A Call to Greatness: the Story of the Founding of the Progressive National Baptist Convention. - book review

Baptist History and Heritage, Spring, 2003 by Eddie Stepp

By William D. Booth. Lawrenceville, Ga.: Brunswick Publishing Corporation, 2001. 241 pp.

In A Call to Greatness, William Booth, a Progressive National Baptist Church (PNBC) pastor, chronicles the story of his father's important, indeed primary, role in founding the PNBC in the 1960s. The book is an intriguing mixture of historical narrative, primary sources, and the autobiographical reflections of L. Venchael Booth, founder of the convention. Through his own narrative and the documentary evidence, the author's goal is to assert that his father should rightfully be called the founder of the PNBC.

William Booth records the rise of the PNBC as a group that splintered from the National Baptist Convention, U.S.A., Inc. (NBC) over the issue of presidential tenure. When the NBC reverted to a policy that allowed unlimited terms of office for the president, L. Venchael Booth provided leadership, vision, and organization to a group of disgruntled NBC pastors that resulted in the formation of the PNBC in 1961.

The author, however, goes out of his way to distance his father from anyone else who may have been remotely involved in the formation of the new convention. He notes the tenuous connection between his father and Gardner Taylor, aspirant to the presidency of the NBC who was defeated in a close election in 1960. Taylor longed for reform in the NBC, but Venchael Booth, by 1960, was agitating for a new convention.

The author also distinguishes his father's work in forming the new convention from the separate work of the civil rights movement. The author argues that while some have erroneously attributed the inception of the PNBC to the work of Martin Luther King Jr., Booth believes that the PNBC, while being a strong supporter of the civil rights agenda, emerged because of the leadership of his father.

Booth's narrative, however, fails to mention the attempt by opponents of the NBC president to take the stage by force at the 1961 NBC meeting in Kansas City. The failed attempt resulted in the death of one pastor and damaged the integrity of splinter movements. The issue is not whether Booth, the founder, was involved in the fracas, but it raises the question of the author's bias and leaves the reader wondering if other significant historical details have been omitted from the story.

The primary source materials, randomly arranged as appendices covering more than one hundred pages, provide a glimpse at the correspondence between Booth, the founder, and other colleagues in the formative days of the PNBC. The question that emerges from examining these documents is: Do the selected documents provide an accurate account of the events that took place or is the selection of documents weighted in favor of the author's thesis?

Despite the questions of concern, Booth's volume provides an instructive balance to the historical record for the formation of a major Baptist body. And as this work makes clear, the PNBC has cause to remember and be grateful for the leadership and vision of L. Venchael Booth.

Eddie Stepp, assistant professor of Christian studies, Bluefield College.