Analysis: 1960-2019
Presented in Figs. 1 and 2 below are the titles of all topics identified along with the percent the Sermons or Presidential Addresses assigned to that topic for a given year. The top 50 words of each topic can be found in the supplemental material here. Titles have been created by hand based on the words and documents found in each topic.
Fig 1: The percent of each topic assigned to all sermons per year. The color assigned to each percent is shown in the color bar on the right, with the maximum value being set to 25%. The percents displayed next to the title of each topic represent its share of the total set of texts. The gray bars between sections represent the time periods of the different themes developed in this work. Values have been smoothed using a 10 year moving average.
Fig 2: The percent of each topic assigned to all Presidential Addresses per year. The color assigned to each percent is shown in the color bar on the right, with the maximum value being set to 25%. The percents displayed next to the title of each topic represent its share of the total set of texts. The gray bars between sections represent the time periods of the different themes developed in this work. Values have been smoothed using a 10 year moving average.
In general, 1960 appears to divide the topics identified in the sermons. Following this decade, the topics Glory of God and The Gospel are significantly less prominent, the use of Stories and Parables increases significantly, and the focus on the Significance of Christianity appears to give way to concern regarding the purpose of the Church, the SBC, and the broader culture of America. This basic distribution is largely mirrored in the presidential addresses as well, although since the earliest addresses analyzed are from 1950 it is impossible to know whether they exhibited a similar change in language.
The passages falling into the topic of Missions often celebrate the SBC's history of action, call for more support for missionaries, or celebrate the work God has done through the convention. Especially in the addresses, this often includes praise of specific SBC organizations or programs. Many of the texts most strongly aligned with this topic originate from calls in the 1970s to further support the Cooperative Program, the primary means by which many SBC churches contributed to the efforts of the convention. The focus on missions decreases substantially in the sermons after 1980 and in the addresses after 1990, though in recent decades preachers have been including more missional language in their sermons.
The sentiment captured in the topic The Church appears to largely include calls for the body of Christ to grow and thrive, particularly through more people joining via evangelism and baptism. This pairs with a focus on missions, as this effort is ultimately accomplished by the Church, as described in an excerpt from a 1969 sermon by Scott Tatum, reproduced below. Note that similar language is also employed in more modern passages falling into this topic.
Surely all of us can agree that the one thing uppermost in the mind of our Lord in giving his commissions to his disciples was the winning of individual persons to faith in Jesus Christ as Savior. Our primary assignment is to rescue souls from the hell of the here and now and the hell of the hereafter...
Jesus said, "The gates of Hell shall not prevail against my church." This reference, of course, is not to the defensive protection assured the church, but the promise of victory as the church moves out offensively. We are literally to storm the gates of hell to rescue sinners. The primary task of the church must always be evangelism. We are to win the lost to Jesus, whether they are neighbors in the same block or neighbors on the other side of the world.
After 1960, one finds references to Prayer alongside language related to Missions and The Church. Many of the passages assigned to this topic reference the prayers of historical figures, such as Jesus and Paul, or explicitly encourage the SBC to pray. Taken together, these three topics provide examples of how leaders in the SBC hoped to effect change in the convention and the world.
The topic The SBC captures language and words related to the convention itself. The significance of the topic may be artificially inflated because many of the addresses begin with the credentials of the president, most of whom have been involved in many SBC related organizations. However, the fact that this language decreases in prominence following the Conservative Resurgence, which began in 1979 and was largely complete in 1990, suggests that between 1960 and 1990 SBC leadership was focused on the convention itself more so than other years.
Additionally, during the Conservative Resurgence a large portion of the sermons (and to a lesser extend the addresses) included language related to the Bible. As described by the 1986 peace committee, the primary issue of this conflict was related to the question of how the Bible ought to be interpreted. Thus, it is very likely that this sudden and uncharacteristic interest in the Bible was caused by this conflict. In Figs. 1 and 2 one can see that after 1990, the focus on the Bible greatly decreases. This is particularly interesting because, as shown elsewhere on this site, it was after this period that Biblical language began to regularly appear in the SBC's resolutions, ultimately becoming a defining characteristic of these statements. It is possible, then, that after the success of the Resurgence, SBC leadership no longer saw a need to exhort the convention to hold to a particular view of Scripture.
The final topic to discuss is that of America. This is the only one which directly touches on political or social issues. Given the high volume of resolutions adopted by the SBC after 1960 to address perceived problems in American society and politics, it is significant that in these public, influential statements, the SBC's leadership has spoken comparatively few words. In general, the topic of America becomes consistently prominent in the Sermons after 1960 and remains relatively constant in the presidential addresses through the period studied.
The way America is referenced differs with the historical context. For example, in 1971, towards the end of the Vietnam War, John Claypool spoke to ``The Challenge of This Hour'' and softly critiqued American foreign policy, calling upon the Church to ``lead our nation in maturing.'' In 2004, Steve Gaines, identifying the threat of ``well-organized, militant, liberal groups in America,'' described the US as a divided nation, calling upon members of the SBC to be ``spiritual wall-builders.'' In 2016, Ronnie Floyd encouraged ``every Southern Baptist Layperson'' to be engaged in integrating faith ``on the front lines of our culture.''
This focus on America paired with a call to action mirrors the change seen in the resolutions. In the 1960s, the SBC began to more often use its public platform to address issues in society, actions by the American government, and to call for its members to be more engaged politically. It is possible that this focus on engagement is why the topic of Stories and Parables becomes so prominent in the sermons after 1980 and in the addresses after 2000, as appealing to emotion through personal stories and parables can be a very motivating rhetorical device.
