Hello, my name's Layton Flowers. I'm with Sociology 101 and the director of apologetics for

Texas Baptist. I get the question quite often about the term traditionalism or traditionalist.

Why that label? Some people object, especially those among Southern Baptist who know the history

of Southern Baptist and know that many of the founders of the Southern Baptist Convention actually leaned a little bit more Calvinistically. And therefore, the question

becomes, well, why are you calling yourself a traditionalist if the earliest founders of the Southern

Baptist Convention tended to be, at least for the most part, Calvinistic. Well, the term

traditionalism doesn't necessarily connote the concept or idea of how something began. For example,

I may say, I'm going to the traditional worship service, which means that I'm going to a

worship service, not exactly how it started at the very beginning of the Southern Baptist

Church or the very beginning of the Southern Baptist Church or the very

beginning of church in history. It's just saying, you know, this is the most, this is the most

traditional way the worship service has been going over the last 20, 30, 40 years, 50 years or whatever.

And so traditional or the term traditional has never meant this is the way something started

necessarily.

It's just saying this is the most predominant view among Southern Baptists over the last, you know,

50 to 100 years or so.

And I think that's pretty verifiable with regard to sociology, that most Southern Baptists have

not been Calvinist, five-point Calvinist, over the last hundred years or more.

And traditionalists, the scholars among traditionalists, all recognize and acknowledge that there

have been two streams of sociological camps, both general and particular Baptist, from our

very beginnings.

And nobody denies that.

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