Albert Mohler’s darkest hour
For more than 30 years, Dr. R. Albert Mohler has been among the best known and most revered leaders in the Southern Baptist Convention, and when he chose to run for president of the country’s largest Protestant denomination, he was widely considered the favorite. But at their annual gathering this week, the 17,000 “messengers” in attendance declined to press the denominational laurels upon Mohler’s brow.
Mohler is the president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky — the denomination’s flagship school and one of the largest seminaries in the world. He was appointed to lead in 1993 at the age of 33. Not long afterward, he would be the chief architect in the SBC’s revision of its confession of faith, a document known as the “Baptist Faith and Message.”
From his post at SBTS, he branded himself as a conservative political commentator and theological watchdog, monitoring America’s “moral decline” and adjudicating cultural debates from a “biblical worldview.” Mohler appeared regularly on cable news television, blogged relentlessly and was named “the reigning intellectual of the evangelical movement in the U.S.” by Time magazine.