Baptists Split Evenly Over Bible’s Words

NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Southern Baptists are evenly split over two views of the nature of the Bible, according to findings of a survey sponsored by the denomination’s Baptist Sunday School Board.

The eight-year drive for political control has been fought by a fundamentalist wing insisting on a literalist view of Scripture as without error about any matter.

In responses from 1,072 members to a four-page questionnaire, 38% said they believe “God inspired writers in such a way . . . that the whole of what they wrote was without error.”

However, another 38% said God gave the writers “inspired ideas so that what they wrote expressed the revealed truth of God in words drawn from the writers’ own background and experiences.”

Seventeen percent accepted the so-called “dictation theory” that “God gave Scriptures word for word” and 3% said the writers “were inspired in the same manner in which all great poets and writers have been.” The rest had other views or no response.

The survey was conducted by NFO Research Inc., of Toledo, Ohio, for the Baptist agency.