November (Web-only) 2005

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Former Southern Baptist Convention President Adrian Rogers, whose deep preaching voice was broadcast for decades and whose conservative leadership helped change the Southern Baptist Convention, died Tuesday, November 15, in a Memphis, Tenn., hospital.

Rogers, 74, had suffered recently from colon cancer and double pneumonia.

Credited as one of the pre-eminent preachers in his denomination and beyond, Rogers was the first Southern Baptist president in a conservative resurgence that began in 1979 in the nation's largest Protestant denomination.

"Few men have left such an impact on a church, a denomination and the larger world," said R. Albert Mohler Jr., president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky., writing on his website. "His personal defense of biblical inerrancy and the great truths of the gospel awakened a generation of Southern Baptists to a crisis in our midst—and he put his own ministry and reputation on the line for the sake of denominational recovery and reformation."

Rogers' emphasis on inerrancy—a belief that the Bible is without error—in heated annual Baptist conventions marked a turning point for the denomination.

"He understood that grass-roots Southern Baptists were going to be energized around this issue from the pulpit," said the Rev. Bill Leonard, dean of Wake Forest University Divinity School in Winston-Salem, N.C. "That rhetoric was necessary to articulate doctrine in ways that would galvanize them. And I say that as a moderate. I don't think moderates understood that in the beginning as clearly."

Rogers was elected president two other times, in 1986 and 1987, making him the only leader in recent history to serve in the post three times. He founded Love Worth Finding Ministries, ...