ABSTRACT
Mullins’s first objective was to reconcile the warring parties among the Southern Baptists. His second was to reconcile Southern Baptists with mainline Protestantism. He accomplished his first task by appropriating the Landmarkist language of ‘distinctives’. They used Baptist distinctives as a way of delineating themselves from their denominational rivals; Mullins accepted the term but filled it with new meaning. Where Landmarkers defined Baptist ‘distinctives’ in terms of a ‘high church ecclesiology’ centred on local churches, Mullins redefined the primary distinctive as ‘soul competency’, a concept for which he offered no biblical proof text.44 This was a classic liberal move, using traditional language in a new way. It was also a pan-Protestant move, for Protestant personalism was now in its heyday, and Mullins invited other Protestants to join his logical consistency by becoming moderate Baptists.45
