Sounding a false alarm: W. O. Carver and the 1914 controversy over the virgin birth: one of the most intriguing questions in the history of southern religion concerns the nature and extent of theological liberalism in denominations, particularly the Southern Baptist Convention

Baptist History and Heritage, Spring, 2004 by Mark Wilson

Did theological liberalism exist below the Mason-Dixon line? And if so, how did denominations handle yet another form of outside agitation that seemingly threatened the doctrinal status quo of churches and their institutions? The following case study explores this issue and illustrates how one Southern Baptist seminary professor sought to balance his understanding of traditional orthodoxy with the intellectual challenges of the modern world.

In late 1903, seminary president E. Y. Mullins announced the founding of a new theological quarterly for Southern Baptists, The Baptist Review & Expositor, a tool he hoped would, according to his biographer, "control doctrinal debate among his brethren" and "intellectualize conservative Christian thought." (2) Most Southern Baptists received the journal well, and for years it stood as the denomination's single venue for academic scholarship.

For many years, William Owen Carver served as book review editor for The Baptist Review & Expositor. Born in Tennessee, with degrees from Richmond College and Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, Carver quickly became a revered professor at his alma mater, serving as chair of the department of Comparative Religions and Missions at the seminary. In 1907, Carver was instrumental in founding the Woman's Missionary Union Training School and was, by the second decade of the twentieth century, a well-known leader in the denomination. (3)

The Inside of the Cup

As book review editor of the journal, Carver took the liberty of reviewing many books himself. In the April 1914 issue, over ninety books received either a short notice or a full-fledged review, with Carver reviewing over a third of the books. The wide array of book topics he reviewed is astonishing. Everything from Harvard University professor George Moore's History of Religion to Vilhjalmur Stefannson's ethnographic study My Life With the Eskimo received his attention. One book, however, enjoyed by far the longest review of the issue, five times the length of a typical review. For nearly six pages, Carver critiqued the famous American writer Winston Churchill's 1913 novel, The Inside of the Cup.

Churchill can best be described as a successful novelist turned politician and social prophet. Rallying around the political ideals of progressivism, Churchill ran successfully in 1902 for the New Hampshire state legislature and unsuccessfully twice thereafter for the state's governorship. Churchill, a lifelong Episcopalian, determined early in his youth that religion could not answer the most pressing questions about the world; but by 1910, he had concluded that political and economic reforms could not cure the evils of contemporary society and he turned to religion for guidance. "From then on," his biographer stated, "Churchill devoted most of his time to preaching the new faith, a faith that would allow mankind to survive in an industrial world by inaugurating a utopia of social cooperation." (4) Churchill, in The Inside of the Cup, told the story of a rector who, when faced with the task of pastoring a high-class church in a downtrodden area, converted from orthodox Episcopalianism to liberal, social Christianity. (5)

Carver's lengthy review of The Inside of the Cup contained both praise and censure. Carver wrote, "I think that the author has acquired a remarkable familiarity with the modern situation in society and a quite unusual understanding of the relation of the Church to the intellectual and social situation of the present." (6) On the other hand, Carver chided Churchill for his useless "antagonisms to some of the facts of Christianity," which had no bearing on the book's thesis, and for his occasional interpretations of scripture in which "he misses both words and meaning." In conclusion, Carver advised his audience to read the book. He wrote, "One could wish that every minister and thinking laymen might read this book who desires the best for men and sees that the best lies only in the hope of Christianity." "It needs to be read with discrimination," he warned, "but so does everything that is worth reading." (7)

The Controversy Begins

Without a doubt, at least one of Carver's readers used discrimination in his reading and was shocked by the review. O. L. Hailey, pastor of Corsicana Baptist Church in Texas, fired off a letter to the Texas state paper, Baptist Standard, because, he said, "When I read [the review], I could scarcely believe my eyes." (8) In the review, Carver discussed in one full page Churchill's "groundless and violent opposition ... to the doctrine of the Virgin Birth of Jesus." He stated there was no purpose to the author's attack because in the grand scheme of things Jesus' being born of a virgin had no consequence. "As a dogma I would, perhaps, care no more for the Virgin Birth than would Mr. Churchill. As an explanation and a proof of the divinity of the Lord it is both insufficient and needless," he said. Carver pointed out that the virgin birth was "purely a question of fact." He stated that it was true that the story was omitted from Matthew's Gospel and that evidence clearly showed it "had been wrought into the text" in Luke and clearly did not mean much to first-century Christians. "There is no reason for being unduly agitated over it one way or the other," Carver concluded. Yet, as if he anticipated criticism from those holding the other position, he stated that the virgin birth tradition came into being because it was true and described the tradition as one with "fitness and beauty." (9)