Brad Onishi interviews Texas Monthly senior writer Robert Downen about his 12,000-word feature on Paul Pressler, a key architect of the Southern Baptist Convention’s conservative resurgence alongside Paige Patterson. Downen outlines how the takeover, framed around biblical inerrancy, gender hierarchy, abortion, and weakening church–state separation, helped align the SBC with the GOP and built a broader culture-war mindset, aided by sophisticated internal tactics such as tracking pastorates, spying on professors, and manipulating convention rules. He traces Pressler’s privileged Texas lineage and early political training through his grandfather’s Texas Regulars ties and shows how Pressler leveraged SBC power into national influence via the Council for National Policy and Republican politics. The conversation centers on longstanding allegations that Pressler abused young men and how institutional deference and fear of “liberal” attacks enabled silence, shaping SBC responses to the later denomination-wide sexual abuse crisis and ongoing membership decline.
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