The fundamentalist takeover of the Southern Baptist Convention began at a meeting in Houston, Texas in 1979. From the beginning voting irregularities accompanied the takeover. (John Baugh, the Baptist layman who founded Sysco Corp., calls it "Voting Fraud" -- see his Battle for Baptist Integrity, p. 95)
The chief architect of the SBC takeover was Houston appellate court judge Paul Pressler who meticulously reviewed the Convention's Constitution and By-laws and crafted the strategy for the takeover. Yet, in 1979, Pressler himself registered and voted at the Convention's annual meeting in violation of the SBC's Constitution. Pressler registered as a messenger (delegate) from a church in which he was not a member (the ecclesial equivalent to the recent vote fraud felony Ann Coulter allegedly committed when she voted at a precinct in which she did not live). Voting irregularities during the takeover were not limited to the actions of this politically savvy judge. After Adrian Rogers was elected President of the Convention, a number of people stepped forward to protest improprieties that they had observed during his election. |