Battle For The Minds Views

Movies & TV shows

But now, I just want to explain to you why Steven Lipscomb's brilliant documentary, Battle for the Minds, which chronicles the recent takeover of Southern by intransigent and unforgiving fundamentalists, is so personally poignant. It airs on PBS on June 10 (check local listings), another splendid addition to the P.O.V. series of documentaries which for a decade now has graced public television with so much intelligence. It's the story of the death - or at least the serious wounding - of a grand institution. It's the tale of a takeover and a subsequent purge. It's a parable about the relationship of doctrinal authority and individual conscience.

But - as the earlier PBS history of fundamentalism, With God on Our Side, makes clear - around the mid-seventies of this century, the churches began to realize how much heft they did wield; and the fundamentalists, perhaps because of the soundless depth of their conviction, realized it most acutely. At any rate, as Battle for the Minds documents, by the Southern Baptist Convention of 1979, the fundamentalists had positioned themselves to take control of the major offices of the denomination - led, in large part, by Paige Patterson, who is now president of Southeastern Seminary. And on their agenda, besides the inerrancy of Scripture, was the impossibility of ordaining women.

By '95, Southern, the citadel of liberal Baptism, had fallen. Its president was Albert Mohler, Jr., formerly a liberal but now a deep-dyed conservative. (You're right: Battle for the Minds is happily and unabashedly parti pris, and Brother Mohler is its Designated Bad Guy. Come on, you're going to talk about religion and not take sides?) And the most popular and beloved professor of theology at Southern was a liberal and feminist named Molly Marshall.

WINFIELD, IL – Members of Christ Our Savior Lutheran Church and their friends and family are using their brain power and creativity to help raise funds during this economic down-turn and have fun at the same time by sponsoring a ‘Battle of the Minds’ competition on Saturday, March 5 at 6:00 p.m.