boosting all activities of the convention. True to its goal to "be for the organized work of our denomination all along the line," BS, January 4, 1900, p. 4. it legitimated the authority and programs of the burgeoning religious bureaucracy with its confident tone and wide circulation. Cranfill and Gambrell, both verbally skilled at transforming innovation into old-fashioned truth, were the primary editors from 1892 until 1914 when the BGCT purchased the Standard and made it their official publicity medium. Cranfill edited the paper from 1892-1904, Gambrell from 1904-07, J. M. Dawson in 1907, J. Frank Norris from 1908-10, and Gambrell from 1910-13. E. C. Routh served from 1914-29.

Even after the uniting of Waco and Baylor universities, the ideal of its serving as the cornerstone of the Texas Baptist educational system was seriously threatened. Within a few years of its establishment at Waco and with it still heavily indebted, charters for over a dozen new colleges were given to Baptists in various parts of the state. This can be partially explained by the wide distances encompassed within Texas (particularly in the rapidly-developing west) and by the booming population. Establishing a school was also a favored way of using a newly-acquired fortune to ensure the perpetuation of one's name. This overtaxed educational system was rescued, first, by a successful campaign conducted in 1891-93 by George Truett (a student at the time) and B. H. Carroll to pay off Baylor University's debt, and second, by the linking of the schools in a junior college plan. Following the example of John D. Rockefeller's dealings with the American Baptist system, Colonel C. C. Slaughter, a wealthy cattleman, seeded the money to eliminate school indebtedness, thereafter limiting the number of schools and instituting a federation of junior colleges, under the supervision of the BGCT, with Baylor University at the head, issuing final degrees. Baylor Female College in Belton continued as the only other four-year school.

The other educational advance--a marked challenge of authority to the monopoly of Baptist seminaries in the Deep South--was the building of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth. Attributable to B. H. Carroll in the same way the Standard was to Cranfill, the missions program to Gambrell and the orphanage to Buckner, the seminary began as a Department of Bible at Baylor University, received its own charter in 1908, and opened in Fort Worth in 1910 with Carroll as its president.

Although Texas Baptists were not part of the "social gospel" movement that united many American Protestant churches early in the twentieth century, they definitely moved in the direction of wider participation in social causes. As John Lee Eighmy pointed out, Baptists in America have responded to social issues more significantly than is generally recognized; their interest in civil liberties, public and private morality, slavery, and laissez-faire economics during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries were testimony to the fact that they "were never aliens to temporal affairs." Eighmy, p. x. Eighmy deals extensively with Southern Baptists' reaction to Christian social movements in the twentieth century. Their heightened level of interest in the decades on either side of 1900 indicated that growing investment in denominational institutions was producing a shift in the locus of progress from the supernatural realm to the natural world. Texas Baptists began designating a significant portion of their collections to benevolent causes as well as to evangelization and religious education. Buckner Orphans' Home has already been mentioned as the first charitable work that won the state's loyalty. Undertaken by an individual and supported informally by the convention through contributions, it was officially adopted by the BGCT in 1914 and placed under the direction of a convention board. After the turn of the century, Texas Baptists were converted (largely by George Truett) to the idea of building a hospital in Dallas, and they did so between 1904-09. This complex, which became known as the Baylor Hospital system, added training facilities in medicine, dentistry, pharmacy, and nursing through the 1910s. Another "sanatorium" was purchased by Baptists in Houston in 1907. Also in a benevolent vein, the convention recognized its responsibility to aged ministers and oversaw a relief fund for their benefit.