James Bulman and the North Carolina Baptist Controversies of the Mid-Twentieth Century

Abstract

This thesis examines the activities of pastor James Bulman in North Carolina during the mid-twentieth century. Bulman was a conservative Southern Baptist who responded to several controversies involving the Baptist State Convention of North Carolina. Bulman and others like him believed that the convention’s bureaucracy and educational institutions were both oppressive and liberal. Bulman responded by organizing a campaign to publicize these concerns to his fellow Baptists. His hope was to rally their support to challenge and reform the convention’s bureaucracy and educational institutions in order to restore them to traditional Baptist principles and beliefs. The purpose of this thesis is to demonstrate how and why Bulman’s campaign was one of the key predecessors of the Fundamentalist Takeover of the Southern Baptist Convention and its connection to the rise of the Religious Right.