It's hard to underestimate how much Pressler changed the Southern Baptist Convention. When I was a teenager, the SBC was considered to be relatively liberal compared to other Baptists and similar Evangelicals.

Pressler was part of and possibly primarily responsible for the wave of change that turned the SBC (and by extension, much of the Evangelical world) into a hardcore reactionary force.

Biblical inerrency? It's tough for anyone to engage with serious Bible scholarship and conclude that a doctrine like inerrency is even possible. But that's what Pressler and his allies insisted on.

They insisted that every word of the Bible is literally, historically true. No mistakes or contradictions exist, not even in translations, which depending on the translation, the SBC inerrency gang insist that God protected from error.

None of that makes coherent sense, especially given that Southern Baptists are as likely as anyone to use their own presuppositions to interpret the Bible.

The inerrency doctrine alone has turned off so much thoughtfulness and flexibility in the Evangelical world, which tends to operate with a knee-jerk obsessiveness about "conserving" ancient beliefs that are actually recent, Evangelical innovations.

Pressler has made it popular in the Evangelical world to not question leaders, to not value Biblical scholarship, and to treat differences of interpretive opinion on even minor matters as heresies deserving of shunning and disfellowship.

We aren't supposed to think and study, nor value the opinions of those who have devoted their lives to thinking and studying.

We're supposed to value men like Pressler instead. Because God raised them up.

I see.

*Cough*