‘Unofficial Boycott’ Hits Book Describing Baptist Controversy

Criterion Publications says that Baptist bookstore employees have indicated that an “unofficial boycott” is going on against a new book about the current controversy in the Southern Baptist Convention.

Its Sunday School Board has decided not to offer the book, “The Truth in Crisis” by the Rev. James C. Hefley of Hannibal-LaGrange College in Missouri, at the denomination’s convention next week in Atlanta, the publisher said.

The firm also said that steps apparently are being taken to limit access to the book at many of the denomination’s 60 retail book outlets.

(William S. Graham, bookstore division director of the Sunday School Board, said the decision not to sell the book at the annual meeting was in keeping with the board’s understanding of an appeal from the convention’s Peace Committee for Southern Baptists to avoid dissension.)

“I am appalled,” said Hefley, who terms the book an evenhanded account of the controversy over Bible interpretation that has torn the denomination into battling fundamentalist and moderate camps.