Church–State Entanglements in Southern Baptist Post-War Juvenile Delinquency Programs

Abstract

In 1947, Travis Freeman Epes of Richmond, Virginia, called on Southern Baptists to fight the growing epidemic of juvenile delinquency. Writing to prominent seminary professor J. B. Weatherspoon, Epes claimed “there will be money and workers IN ABUNDANCE if our top-ranking church leaders will promote a general plan in all churches on the basis of ‘Each Person Doing Some Church Work’.”1 Across the later 1940s and 1950s, Southern Baptists acted. They engaged with juvenile courts as voluntary court-assigned sponsors with the hopes of encouraging youthful offenders to live a Christian life. Southern Baptists cited a variety of causes for juvenile delinquency—including alcohol and comic books—but believed the core of the problem was spiritual: delinquents disregarded Sunday worship, and spiritual matters in general, and did not grow up in truly Christian homes.2 By 1949, the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) recommended “that our churches inaugurate community action to meet the challenge of this problem by sponsoring forums, panel discussions and fact-finding committees to study carefully the local situation.”3 The problem may have been “as old as mankind” but A. C. Miller of the SBC’s Christian Life Commission believed a comprehensive approach, one “made in terms of the spiritual values, the cultural habits, and the social structure of the total community” could provide remedy.4