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Among the new facts are new faces. In New Mexico, for example, the Baptists have won masses of converts among technical workers from the North, Spanish-American immigrants, Indians. Working through motorized revival teams, cowboy camp meetings, and the world's largest outdoor religious encampment (at Glori-eta), New Mexico's Baptists often achieve a melting-pot atmosphere. Of a recent service, the Rev. Lewis Myers of Laguna says: "I was the preacher; the girl at the organ was Navaho; a Spanish woman led the singing, and in the congregation there were a number of Anglos and Laguna Indians, all sitting together, praying together and loving the Lord together."
Respectable Sin. The New Mexico experience is still far from typical over the South as a whole, but it is a sign that the oldtime isolation is breaking down. Perhaps most significant, it is breaking down in theology. For decades, while liberal theology was fashionable, the Baptists were considered hopelessly backward. Now Baptists themselves have become more liberal —notably in accepting more and more of a social gospel that includes everything from soup kitchens to safe-driving campaigns—but it is really the rest of Protestant Christianity that has moved the Baptists' way. For in the '305 began a new theological climate in which original sin was respectable again and fundamentalism was no longer a laughing matter. An old Baptist doctrine known as Landmark-ism,— which holds that man is helpless to save himself and must depend entirely on the grace of God, is re-emphasized in the writings of Swiss Theologian Karl Earth.
Other Protestant theologians have reasserted the importance of baptism (either in the Baptist or in other versions) as a Christian sacrament.
Along with theological isolation, geographical isolation is breaking down.
Southern Baptists still give the ecumenical movement and international organizations a wide berth. But Southern Baptists have ventured into Ted Adams' Baptist World Alliance (an international fellowship without power over its members), and they have become far more interested in their brethren abroad. Adams himself went to Russia this summer.
The Fact Remains. Probably the gravest problem facing Southern Baptism, and the area where change is slowest, is the segregation of the Negro. For all practical purposes, Southern Baptism is strictly black and white. There are cases of Baptist preachers being fired for daring to speak out against segregation.