The Southern Baptist Convention (SBC), alternatively the Great Commission Baptists (GCB), is a Christian denomination based in the United States. It is the world's largest Baptist denomination, and the largest Protestant and second-largest Christian denomination in the United States. In 1845 the Southern Baptists separated from the Triennial Convention in order to support slavery, which the southern churches regarded as "an institution of heaven". During the 19th and most of the 20th century, it played a central role in Southern racial attitudes, supporting racial segregation and the Lost Cause of the Confederacy while opposing interracial marriage. In 1995, the organization apologized for its history. Since the 1940s, it has spread across the United States, having member churches across the country and 41 affiliated state conventions.

Churches affiliated with the denomination are evangelical in doctrine and practice, emphasizing the significance of the individual conversion experience, which is affirmed by the person having complete immersion in water for a believer's baptism. The church says that other specific beliefs based on biblical interpretation can vary by congregational polity, and has resolved to balance local church autonomy with accountability against abuses by ministers and others in the church. These claims are disputed by pastors whose churches have been expelled because of their support for LGBTQ inclusion, which contradicts its confession of faith. The denomination forbids women from becoming ministers, and denounces same-sex marriage as an "abomination". Like most other conservative evangelical denominations in the 1960s, the Southern Baptist Convention initially predominately supported the abortion rights movement, but that changed beginning in the 1970s as a political tactic to incorporate Catholics into the religious right.

In 2018, investigations showed that the organization suppressed reports of sexual abuse and protected over 700 accused ministers and church workers. In 2022, a report indicated church leaders had stonewalled and disparaged clergy sex abuse survivors for nearly two decades; reform efforts had been met with criticism or dismissal from other organization leaders; and known abusers had been allowed to keep their positions without informing their local churches. On August 12, 2022, the denomination announced that it was facing a federal investigation into the scandal.

Self-reported membership peaked in 2006 at roughly 16 million. Membership has contracted by an estimated 13.6% since that year, with 2020 marking the 14th year of continuous decline. Mean denomination-wide weekly attendance dropped about 27% between 2006 and 2020.

Name
The official name is the Southern Baptist Convention. The word Southern in "Southern Baptist Convention" stems from its having been organized in 1845 in Augusta, Georgia, by white Baptists in the Southern United States who supported continuing the institution of slavery and split from the northern Baptists (known today as the American Baptist Churches USA), who did not support funding slave-holding evangelists from the South.

In 2012, the organization adopted the descriptor Great Commission Baptists after the election of its first African American president. Additionally, in 2020, some leaders of the Southern Baptists wanted to change its name to "Great Commission Baptists" to distance itself from its white supremacist foundation, and because it is no longer a specifically Southern church. Several churches affiliated with the denomination have also begun to identify as "Great Commission Baptists".

History

Colonial era

Most early Baptists in the British colonies came from England in the 17th century, after conflict with the Church of England for their dissenting religious views. In 1638, Roger Williams founded the first Baptist church in British America at the Providence Plantations, the first permanent European American settlement also founded by Williams in Rhode Island. The oldest Baptist church in the South, First Baptist Church of Charleston, South Carolina, was organized in 1682 under the leadership of William Screven. A Baptist church was formed in Virginia in 1715 through the preaching of Robert Norden and another in North Carolina in 1727 through the ministry of Paul Palmer.

The Baptists adhered to a congregationalist polity and operated independently of the state-established Anglican churches in the South, at a time when non-Anglicans were prohibited from holding political office. By 1740, about eight Baptist churches existed in the colonies of Virginia, North Carolina, and South Carolina, with an estimated 300 to 400 members. New members, both black and white, were converted chiefly by Baptist preachers who traveled throughout the South during the 18th and 19th centuries, in the eras of the First and Second Great Awakenings.

Black churches were founded in Virginia, South Carolina, and Georgia before the American Revolution. Some black congregations kept their independence even after whites tried to exercise more authority after the Nat Turner slave rebellion of 1831.

American Revolution period
Before the American Revolution, Baptist and Methodist evangelicals in the South promoted the view of the common man's equality before God, which embraced slaves and free blacks. They challenged the hierarchies of class and race and urged planters to abolish slavery. They welcomed slaves as Baptists and accepted them as preachers.

During this time, there was a sharp division between the austerity of the plain-living Baptists, attracted initially from yeomen and common planters, and the opulence of the Anglican planters, the slave-holding elite who controlled local and colonial government in what had become a slave society by the late 18th century. The gentry interpreted Baptist church discipline as political radicalism, but it served to ameliorate disorder. The Baptists intensely monitored each other's moral conduct, watching especially for sexual transgressions, cursing, and excessive drinking; they expelled members who would not reform.

In Virginia and in most southern colonies before the American Revolution, the Church of England was the established church and supported by general taxes, as it was in England. It opposed the rapid spread of Baptists in the South. Particularly in Virginia, many Baptist preachers were prosecuted for "disturbing the peace" by preaching without licenses from the Anglican Church. Patrick Henry and James Madison defended Baptist preachers before the American Revolution in cases considered significant in the history of religious freedom. In 1779, Thomas Jefferson wrote the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, enacted in 1786 by the Virginia General Assembly. Madison later applied his ideas and those of the Virginia document related to religious freedom during the Constitutional Convention, when he ensured that they were incorporated into the national constitution.

The struggle for religious tolerance erupted and played out during the American Revolution, as the Baptists worked to disestablish the Anglican churches in the South. The Baptists protested vigorously; the resulting social disorder resulted chiefly from the ruling gentry's disregard for public need. The vitality of the religious opposition made the conflict between "evangelical" and "gentry" styles a bitter one. Scholarship suggests that the evangelical movement's strength determined its ability to mobilize power outside the conventional authority structure.

National unification and regional division

In 1814, leaders such as Luther Rice helped Baptists unify nationally under what became known informally as the Triennial Convention (because it met every three years) based in Philadelphia. It allowed them to join their resources to support missions abroad. The Home Mission Society, affiliated with the Triennial Convention, was established in 1832 to support missions in U.S. frontier territories. By the mid-19th century, there were many social, cultural, economic, and political differences among business owners of the North, farmers of the West, and planters of the South. The most divisive conflict was primarily over the issue of slavery and secondarily over missions.

Divisions over slavery

The issues surrounding slavery dominated the 19th century in the United States. This created tension between Baptists in northern and southern U.S. states over the issue of manumission. In the two decades after the American Revolution during the Second Great Awakening, northern Baptist preachers (as well as the Quakers and Methodists) increasingly argued that slaves be freed. Although most Baptists in the 19th century south were yeomen farmers and common planters, the Baptists also began to attract major planters among their membership. The southern pastors interpreted the Bible as supporting slavery and encouraged paternalistic practices by slaveholders. They preached to slaves to accept their places and obey their masters, and welcomed slaves and free blacks as members, though whites controlled the churches' leadership, and seating was usually segregated. From the early 19th century, many Baptist preachers in the South also argued in favor of preserving the right of ministers to be slaveholders.

Black congregations were sometimes the largest in their regions. For instance, by 1821, Gillfield Baptist in Petersburg, Virginia, had the largest congregation within the Portsmouth Association. At 441 members, it was more than twice as large as the next-biggest church. Before the Nat Turner slave rebellion of 1831, Gillfield had a black preacher. Afterward, the state legislature insisted that white men oversee black congregations. Gillfield could not call a black preacher until after the American Civil War and emancipation. After Turner's rebellion, whites worked to exert more control over black congregations and passed laws requiring white ministers to lead or be present at religious meetings. Many slaves evaded these restrictions.

The Triennial Convention and the Home Mission Society adopted a kind of neutrality concerning slavery, neither condoning nor condemning it. During the "Georgia Test Case" of 1844, the Georgia State Convention proposed that the slaveholder Elder James E. Reeve be appointed as a missionary. The Foreign Mission Board refused to approve his appointment, recognizing the case as a challenge and not wanting to violate their neutrality on slavery. They said that slavery should not be introduced as a factor into deliberations about missionary appointments.

In 1844, University of Alabama president Basil Manly Sr., a prominent preacher and major planter who owned 40 slaves, drafted the "Alabama Resolutions" and presented them to the Triennial Convention. They included the demand that slaveholders be eligible for denominational offices to which the Southern associations contributed financially. They were not adopted. Georgia Baptists decided to test the claimed neutrality by recommending a slaveholder to the Home Mission Society as a missionary. The Home Mission Society's board refused to appoint him, noting that missionaries were not allowed to take servants with them (so he clearly could not take slaves) and that they would not make a decision that appeared to endorse slavery. Southern Baptists considered this an infringement of their right to determine their own candidates. From the southern perspective, the northern position that "slaveholding brethren were less than followers of Jesus" effectively obligated slaveholding Southerners to leave the fellowship. This difference came to a head in 1845 when representatives of the northern states refused to appoint missionaries whose families owned slaves. To continue in the work of missions, the southern Baptists separated and created the Southern Baptist Convention.

Missions and organization

A secondary issue that disturbed the Southerners was the perception that the American Baptist Home Mission Society did not appoint a proportionate number of missionaries to the South. This was likely a result of the society's not appointing slave owners as missionaries. Baptists in the North preferred a loosely structured society of individuals who paid annual dues, with each society usually focused on a single ministry.

Baptists in Southern churches preferred a more centralized organization of churches patterned after their associations, with a variety of ministries brought under the direction of one denominational organization. The increasing tensions and the discontent of Baptists from the South over national criticism of slavery and issues over missions led to their withdrawal from national Baptist organizations.

The Southern Baptists met at the First Baptist Church of Augusta in May 1845. At this meeting, they created a new convention—the Southern Baptist Convention. They elected William Bullein Johnson (1782–1862) as its first president. He had served as president of the Triennial Convention in 1841, though he initially attempted to avoid a schism.

Formation and separation of Black Baptists

African Americans had gathered in their own churches early on, in 1774 in Petersburg, Virginia, and in Savannah, Georgia, in 1788. Some were established after 1800 on the frontier, such as the First African Baptist Church of Lexington, Kentucky. In 1824, it was accepted by the Elkhorn Association of Kentucky, which was white-dominated. By 1850, First African had 1,820 members, the largest of any Baptist church in the state, Black or white. In 1861, it had 2,223 members.

Southern whites generally required Black churches to have white ministers and trustees. In churches with mixed congregations, seating was segregated, with Blacks out of sight, often in a balcony. White preaching often emphasized Biblical stipulations that enslaved people should accept their places and try to behave well toward their masters. After the American Civil War, another split occurred when most freedmen set up independent black congregations, regional associations, and state and national conventions. Black people wanted to practice Christianity independently of white supervision. They interpreted the Bible as offering hope for deliverance, and saw their own exodus out of enslavement as comparable to the Exodus, with abolitionist John Brown as their Moses. They quickly left white-dominated churches and associations and set up separate state Baptist conventions. In 1866, Black Baptists of the South and West combined to form the Consolidated American Baptist Convention. In 1895, they merged three national conventions to create the National Baptist Convention, USA. With more than eight million members, it is today the largest African American religious organization and second in size to the Southern Baptists.

Free Black people in the North had founded churches and denominations in the early 19th century that were independent of white-dominated organizations. In the Reconstruction era, missionaries both Black and white from several northern denominations worked in the South; they quickly attracted tens and hundreds of thousands of new members from among the millions of freedmen. The African Methodist Episcopal Church attracted more new members than any other denomination. White Southern Baptist churches lost Black members to the new denominations, as well as to independent congregations which were organized by freedmen.

In 1964, Addie Davis became the first ordained female pastor in the Convention.

During the civil rights movement, most Southern Baptist pastors and members of their congregations rejected racial integration and accepted white supremacy, further alienating African Americans. According to historian and former Southern Baptist Wayne Flynt, "The [Southern Baptist] church was the last bastion of segregation." But it has been acknowledged that the SBC integrated seminary classrooms in 1951.

In 1995, the convention voted to adopt a resolution in which it renounced its racist roots and apologized for its past defense of slavery, segregation, and white supremacy. This marked the denomination's first formal acknowledgment that racism had played a profound role in both its early and modern history.

Increasing diversity and policy changes

By the early 21st century, numbers of ethnically diverse congregations were increasing among the Southern Baptists. In 2008, almost 20% were estimated to be majority African American, Asian, or Hispanic and Latino. The SBC had an estimated one million African American members. It has passed a series of resolutions recommending the inclusion of more black members and appointing more African American leaders. At its 2012 annual meeting, it elected Pastor Fred Luter of the Franklin Avenue Baptist Church as its first African American president. He had earned respect by showing leadership skills in building a large congregation in New Orleans.

The SBC's increasingly national scope inspired some members to suggest a name change. In 2005, proposals were made at the SBC Annual Meeting to change the name to the more national-sounding "North American Baptist Convention" or "Scriptural Baptist Convention" (to retain the SBC initials). These proposals were defeated.

The messengers of the 2012 annual meeting in New Orleans voted to adopt the descriptor "Great Commission Baptists". The legal name remained "Southern Baptist Convention", but affiliated churches and convention entities could voluntarily use the descriptor.

Almost a year after the Charleston church shooting, the denomination approved a resolution that called upon member churches and families to stop flying the Confederate flag.

The church approved a resolution, "On Refugee Ministry", encouraging member churches and families to welcome refugees coming to the United States. In the same convention, Russell Moore of the Southern Baptist Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission quickly responded to a pastor who asked why a member should support the right of Muslims living in the U.S. to build mosques. Moore responded, "Sometimes we have to deal with questions that are really complicated... this isn't one of them." Moore said that religious freedom must be for all religions.

From February to June 2016, the denomination collaborated with the National Baptist Convention, USA on racial reconciliation. SBC-GCB and NBC presidents Ronnie Floyd and Jerry Young assembled 10 pastors from each convention in 2015, discussing race relations; in 2016, Baptist Press and The New York Times revealed tension among National Baptists debating any collaboration with Southern Baptists, quoting NBC President Young:

After an initial resolution denouncing the alt-right movement failed to make it the convention floor, the denomination officially denounced the alt-right movement at the 2017 convention. On November 5, 2017, a mass shooting took place at the First Baptist Church of Sutherland Springs. It was the deadliest shooting to occur at any affiliated church in its history and, in modern history, at an American place of worship.

In 2020, the denomination's convention was canceled due to COVID-19 concerns and eventually rescheduled for June 2021.

In a Washington Post story dated September 15, 2020, Greear said some Southern Baptist Convention leaders wanted to change the official name of the church to "Great Commission Baptists" (GCB), to distance the church from its support of slavery and because it is no longer just a Southern church. Since then, several leaders and churches have begun adopting the alternative descriptor for their churches.

Doctrine

The general theological perspective of the denomination's churches is represented in the Baptist Faith and Message (BF&M). The BF&M was first drafted in 1925 as a revision of the 1833 New Hampshire Confession of Faith. It was revised significantly in 1963, amended in 1998 with the addition of one new section on the family, and revised again in 2000. The 1998 and 2000 changes were the subject of much controversy, particularly in regard to the role of women in the church.

The BF&M is not considered a creed, such as the Nicene Creed. Members are not required to adhere to it, and churches and state conventions belonging to the global body are not required to use it as their statement of faith or doctrine, though many do in lieu of creating their own statement. Nevertheless, key leaders, faculty in denomination-owned seminaries, and missionaries who apply to serve through the various missionary agencies must affirm that their practices, doctrine, and preaching are consistent with the BF&M.

In 2012, a LifeWay Research survey of the denomination's pastors found that 30% of churches identified with the labels Calvinist or Reformed, while 30% identified with the labels Arminian or Wesleyan. LifeWay Research President Ed Stetzer said, "historically, many Baptists have considered themselves neither Calvinist nor Arminian, but holding a unique theological approach not framed well by either category". The survey also found that 60% of its pastors were concerned about Calvinism's impact within the convention. Nathan Finn writes that the debate over Calvinism has "periodically reignited with increasing intensity" and that non-Calvinists "seem to be especially concerned with the influence of Founders Ministries" while Calvinists "seem to be particularly concerned with the influence of revivalism and Keswick theology."

Historically, the denomination has not considered glossolalia or other Charismatic beliefs to be in accordance with Scriptural teaching, though the BF&M does not mention the subject. In 2015, the International Mission Board lifted a ban on glossolalia for its missionaries, while reaffirming that it should not be taught as normative.

Position statements

In addition to the BF&M, the denomination has also issued position statements affirming the autonomy of the local church; identifying the Cooperative Program of missions as integral to the denomination; that statements of belief are revisable in light of Scripture, though the Bible is the final word; honoring the indigenous principle in missions without compromising doctrine or its identity for missional opportunities; that laypersons have the same right as ordained ministers to communicate with God, interpret Scripture, and minister in Christ's name; that "At the moment of conception, a new being enters the universe, a human being, a being created in God's image", who as such should be protected regardless of the circumstances of the conception; that God's plan for marriage and sexual intimacy is a lifetime relationship of one man and one woman, rejecting homosexuality; understanding the Bible to forbid any form of extramarital sexual relations; affirming the accountability of each person before God; and that women are not eligible to serve as pastors.

In 2022, it passed a resolution against prosperity theology, which it considers a distortion of the message of the Bible.

Abortion
Like other conservative evangelical denominations, the Southern Baptist position on abortion has changed significantly over time, evolving from general acceptance to opposition.

In 1971, the SBC passed a resolution urging a loosening of abortion laws in the United States, stating:Be it further resolved, that we call upon Southern Baptists to work for legislation that will allow the possibility of abortion under such conditions as rape, incest, clear evidence of severe fetal deformity, and carefully ascertained evidence of the likelihood of damage to the emotional, mental, and physical health of the mother.In 1973, a "poll conducted by the Baptist Standard news journal found that 90 percent of Texas Baptists believed their state's abortion laws were too restrictive".

During this era, a majority of Southern Baptists, including conservatives within the denomination, supported the expansion of abortion rights, seeing it as a matter of religious liberty, what they saw as a lack of biblical condemnation, and belief in non-intrusive government. Initial reaction among Southern Baptists and evangelicals to the Roe v. Wade decision was one of support or indifference; they overwhelmingly viewed anti-abortion movements as a sectarian and Catholic concern. By the mid-1970s, this began to change, as political strategists sought to use the issue of abortion as a political tactic to incorporate traditionalist Catholics together with Southern evangelicals in order to prevent segregation academies from being racially integrated. Southern Baptist opinion on abortion began to substantially change against abortion in subsequent years. Today, the SBC strongly opposes abortion.

Gender-based roles
Officially, the denomination subscribes to the complementarian view of gender roles. Beginning in the early 1970s, as a reaction to their perceptions of various "women's liberation movements", the church, along with several other historically conservative Baptist groups, began to assert its view of the propriety and primacy of what it deemed "traditional gender roles" as a body. In 1973, at the annual meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention, delegates passed a resolution that read in part: "Man was not made for woman, but the woman for the man. Woman is the glory of man. Woman would not have existed without man." In 1998, the convention appended a male leadership understanding of marriage to the 1963 version of the Baptist Faith and Message, with an official amendment: Article XVIII, "The Family". In 2000, it revised the document to reflect support for a male-only pastorate with no mention of the office of deacon.

In the pastorate and marriage
In 1984, when it had about 250 women pastors, the Convention adopted a resolution affirming the exclusion of women from pastoral leadership.

Since 1987, various local associations and regional conventions have considered churches that have authorized the pastoral ministry of women to not be in friendly cooperation (or "disfellowshipped"), without the intervention of the national convention on the subject.

By explicitly defining the pastoral office as the exclusive domain of males, the 2000 BF&M provision became the Southern Baptist's first-ever official position against women pastors. As individual churches affiliated with the organization are autonomous, churches cannot be forced to adopt a male-only pastorate.

Some churches that have installed women as their pastors have been disfellowshipped from membership in their local associations; a smaller number have been disfellowshipped from their affiliated state conventions. In February 2023, the Executive Committee for the first time deemed five churches that had appointed women pastors to not be in friendly cooperation. In June 2023, when two churches requested a review of the decision on this subject, 88% of church representatives at the annual convention voted to uphold the decision. American Reformer magazine estimated the convention would have 1,844 female pastors in 2023.

The crystallization of the church's positions on gender roles and restrictions of women's participation in the pastorate contributed to the decision by members now belonging to the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, which broke from the convention in 1991. Another denomination that broke off, the Alliance of Baptists, also accepts women's ordination.

The 2000 BF&M prescribes a husband-headship authority structure, closely following the apostle Paul's exhortations in :

Ordinances

Southern/Great Commission Baptists observe two ordinances: the Lord's Supper and believer's baptism (also known as credo-baptism, from the Latin for "I believe"). Furthermore, they hold the historic Baptist belief that immersion is the only valid mode of baptism. The Baptist Faith and Message describes baptism as a symbolic act of obedience and a testimony of the believer's faith in Jesus Christ to other people. The BF&M also notes that baptism is a precondition to congregational church membership.

The BF&M holds to memorialism, the belief that the Lord's Supper is a symbolic act of obedience in which believers commemorate the death of Christ and look forward to his Second Coming. Individual churches are free to practice either open or closed communion (due to the convention's belief in congregational polity and the autonomy of the local church), but most practice open communion. For the same reason, the frequency of observance of the Lord's Supper varies from church to church. It is commonly observed quarterly, but some churches offer it monthly and a small minority offers it weekly. Because the organization has traditionally opposed alcoholic beverage consumption by members, grape juice is used instead of wine.

Worship

Most members observe a low church form of worship, which is less formal and uses no stated liturgy. The form of the worship services generally depend on whether the congregation uses a traditional service or a contemporary one, or a mix of both—the main differences being with regards to music and the response to the sermon.

In both types of services, there will be a prayer at the opening of the service, before the sermon, and at closing. Offerings are taken, which may be around the middle of the service or at the end (with the increased popularity of electronic financial systems, some churches operate kiosks allowing givers the opportunity to do so online, or through a phone app or website link). Responsive Scripture readings are not common, but may be done on a special occasion.

In a traditional service, the music generally features hymns, accompanied by a piano or organ (the latter has been generally phased out due to a shift in worship preferences) and sometimes with a special featured soloist or choir. Smaller churches generally let anyone participate in the choir regardless of actual singing ability; larger churches will limit participation to those who have successfully tried out for a role. After the sermon, an invitation to respond (sometimes termed an altar call) might be given; people may respond during the invitation by receiving Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior and beginning Christian discipleship, seeking baptism or requesting to join the congregation, or entering into vocational ministry or making some other publicly stated decision. Baptisms may be scheduled on specific weekends, or (especially in buildings with built-in baptisteries) be readily available for anyone desiring baptism.

In a contemporary service, the music generally features modern songs led by a praise team or similarly named group with featured singers. Choirs are not as common. An altar call may or may not be given at the end; if it is not, interested persons are directed to seek out people in the lobby who can address any questions. Baptismal services are usually scheduled as specific and special events. Also, church membership is usually done on a periodic basis by attending specific classes about the church's history, beliefs, what it seeks to accomplish, and what is expected of a prospective member. Controversially, a member may be asked to sign a "membership covenant", a document that has the prospective member promise to perform certain tasks (regular church attendance both at main services and small groups, regular giving—sometimes even requiring tithing, and service within the church). Such covenants are highly controversial: among other things, such a covenant may not permit a member to voluntarily withdraw from membership to avoid church discipline or, in some cases, the member cannot leave at all (even when not under discipline) without the approval of church leadership. A Dallas/Fort Worth church was forced to apologize to a member who attempted to do so for failing to request permission to annul her marriage after her husband admitted to viewing child pornography.

Race
During the 19th and most of the 20th century, the organization supported white supremacy, racial segregation, the Confederacy, and the Lost Cause. The organization also denounced interracial marriage as an "abomination", citing the Bible. With the advent of the civil rights movement in the 20th century, it officially denounced racism and its white supremacist history. Following the election of the organization's first black president in the 21st century, the Southern Baptist Convention adopted the "Great Commission Baptists" descriptor, which began to gain prominent use among several churches desiring to sever themselves from its white supremacist history and controversies.

Although racism and white supremacy were denounced, and efforts to reconcile with minorities have been made, racism has continued to persist among the denomination's churches and affiliated organizations. In 2012, an African American couple in Crystal Springs, Mississippi attending an affiliated church were prevented from being married in that church because they were black. The church's pastor was threatened with being voted out if he hosted the wedding at the church (the pastor performed the ceremony at a different church). By November 2020, the six convention seminary presidents called critical race theory "unbiblical" and emphasized the need to turn not to secular ideas to confront racism, but to the Word of God in the love of Christ. At least four African American churches left the denomination over the leadership's refusal to recognize critical race theory.

Statistics

Membership

According to a denomination census released in 2023, the organization claimed 47,198 churches, 3.8 million in weekly worship attendance and 13,223,122 members.

The global convention has more than 1,161 local associations and 41 state conventions, and fellowships covering all fifty states and territories of the United States. The five U.S. states with the highest rates of membership are Texas, Georgia, North Carolina, Florida, and Tennessee. Texas has the largest number of members with an estimated 2.75 million. Within Texas, these are divided among the more traditionalist Southern Baptists of Texas Convention and more moderate, diversified Baptist General Convention of Texas; the Baptist General Convention of Texas, or the Texas Baptists, are also more financially and organizationally autonomous from the primary convention in contrast to most state conventions.

Through the Cooperative Program, Southern/Great Commission Baptists support thousands of missionaries in the United States and worldwide.

Trends
Data from church sources and independent surveys indicate that since 1990 membership of Southern Baptist churches has declined as a proportion of the American population. Historically, the convention grew throughout its history until 2007, when membership decreased by a net figure of nearly 40,000 members. The total membership, of about 16.2 million, was flat over the same period, falling by 38,482 or 0.2%. An important indicator for the health of the denomination is new baptisms, which have decreased every year for seven of the last eight years. , they had reached their lowest levels since 1987. Membership continued to decline from 2008 to 2012. The convention's statistical summary of 2014 recorded a loss of 236,467 members, their biggest one-year decline since 1881. In 2018, membership fell below 15 million for the first time since 1989 and reached its lowest level for over 30 years.

This decline in membership and baptisms has prompted some SBC researchers to describe the convention as a "denomination in decline". In 2008, former SBC president Frank Page suggested that if current conditions continue, half of all the convention's churches will close their doors permanently by 2030. This assessment was supported by a 2004 survey of SBC churches that found that the membership of 70% of SBC churches is declining or has plateaued.

The decline in membership was discussed at the June 2008 Annual Convention. Curt Watke, a former researcher for the organization, noted four reasons for the decline of the church based on his research: the increase in immigration by non-European groups, decline in growth among predominantly European American (white) churches, the aging of the current membership, and a decrease in the proportion of younger generations participating in any church life. Some believe that the Baptists have not worked sufficiently to attract minorities.

On the other hand, the state conventions of Mississippi and Texas report an increasing proportion of minority members. In 1990, 5% of congregations were non-white. In 2012, the proportion of congregations that were of other ethnic groups (African American, Latino, and Asian) had increased to 20%. Sixty percent of the minority congregations were in Texas, particularly in the suburbs of Houston and Dallas. In 2020, an estimated 22.3% of affiliated churches were non-white.

The decline in SBC-GCB membership may be more pronounced than these statistics indicate because Baptist churches are not required to remove inactive members from their rolls, likely leading to greatly inflated membership numbers. In addition, hundreds of large moderate congregations have shifted their primary allegiance to other Baptist groups, such as the American Baptist Churches USA, the Alliance of Baptists or the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, but have continued to remain on the convention's books. Their members are thus counted in the convention's totals although these churches no longer participate in the annual convention meetings or make more than the minimum financial contributions.

In some cases, groups have withdrawn from the convention because of its conservative trends. On November 6, 2000, the Baptist General Convention of Texas voted to cut its contributions to Southern Baptist seminaries and reallocate more than $5 million to three theological seminaries in the state that members believed were more moderate. These included the Hispanic Baptist Theological School in San Antonio, Baylor University's George W. Truett Theological Seminary in Waco, and Hardin–Simmons University's Logsdon School of Theology in Abilene. Since the controversies of the 1980s, more than 20 theological or divinity programs directed toward moderate and progressive Baptists have been established in the Southeast. In addition to Texas, schools in Virginia, Georgia, North Carolina and Alabama were established in the 1990s. These include the Baptist Theological Seminary in Richmond, McAfee School of Theology of Mercer University in Atlanta, Wake Forest, Gardner Webb and Campbell Divinity schools in North Carolina, and Beeson Divinity School at Samford University. These schools contributed to the flat and declining enrollment at seminaries operating in the same region of the United States. Texas and Virginia have the largest state conventions identified as moderate in theological approach.

On June 4, 2020, the organization reported a drop in its membership—the 13th consecutive year that membership has declined. Total membership in the church fell almost 2% to 14,525,579 from 2018 to 2019. In 2022, the church lost another 457,371 members (the largest drop in over a century) to 13,223,122, a similar level as the late 1970s.

Organization
The denomination has four levels of organization: the local congregation, the local association, the state convention, and the national convention. There are 41 affiliated state conventions or fellowships.

The national and state conventions and local associations are conceived as a cooperative association by which churches can voluntarily pool resources to support missionary and other work. Because of the basic Baptist principle of the autonomy of the local church and the congregationalist polity of the denomination, neither the national convention nor the state conventions or local associations has any administrative or ecclesiastical control over local churches; such a group may disfellowship a local congregation over an issue, but may not terminate its leadership or members or force its closure. The national convention has no authority over state conventions or local associations, nor do state conventions have authority over local associations. Furthermore, no individual congregation has any authority over any other individual congregation; a church may oversee another congregation voluntarily as a mission work, but that other congregation has the right to become an independent congregation at any time.

The national convention maintains a central administrative organization in Nashville, Tennessee. Its executive committee exercises authority and control over seminaries and other institutions owned by the national convention.

The national convention had around 10,000 ethnic churches as of 2008. Commitment to the autonomy of local churches was the primary force behind its executive committee's rejection of a proposal to create a convention-wide database of clergy accused of sexual crimes against congregants or other minors in order to stop the "recurring tide" of clergy sexual abuse within affiliated congregations. A 2009 study by Lifeway Christian Resources, the convention's research and publishing arm, revealed that one in eight background checks for potential volunteers or workers in churches revealed a history of crime that could have prevented them from working.

The denominational statement of faith, the Baptist Faith and Message, is not binding on churches or members due to the autonomy of the local church (though national convention employees and missionaries must agree to its views as a condition of employment or missionary support). Politically and culturally, Southern/Great Commission Baptists tend to be conservative. Most oppose homosexual activity and abortion.

Pastor and deacon
Generally, Baptists recognize only two scriptural offices: pastor-teacher and deacon. The convention passed a resolution in the early 1980s recognizing that offices requiring ordination are restricted to men. According to the Baptist Faith and Message, the office of pastor is limited to men based on certain New Testament scriptures.

Annual meeting

The annual meeting (held in June, over a two-day period) consists of delegates (called "messengers") from cooperating churches. The messengers confer and determine the programs, policies, and budget of the convention, and elect the officers and committees. Each cooperating church is allowed up to two messengers regardless of the amount given to convention entities, and may have more depending on the amount of giving (either in terms of dollars or percent of the church's budget), but the maximum number of messengers permitted from any church is 12.

Missions and affiliated organizations

Cooperative Program
The Cooperative Program (CP) is the organization's unified funds collection and distribution program for the support of regional, national and international ministries; the CP is funded by contributions from affiliated congregations.

In the fiscal year ending September 30, 2008, the local congregations of the denomination reported gift receipts of $11.1 billion. From this they sent $548 million, approximately five percent, to their state Baptist conventions through the CP. Of this amount, the state Baptist conventions retained $344 million for their work. Two hundred and four million dollars was sent on to the national CP budget for the support of denomination-wide ministries.

Missions agencies
The denomination was organized in 1845 primarily for the purpose of creating a mission board to support the sending of Baptist missionaries, albeit slaveholding missionaries. The North American Mission Board, or NAMB, (founded as the Domestic Mission Board, and later the Home Mission Board) in Alpharetta, Georgia serves missionaries involved in evangelism and church planting in the U.S. and Canada, while the International Mission Board, or IMB, (originally the Foreign Mission Board) in Richmond, Virginia, sponsors missionaries to the rest of the world.

Baptist Men is the mission organization for men in the convention's churches, and is under the North American Mission Board.

The Woman's Missionary Union, founded in 1888, is an auxiliary to the national convention, which helps facilitate two large annual missions offerings: the Annie Armstrong Easter Offering (for North American missions) and the Lottie Moon Christmas Offering (for international missions).

Southern Baptist Disaster Relief

Among the more visible organizations within the North American Mission Board is Southern Baptist Disaster Relief. In 1967, a small group of Texas Southern Baptist volunteers helped victims of Hurricane Beulah by serving hot food cooked on small "buddy burners". In 2005, volunteers responded to 166 named disasters, prepared 17,124,738 meals, repaired 7,246 homes, and removed debris from 13,986 yards. Southern Baptist Disaster Relief provides many different types: food, water, child care, communication, showers, laundry, repairs, rebuilding, or other essential tangible items that contribute to the resumption of life following the crisis—and the message of the Gospel. All assistance is provided to individuals and communities free of charge. SBC DR volunteer kitchens prepare much of the food distributed by the Red Cross in major disasters.

Southern Baptist Association of Christian Schools
The SBC has various affiliated primary and secondary schools, gathered in the Southern Baptist Association of Christian Schools.

Universities and colleges

The SBC has several affiliated universities.

Seminaries

The national convention directly supports six theological seminaries devoted to ministry preparation.

 Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, Louisville, Kentucky (1859, originally in Greenville, South Carolina)
 Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, Fort Worth, Texas (1908, originally part of Baylor University in Waco, Texas).
 New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary, New Orleans, Louisiana (1916, originally New Orleans Baptist Bible Institute)
 Gateway Seminary, Ontario, California (1944, originally in Oakland, California, and formerly called Golden Gate Baptist Theological Seminary)
 Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, Wake Forest, North Carolina (1950)
 Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, Kansas City, Missouri (1957)

Other organizations
Other notable organizations under the national convention include Baptist Press, the nation's largest Christian news service, established by the convention in 1946; Baptist Collegiate Network, the college-level organization operating campus and international missions typically known as the Baptist Student Union and Baptist Collegiate Ministries; GuideStone Financial Resources (formerly called the Annuity Board of the Southern Baptist Convention, and founded in 1918 as the Relief Board of the Southern Baptist Convention), which provides insurance, retirement, and investment services to churches, ministers, and employees of affiliated churches and agencies (it does not limit its services to member churches and members); LifeWay Christian Resources, founded as the Baptist Sunday School Board in 1891, one of the nation's largest Christian publishing houses, which previously operated the "LifeWay Christian Stores" (formerly "Baptist Book Stores") until closing physical stores in 2019; Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission (formerly known as the Christian Life Commission of the SBC), dedicated to addressing social and moral concerns and their implications on public policy issues from city hall to Congress and the courts; and the Southern Baptist Historical Library and Archives, in Nashville, Tennessee, the official depository for the denomination's archives and a research center for the study of Baptists worldwide. The SBHLA website includes digital resources.

Controversies
During its history, the organization has had several periods of major internal controversy—from its establishment to the present day.

Landmark controversy
In the 1850s–1860s, a group of young activists called for a return to certain early practices, or what they called Landmarkism. Other leaders disagreed with their assertions, and the Baptist congregations became split on the issues. Eventually, the disagreements led to the formation of Gospel Missions and the American Baptist Association (1924), as well as many unaffiliated independent churches. One historian called the related James Robinson Graves—Robert Boyte Crawford Howell controversy (1858–60) the greatest to affect the denomination before that of the late 20th century involving the fundamentalist-moderate break.

Whitsitt controversy
In the Whitsitt controversy of 1896–99, William H. Whitsitt, a professor at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, suggested that, contrary to earlier thought, English Baptists did not begin to baptize by immersion until 1641, when some Anabaptists, as they were then called, began to practice immersion. This overturned the idea of immersion as the practice of the earliest Baptists as some of the Landmarkists contended.

Moderates–conservatives controversy

The Southern Baptist Convention conservative resurgence () was an intense struggle for control of the national convention's resources and ideological direction. The major internal disagreement captured national attention. Its initiators called it a "Conservative Resurgence", while its detractors have labeled it a "Fundamentalist Takeover". Russell H. Dilday, president of the Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary from 1978 to 1994, described the resurgence as having fragmented Southern Baptist fellowship and as being "far more serious than [a controversy]". Dilday described it as being "a self-destructive, contentious, one-sided feud that at times took on combative characteristics". Since 1979, Southern Baptists had become polarized into two major groups: moderates and conservatives. Reflecting the conservative majority votes of messengers at the 1979 annual meeting of the SBC, the new national organization officers replaced all leaders of Southern Baptist agencies with presumably more conservative people (often dubbed "fundamentalist" by dissenters).

In 1987, a group of churches criticized the fundamentalists for controlling the leadership and founded the Alliance of Baptists. In 1990, a group of moderate churches criticized the denomination for the same reasons, as well as opposition to women's ministry, and founded the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship in 1991.

LGBTQ
Since 1992, the national convention has carried out excommunications of various churches that support LGBTQ inclusion. In 2018, the District of Columbia Baptist Convention was excommunicated for this reason.

Sexual abuse

On February 10, 2019, a joint investigation by the Houston Chronicle and the San Antonio Express found that there had been over 700 victims of sexual abuse by nearly 400 Southern Baptist church leaders, pastors, and volunteers over the previous 20 years.

In 2018, the Houston Chronicle verified details in hundreds of accounts of abuse. It examined federal and state court databases, prison records, and official documents from more than 20 states and researched sex offender registries nationwide. The Chronicle compiled a list of records and information (current as of June 2019) listing church pastors, leaders, employees, and volunteers who have pleaded guilty to or were convicted of sex crimes.

On June 12, 2019, during their annual meeting, convention messengers, who assembled that year in Birmingham, Alabama, approved a resolution condemning sex abuse and establishing a special committee to investigate sex abuse, which will make it easier for churches to be excommunicated from the convention. The Reverend J. D. Greear, president of the convention and pastor of The Summit Church in Durham, North Carolina, called the move a "defining moment". Ronnie Floyd, president of the convention's executive committee, echoed Greear's remarks, calling the vote "a very, very significant moment in the history of the Southern Baptist Convention".

In June 2021, letters from former policy director Russell D. Moore to convention leadership were leaked. In the letters, Moore described how the convention had mishandled claims of sexual abuse.

On May 22, 2022, Guidepost Solutions, an independent firm contracted by the organization's executive committee, released a report detailing that church leaders had stonewalled and disparaged clergy sex abuse survivors for nearly two decades. This was the largest investigation undertaken in the convention's history at the time, with $4 million reportedly spent by the organization to fund the inquiry. The report also found that known abusers were allowed to keep their positions without informing their church or congregation. The report alleged that while the convention had elected a president, J. D. Greear, in 2018 who made addressing sexual abuse a central part of his agenda, nearly all efforts at reform had been met with criticism and dismissal by other organization leaders.

On June 14, 2022, the denomination voted "to create a way to track pastors and other church workers credibly accused of sex abuse and launch a new task force to oversee further reforms" after a consultant exposed that "Southern Baptist leaders mishandled abuse cases and stonewalled victims for years". The new task force will operate for one year, with the option to continue longer.

On August 12, 2022, the organization announced that it was facing a federal investigation into the sex abuse scandal.

See also

 List of Baptist denominations
 List of Southern Baptist Convention affiliated people
 List of the largest Protestant denominations
 Protestantism in the United States
 Southern Baptist Convention Presidents
 Christian views on slavery
 Christianity in the United States
 Religion in the United States

Notes

References

Footnotes

Bibliography

Further reading

 .
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 .
 Barnes, William. The Southern Baptist Convention, 1845–1953 Broadman Press, 1954.
 Eighmy, John. Churches in Cultural Captivity: A History of the Social Attitudes of Southern Baptists. University of Tennessee Press, 1972.
 Encyclopedia of Southern Baptists: Presenting Their History, Doctrine, Polity, Life, Leadership, Organization & Work Knoxville: Broadman Press, v 1–2 (1958), 1500 pp; 2 supplementary volumes 1958 and 1962; vol 5. Index, 1984
 Farnsley II, Arthur Emery, Southern Baptist Politics: Authority and Power in the Restructuring of an American Denomination; Pennsylvania State University Press, 1994
 Flowers, Elizabeth H. Into the Pulpit: Southern Baptist Women and Power Since World War II (University of North Carolina Press; 2012) 263 pages; examines women's submission to male authority as a pivotal issue in the clash between conservatives and moderates in the SBC
 Fuller, A. James. Chaplain to the Confederacy: Basil Manly and Baptist Life in the Old South (2002)
 Gatewood, Willard. Controversy in the 1920s: Fundamentalism, Modernism, and Evolution. Vanderbilt University Press, 1969.
 Harvey, Paul. Redeeming the South: Religious Cultures and Racial Identities among Southern Baptists, 1865–1925. University of North Carolina Press, 1997
 Hill, Samuel, et al. Encyclopedia of Religion in the South (2005)
 Hunt, Alma. Woman's Missionary Union (1964) Online free
 Kell, Carl L. and L. Raymond Camp, In the Name of the Father: The Rhetoric of the New Southern Baptist Convention. Southern Illinois University Press, 1999.
 Kidd, Thomas S. and Barry Hankins. Baptists in America: A History. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press, 2015.
 Leonard, Bill J. God's Last and Only Hope: The Fragmentation of the Southern Baptist Convention. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1990.
 Lumpkin, William L. Baptist History in the South: Tracing through the Separates the Influence of the Great Awakening, 1754–1787 (1995)
 McSwain, Larry L. Loving Beyond Your Theology: The Life and Ministry of Jimmy Raymond Allen (Mercer University Press; 2010) 255 pages. A biography of the Arkansas-born pastor (b. 1927), who was the last moderate president of the SBC
 Marsden, George. Fundamentalism and American Culture: The Shaping of 20th Century Evangelicalism. Oxford University Press, 1980.
 .
 .
 Scales, T. Laine. All That Fits a Woman: Training Southern Baptist Women for Charity and Mission, 1907–1926 Mercer U. Press 2002
 Smith, Oran P. The Rise of Baptist Republicanism (1997), on recent voting behavior
 Spain, Rufus B. At Ease in Zion: A Social History of Southern Baptists, 1865–1900 (1961)
 Sutton, Jerry. The Baptist Reformation: The Conservative Resurgence in the Southern Baptist Convention (2000).
 Wills, Gregory A. Democratic Religion: Freedom, Authority, and Church Discipline in the Baptist South, 1785–1900. Oxford University Press, 1997
 Yarnell III, Malcolm B. The Formation of Christian Doctrine (2007), on Baptist theology

External links

Religious organizations established in 1845
Evangelical denominations in North America
1845 establishments in the United States
Organizations based in Georgia (U.S. state)
Augusta, Georgia
White supremacy in the United States
History of the Southern United States
Religion in the United States
History of religion in the United States
Religious belief systems founded in the United States

Southern Baptist Convention


Giacinto Prandelli (8 February 1914 – 14 June 2010) was an Italian operatic tenor, particularly associated with the Italian and French repertoires.

Life and career

Born in Lumezzane, Italy, Prandelli sang as a boy in a church choir. He studied in Rome with Fornarini, and in Brescia with Grandini, and made his stage debut at the Teatro Donizetti in Bergamo, as Rodolfo, in 1942.

He made his debut at the Rome Opera in 1943, as Alfredo, he then appeared in Bologna, Genoa, Florence, Cagliari, Palermo, Catania, and made his debut in Milan, at the Teatro Lirico, as Rinuccio, in 1944. He sang the solo tenor part in Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, under Arturo Toscanini in 1946.

In the early 1950s, he began an international career, appearing in Monte Carlo, Barcelona, Lisbon, Buenos Aires. He made his Metropolitan Opera debut in 1951, his San Francisco Opera debut in 1954, and his Lyric Opera of Chicago in 1956.

He excelled in Italian and French lyric roles, such as; Edgardo, Duca di Mantua, Alfredo, Enzo, Rodolfo, Pinkerton, Cavaradossi, des Grieux, Werther, Gounod's and Boito's Faust, etc. He also sang in many contemporary works by Alfano, Wolf-Ferrari, Menotti, Respighi.

Prandelli's final stage appearance was in 1976 as Paolo in Francesca da Rimini at the Teatro Grande in Brescia. He can be heard in a number of recordings, notably; La bohème, Fedora, Adriana Lecouvreur, Francesca da Rimini. He appeared in a television (RAI) production of Manon Lescaut, opposite Clara Petrella in 1956.

The Italian music company Azzali Editori, Via Massimo D'Azeglio 76/A, 43100 Parma has published in 2003 a comprehensive, 303-pages life of Prandelli: "GIACINTO PRANDELLI, Del Recitar Cantando...", by Cornelia Pelletta. The text is in Italian, with 40 pages of photographs, and an inserted digital remastered CD, Giacinto Prandelli singing 18 arias from L'Elisir d'Amore, Rigoletto, Luisa Miller, Lohengrin, Werther, Manon, La Gioconda, La Bohème, Adriana Lecouvreur, Fedora, Francesca da Rimini, Manon Lescaut, and Tosca." The book was launched at Milan's La Scala in the presence of Prandelli himself six years before his death in 2010.

References

External links

1914 births
2010 deaths
Italian operatic tenors
Musicians from the Province of Brescia
20th-century Italian male opera singers

Giacinto Prandelli


The Mexican Railway (Ferrocarril Mexicano)  was one of the primary pre-nationalization railways of Mexico. Incorporated in London in September 1864 as the Imperial Mexican Railway (Ferrocarril Imperial Mexicano) to complete an earlier project, it was renamed in July 1867 after the Second French Empire withdrew from Mexico.

History

The main line from Mexico City to Veracruz was dedicated on January 1, 1873, by President Sebastián Lerdo de Tejada; branches connected Ometusco to Pachuca and Apizaco to Puebla.  The  between Esperanza and Paso del Macho were electrically operated beginning in the 1920s.

The Mexican Railway remained independent of the government-owned Ferrocarriles Nacionales de México (National Railways of Mexico) until the government gained control in June 1946 and merged the property in March 1959. Following privatization in the 1990s, Ferrosur acquired the lines of the former Mexican Railway.

References

External links

Defunct railway companies of Mexico
History of the State of Mexico
History of Puebla
History of Veracruz
Transportation in Hidalgo
Transportation in the State of Mexico
Transportation in Mexico City
Transportation in Puebla
Transportation in Tlaxcala
Transportation in Veracruz
Railway companies established in 1867
1867 establishments in Mexico
Railway lines opened in 1873
Railway companies disestablished in 1959

Mexican Railway


Daniel Donovan Naulty (born January 6, 1970) is an American former Major League Baseball pitcher who is now a pastor. He is the only player mentioned in the Mitchell Report to openly admit to using performance-enhancing drugs in the report.

Early years
Richard & Una Mae Naulty (Dan's parents) divorced in  when Naulty was six years old. After living briefly with his mother in Palos Verdes, California, Naulty returned to Pasadena to live with his father. At the urging of a baseball coach, Richard & Dan moved to Huntington Beach, California when Dan was twelve years old.

After graduating from Ocean View High School in Huntington Beach, Naulty spent two years at Cerritos College before transferring to Cal State Fullerton, where he competed in the 1992 College World Series. Cal State lost in the finals to Pepperdine University; Naulty was the losing pitcher. Four days later, he signed with the Minnesota Twins, who had drafted him in the 14th round of the 1992 Major League Baseball draft.

Naulty went 0-1 with a 5.50 earned run average in his first professional season with the Kenosha Twins of the Midwest League. A hip injury limited him to just six appearances and eighteen innings pitched. He returned healthy the following season to pitch a combined 146 innings for the Fort Wayne Wizards and Fort Myers Miracle.

Major leagues
He made the Twins out of Spring training , and made his major league debut against the Detroit Tigers in the second game of the season. He went 3-2 with a 3.79 ERA, and earned four saves in 49 games his rookie season, but was shut down late in the season due to a circulatory problem in his right arm. His role soon diminished as he spent the next two seasons going back-and-forth to the disabled list and doing rehab stints in the minors. In  and , Naulty went a combined 1-3 with a 5.53 ERA and one save at the major league level. He tore his right groin off his pelvis in his final game as a Twin on July 11, 1998. Following the season, he was traded to the New York Yankees for minor league prospect Allen Butler.

He went 1-0 with a 4.38 ERA doing mostly mop up duty with the Yankees (the Yankees were 6-27 in games Naulty appeared in). Though he did not make a postseason appearance, he earned a World Series ring with the Yankees in . After just one season in New York City, Naulty was traded to the Los Angeles Dodgers for minor league first baseman Nick Leach. The Dodgers released him during spring training . He soon caught on with the Kansas City Royals, however, after just 1.2 innings with the Omaha Golden Spikes, in which he gave up eight walks and nine earned runs, he was released. After a brief stint with the independent Atlantic League's Atlantic City Surf, Naulty retired to become a pastor.

Mitchell Report
George J. Mitchell contacted Naulty in January  as part of his investigation of performance-enhancing drug use by Major League Baseball players. He is first mentioned on page 232 of the Mitchell Report, and is very candid with his admissions. He is one of few former and current baseball players interviewed by investigators to admit to using steroids, beginning in  as a minor leaguer and continuing through his major league career. He also admits to using human growth hormone for one year, 1998, to recover from the groin injury. Naulty attributed his willingness to openly discuss his drug use to the remorse he felt. He told investigators, "if I could give back a little bit of something good, then I would like to."

Shortly after the Mitchell Report came out, Naulty wrote an article for the New York Daily News detailing his drug use. He said he had access to, but did not use, steroids as far back as high school. Shortly after being drafted, he realized that in order to compete, he needed to throw harder, and add muscle to his thin 6'6" frame. Thus, he began taking anabolic steroids and amphetamines, and soon went from 185 pounds to 240, and added ten miles per hour to his fastball. The 1998 groin injury he attributes to having added more muscle to the major tendon in his groin than it is equipped to handle. Therefore, shortly after his trade to the Yankees, he began taking HGH.

The negative impact of his drug use hit him later in his career when he thought about the fact that he took a roster spot from another player who was competing naturally. He fell into alcoholism, and began having severe mood swings from all the testosterone in his body. He claims that the night the Yankees won the World Series, he went out partying with friends, and was contemplating suicide by the end of the night.

Naulty details a hard upbringing in an article published by Tom Verducci in the June 4, 2012 issue of Sports Illustrated. His older sister's heroin and crack cocaine addiction is what led to the decision for him to live with his father. Shortly after moving to Huntington Beach with his father, his father took a job in Kuwait that left Dan in the care of a baseball coach most of the time, who soon began sexually abusing him. Shortly afterwards, a female teacher also began abusing Naulty.

See also
 List of Major League Baseball players named in the Mitchell Report

References

External links

1970 births
Living people
Major League Baseball pitchers
Baseball players from Los Angeles
Minnesota Twins players
New York Yankees players
Nashville Xpress players
American Christian clergy
Cal State Fullerton Titans baseball players
Atlantic City Surf players
Baseball players from Pasadena, California
Columbus Clippers players
Fort Myers Miracle players
Fort Wayne Wizards players
Gulf Coast Twins players
Kenosha Twins players
Omaha Golden Spikes players
Salt Lake Buzz players
Alaska Goldpanners of Fairbanks players
Ocean View High School alumni
Baseball players from Huntington Beach, California

Dan Naulty


Arnold Bürkli (February 2, 1833 – May 6, 1894) is principally known as a municipal engineer in Zürich, Switzerland.

Life and work
Arnold Bürkli was also a railway engineer and, between 1855 and 1858, studied architecture in Berlin. Between 1860 and 1882 Bürkli worked as a municipal engineer on a wide variety of construction projects. After 1867 he completely reorganised and improved the city's water supply and sewerage system, subsequently becoming known internationally as a water supply expert.

Bürkliplatz in Zürich was named after him, as Arnold Bürkli was the leading engineer in the construction of the Quaianlagen on the Zürichsee lake shore, as well as of the Quaibrücke bridge in Zürich.

Memorial

The so-called Bürkliterrasse opposite of the Bürkliplatz is also named after Arnold Bürkli. A sculpture honoring the tireless creating engineer being the driving force behind the new quays stands at the foot of the lake shore hill that elevates around  at the Arboretum Zürich. The simple monument was inaugurated in 1899, five years after his death, at Bürkli's favorite place in the Arboretum, or, in the words of the sculptor Richard Kissling, in the midst of his creation.

References

External links

1894 deaths
1833 births
19th-century Swiss engineers
People from Zürich

Arnold Bürkli


Shlomo Nosson Kotler (; 1856 – c. 1920) was an orthodox rabbi and Rosh yeshiva, Talmudic scholar, Torah author and Posek (Halachic decisor).

Born in Kovno, Lithuania, Kotler studied in the world-renowned Telz yeshiva under the eminent Rabbi Eliezer Gordon, as well as under Rabbi Jacob Joseph and later in the yeshiva of Rabbi Yaakov Charif, who became his foremost teacher. He received semicha from many great rabbis, among them Rabbi Yitzchak Elchanan Spektor. At the young age of twenty, having already served as a Talmudic lecturer in the Łomża yeshiva, he became one of the first teachers in the famed Knesses Yisroel yeshiva in Slobodke. A few years later, he accepted the position of Av Beth Din in the city of Uzhvent, near Kovno.

In 1893, Kotler's ailing former teacher Joseph, then the chief rabbi of New York City, invited him to serve as his associate. Kotler served as rabbi of Congregation Tiferes Jerusalem in New York in Joseph's stead for the next three years. In 1896, he joined the newly founded Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary as a Rosh yeshiva.

Unsatisfied in an America weak in Orthodox Jewish life and practice, Kotler returned to Europe to serve as rabbi in the cities of Kurshan and Luknik. Before World War I, Kotler returned to America, settling for seven years in Detroit.

Towards the end of his life, Kotler emigrated to Palestine, where his daughter lived. Following Kotler's death, his son-in-law (Rabbi Yaakov Moshe Charlap) renamed his Jerusalem yeshiva in his memory. His great-grandson Zevulun Charlop was the Dean of RIETS many decades later.

Torah Works
Kotler authored numerous Torah articles which were published in the various Torah journals of his time, as well as many sefarim, including the two-volumed responsa Kerem Shlomo (Jerusalem, 1936) and the original work Beis Shlomo (St. Louis, 1927). Many of Kotler's unpublished Torah manuscripts and insights have been lost.

References
YU Torah Online Rosh yeshiva biographies
Orthodox Judaism in America: A Biographical Dictionary

1856 births
1920 deaths
American Orthodox rabbis
Emigrants from the Russian Empire to the United States
Lithuanian male writers
Lithuanian Orthodox rabbis
Rosh yeshivas
Writers from Kaunas
19th-century Lithuanian rabbis

Shlomo Nosson Kotler


Daisy Junor [nee Knezovich] (July 10, 1919 – April 29, 2012) was a Canadian outfielder who played in the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League. Listed at 5' 6", 140 lb., she batted and threw left-handed.

Basically a line-drive hitter and a fine defensive player, outfielder Daisy Junor was one of the 68 girls from Canada who played in the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League during its 12-year history. Her elder sister, Ruby Knezovich, also played in the league.

Daisy was one of four children born into the family of Chris and Marina Knezovich. She was born and raised in Regina and lived her entire life in the province of Saskatchewan, with the exception of many winters she spent with her spouse Dave Junor in Mesa, Arizona.

Basically a line-drive hitter and speedy base runner, Junor was also a fine defensive player at all three outfield positions, playing mainly as a center fielder for three different teams during her four seasons in the league.

She entered the league in 1946 with the South Bend Blue Sox, playing for them two and a half years before joining the Springfield Sallies (1948) and the Fort Wayne Daisies (1949). Her most productive season came in her rookie year, when she posted career-highs in games played (99), runs (30), hits (60), RBIs (22) and stolen bases (41), while ranking 10th among all outfielders with 17 assists.

After returning to Regina, Junor became an accomplished bowler and golfer. From there, she was a member of the provincial bowling team that represented Saskatchewan in the Western Canada Five Pin Bowling Championships three times,  winning both city and provincial titles. In addition, she won five golf club championships, two city championships and a provincial senior ladies golf title.

In 1988, Junor received further recognition when she became part of Women in Baseball, a permanent display based at the Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum in Cooperstown, New York, which was unveiled to honor the entire All-American Girls Professional Baseball League.

During her life, she was also honoured several times in recognition of her outstanding contribution to sport regionally, nationally and internationally, gaining inductions into the Saskatchewan Sports Hall of Fame (1989), the Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum (1998), the Regina Sports Hall of Fame (2004), and the Saskatchewan Baseball Hall of Fame in North Battleford.

Shortly before her death in 2012, the City of Regina honoured Daisy with the naming of Junor Drive in northwest Regina.

Career statistics
Batting

Fielding

References

All-American Girls Professional Baseball League players
South Bend Blue Sox players
Springfield Sallies players
Fort Wayne Daisies players
Canadian baseball players
Canadian ten-pin bowling players
Canadian female golfers
Golfing people from Saskatchewan
Baseball players from Regina, Saskatchewan
Canadian expatriates in the United States
1919 births
2012 deaths
20th-century Canadian sportswomen

Daisy Junor


Ximen is a metro station on the Songshan-Xindian Line and Bannan Line in Taipei, Taiwan. The station code of the Songshan-Xindian line station is G12 and the station code of the Bannan line station is BL11.

Station layout information
Both station platforms are located underground. The Songshan-Xindian line platforms are stacked on top of each other, which is the same for the Bannan line platforms. This allows you to walk straight ahead to the front platform when transferring without having to walk long distances. Platform 1 is served by the Bannan line and is for Taipei Nangang Exhibition Center or Kunyang. Platform 2 is served by the Songshan-Xindian line and is for Songshan. Platform 3 is served by the Bannan line and is for Dingpu or Far Eastern Hospital. Platform 4 is served by the Songshan-Xindian line and is for Xindian or Taipower Building.

Railway stations in Taipei

Ximen metro station


Theodor Strünck (7 April 1895, Pries - 9 April 1945, Flossenbürg concentration camp) was a German lawyer and resistance worker, involved in the 20 July plot.

Life
Theodor Strünck studied legal science, graduating at the University of Rostock in 1924, and became a lawyer (later a director) at an insurance company.  Initially sympathising with National Socialism, he then turned to opposing the regime on their seizure of power and the subsequent decline in the rule of law.  In 1937 he became a Hauptmann in Germany's reserve forces, working in the Wehrmacht section of the Amt Ausland/Abwehr under Hans Oster.  He came into contact with Carl Goerdeler and organised meetings of German Resistance members in his own home.

For his participation in the 20 July 1944 plot, Theodor Strünck was arrested on 1 August, dishonourably discharged from the army on 24 August as part of the "Ehrenhof" (so that the Reichskriegsgericht or Reich Courts Martial would no longer have control of his sentencing), and on 10 October condemned to death by the People's Court under its president Roland Freisler.  He was then imprisoned in Flossenbürg concentration camp, where he, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Wilhelm Canaris, Ludwig Gehre, Hans Oster and Karl Sack were executed together by hanging on 9 April 1945.

External links
 Ev. Kirchengem. Charlottenburg-Nord:Biography
 GDW: Biography

1895 births
1945 deaths
20th-century German lawyers
Executed members of the 20 July plot
People who died in Flossenbürg concentration camp
People from Schleswig-Holstein executed in Nazi concentration camps
Resistance members who died in Nazi concentration camps
German civilians killed in World War II
People executed by Nazi Germany by hanging
Jurists from Kiel

Theodor Strünck


Gates of Prayer, the New Union Prayer Book (GOP) is a Reform Jewish siddur that was announced in October 1975 as a replacement for the 80-year-old Union Prayer Book (UPB), incorporating more Hebrew content and was updated to be more accessible to modern worshipers. The prayer book was officially approved by the Joint Commission on Worship of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations (now the Union for Reform Judaism) and the Central Conference of American Rabbis.

Many changes
There were many changes in wording aimed at gender neutrality, such as changing "our fathers" to "our ancestors". The "thees" and "thous" of the UPB were all changed to "you". A wide variety of prayer options are offered, including ten for Friday night services, six for Shabbat morning and others for holidays, weekdays and other special occasions. Additional readings were included from philosophers Martin Buber and Alfred North Whitehead; poets E. E. Cummings, John Masefield and Nelly Sachs; Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel and from Elie Wiesel.

In its 779 pages, Gates of Prayer added services to commemorate Israeli Independence Day and The Holocaust, reflecting the changed realities from the days of the Union Prayer Book. An optional Hebrew opening format was offered for the first time and Friday night service variations were included, all reflecting a greater acceptance of traditional forms of Jewish worship that had been eliminated in the UPB. The GOP sold 50,000 copies in its inaugural year and had sales of some 1.5 million as of 2006.

Criticism and follow-up
Gates of Prayer was criticized as being a non-cohesive collection of prayers, resulting in a prayer book that was too large, and for its retention of masculine pronouns when referring to God. To address these issues, some congregations prepared their own prayer materials (often with edits to neutralize gender) or continued use of the Union Prayer Book.

A project to address these concerns and increase the poeticism of a future prayerbook was initiated in 1981. Israeli poet T. Carmi was brought in to provide guidance on post-biblical Hebrew texts that could be incorporated into the Reform liturgy. The "Carmi Project" generated hundreds of possibilities, many of which would later be integrated into Mishkan T'filah, the successor to Gates of Prayer.

References

External links
Gates of Prayer (official website)
 A. Stanley Dreyus (1991), "The Gates Liturgies: Reform Judaism Reforms Its Worship" in: Paul F. Bradshaw and Lawrence A. Hoffman, eds., The Changing Face of Jewish and Christian Worship in North America (Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press), 1991.

1975 non-fiction books
Reform Judaism in the United States
Reform Zionism
Siddurim of Reform Judaism

Gates of Prayer


The word mamihlapinatapai is derived from the Yaghan language of Tierra del Fuego, listed in The Guinness Book of World Records as the "most succinct word", and is considered one of the hardest words to translate. It has been translated as "a look that without words is shared by two people who want to initiate something, but that neither will start" or "looking at each other hoping that the other will offer to do something which both parties desire but are unwilling to do".

A romantic interpretation of the meaning has also been given, as "that look across the table when two people are sharing an unspoken but private moment. When each knows the other understands and is in agreement with what is being expressed. An expressive and meaningful silence."

A literal translation could be "to make each other feel awkward".

Morphology
The word consists of the reflexive/passive prefix ma- (mam- before a vowel), the root ihlapi (pronounced ), which means "to be at a loss as what to do next", the stative suffix -n, an achievement suffix -ata, and the dual suffix -apai, which in composition with the reflexive mam- has a reciprocal sense.

Usage
The term is cited in books and articles on game theory associated with the volunteer's dilemma.

It is also referenced in Defining the World in a discussion of the difficulties facing Samuel Johnson in trying to arrive at succinct, yet accurate, definitions of words.

See also
Ithkuil

References

Yaghan words and phrases
Words and phrases with no direct English translation
Language comparison

Mamihlapinatapai


Lucien Bonaparte, 1st Prince of Canino and Musignano (born Luciano Buonaparte; 21 May 1775 – 29 June 1840), was a French politician and diplomat of the French Revolution and the Consulate. He served as Minister of the Interior from 1799 to 1800 and as the president of the Council of Five Hundred in 1799.

The third surviving son of Carlo Bonaparte and his wife Letizia Ramolino, Lucien was the younger brother of Napoleon Bonaparte. As president of the Council of Five Hundred, he was one of the participants of the Coup of 18 Brumaire that brought Napoleon to power in France.

Early life
Lucien was born in Ajaccio, Corsica on 21 May 1775. He was educated in mainland France, initially studying at the military schools of Autun and Brienne. After his father's death, he attended the seminary of Aix-en-Provence, from which he dropped out in 1789.

Revolutionary activities
Lucien became a staunch supporter of the French Revolution upon its outbreak in 1789, when he was 14 years old. He returned to Corsica at the start of the Revolution, and became an outspoken orator at the Corsican chapter of the Jacobin Club in Ajaccio, where he adopted the alias "Brutus Bonaparte". In 1791, he became a secretary to Corsican patriot Pasquale Paoli, but broke with him in May 1793 (along with his brother Napoleon).

After returning to mainland France, Lucien held a number of minor administrative posts from 1793 until 1795, when he was briefly jailed for his Jacobin activity, during the Thermidorian Reaction. He was released thanks to Napoleon's intervention, who then found him an administrative assignment in the Army of the North.

Political career
In 1798, Lucien was elected member of the Council of Five Hundred for Corsica's Liamone department (although he was not old enough to run for election). In the legislature, he mostly voted with the Neo-Jacobins, and participated in the Coup of 30 Prairial VII. However, Emmanuel Joseph Sieyès' influence and news of the events in Egypt led to a shift in his political stance, and Lucien became one of the main plotters of coup d'état of 18 Brumaire, in which Napoleon overthrew the government of the Directory to replace it by the Consulate.

On 23 October 1799, Lucien was elected president of the Council of Five Hundred. On 9 November 1799 (18 Brumaire Year VIII on the French Republican Calendar), he had pamphlets distributed in Paris that detailed a fake Jacobin plot, which he used to justify the relocation of the Council to the suburban security of Saint-Cloud. The next day, while presiding over a heated council session, Lucien managed to buy time until Napoleon's sudden entrance into the chamber surrounded by grenadiers. During the coup, Lucien swore he would stab his brother in the chest if he ever betrayed the principles of Liberté, égalité, fraternité. The following day, Lucien arranged for Napoleon's formal election as First Consul.

Under the Consulate, Lucien was appointed Minister of the Interior in December 1799.  In this capacity, Lucien oversaw the appointment of the first prefects and falsified the results of the constitutional referendum of February 1800. He clashed over the right to oversee Paris police matters with Joseph Fouché, the Minister of Police, who showed Napoleon a subversive pamphlet possibly written by Lucien and effected a breach between the brothers. Some evidence exists that Napoleon himself wrote the pamphlet and scapegoated his brother when it was received poorly. He resigned as minister in November 1800.

Following his resignation, Lucien was sent as ambassador to the court of King Charles IV of Spain, where his diplomatic talents won over the Bourbon royal family and, perhaps as importantly, the minister Manuel de Godoy. In March 1801, Lucien and Godoy signed the Treaty of Aranjuez, establishing the French client kingdom of Etruria.

Disputes with Napoleon
Though he was a member of the Tribunat in 1802 and was made a senator of the First French Empire, Lucien came to oppose many of Napoleon's ideas. In 1804, with Lucien disliking Napoleon's intention to declare himself as Emperor of the French and to marry Lucien off to a Bourbon Spanish princess, the Queen of Etruria, Lucien spurned all imperial honours and went into self-imposed exile by living initially in Rome, where he bought the Villa Rufinella in Frascati.

Later years

In 1809, Napoleon increased pressure on Lucien to divorce his wife and return to France, even having their mother write a letter encouraging him to abandon her and return. With the whole of the Papal States annexed to France and the Pope imprisoned, Lucien was a virtual prisoner in his Italian estates, requiring permission of the Military Governor to venture off his property. He attempted to sail to the United States to escape his situation but was captured by the British. When he disembarked in Britain, he was greeted with cheers and applause by the crowd, many of whom saw him as anti-Napoleonic.

The government permitted Lucien to settle comfortably with his family at Ludlow, and later at Thorngrove House in Grimley, Worcestershire, where he worked on a heroic poem on Charlemagne. Napoleon, believing Lucien had deliberately gone to Britain and thus a traitor, had Lucien omitted from the Imperial almanacs of the Bonapartes from 1811 until his 1814 abdication.

Lucien returned to France following his brother's abdication in April 1814. He continued to Rome, where on 18 August 1814 he was made Prince of Canino, Count of Apollino, and Lord of Nemori by Pope Pius VII.

In the Hundred Days after Napoleon's return to France from exile in Elba, Lucien rallied to his brother's cause, and they joined forces once again during Napoleon's brief return to power. His brother made him a French Prince and included his children into the Imperial Family, but this was not recognized by the Bourbons after Napoleon's second abdication. Subsequently, Lucien was proscribed at the Restoration and deprived of his fauteuil at the Académie Française. He was made Prince of Musignano on 21 March 1824 by Pope Leo XII. In 1836 he wrote his Mémoires. He died in Viterbo, Italy, on 29 June 1840, of stomach cancer, the same disease that claimed his father and, reportedly, his brother Napoleon.

Academic activities
Lucien Bonaparte was the inspiration behind the Napoleonic reconstitution of the dispersed Académie Française in 1803, where he took a seat. He collected paintings in la maison de campagne at Brienne, was a member of Jeanne Françoise Julie Adélaïde Récamier's salon and wrote a novel, La Tribu indienne. He was an amateur archeologist, establishing excavations at his property in Frascati which produced a complete statue of Tiberius, and at Musignano which rendered a bust of Juno. Bonaparte owned a parcel which had once formed part of Cicero's estate called Tusculum, and was much given to commenting on the fact. In 1825, Bonaparte excavated the so-called Tusculum portrait of Julius Caesar at the Tusculum's forum.

In 1823, Bonaparte was elected as a member of the American Philosophical Society.

Marriages and children
His first wife was his landlord's daughter, Christine Boyer (3 July 1771 – 14 May 1800), the illiterate sister of an innkeeper of Saint-Maximin-la-Sainte-Baume, and by her he had four children:
 Filistine Charlotte (28 November 1795 – 6 May 1865), married Prince Mario Gabrielli.
 Stillborn son (13 March 1796).
 Victoire Gertrude (born and died 9 July 1797).
 Christine Egypte (18 October 1798 – 1847), married firstly Count Arvid Posse (divorced) and secondly Lord Dudley Stuart.

His second wife was Alexandrine de Bleschamp (23 February 1778 – 12 July 1855), widow of Hippolyte Jouberthon, known as "Madame Jouberthon", and by her he had ten children:
 Charles Lucien Bonaparte (24 May 1803 – 29 July 1857), the naturalist and ornithologist.
 Letizia (1 December 1804 – 15 March 1871), married Sir Thomas Wyse.
 Joseph (14 June 1806 – 15 August 1807).
 Jeanne (22 July 1807 – 22 September 1829), married Marquis Honoré Honorati.
 Paul Marie (3 November 1809 – 7 September 1827).
 Louis Lucien (4 January 1813 – 3 November 1891). A philologist and politician, expert on the Basque language.
 Pierre Napoleon (11 October 1815 – 7 April 1881).
 Antoine (31 October 1816 – 28 March 1877), married Marie-Anne Cardinali, without issue.
 Marie Alexandrine (10 October 1818 – 20 August 1874), married Vincenzo Valentini, Count di Laviano.
 Constance (30 January 1823 – 5 September 1876), a nun.

Coat of arms

References

External links

 Académie Francaise: Les Immortels: (in French)
 Lucien Bonaparte

1775 births
1840 deaths
Politicians from Ajaccio
Jacobins
Lucien
Lucien
Lucien
French diplomats
French Roman Catholics
People of the French Revolution
Members of the Council of Five Hundred
Expelled members of the Académie Française
Members of the Sénat conservateur
Members of the Chamber of Peers of the Hundred Days
French interior ministers
Deaths from stomach cancer
Deaths from cancer in Lazio

Lucien Bonaparte


Dr. David E. Barclay (born July 12, 1948) is an American historian and the author of several books on German history. He received his Ph.D. in history from Stanford University in 1975, where he studied under Gordon A. Craig.  He taught at Kalamazoo College from 1974 to 2016, and presently is the Executive Director of the German Studies Association.

Barclay was named a 2006-07 Berlin Prize Winner by the American Academy in Berlin.

Works
 Rudolf Wissell als Sozialpolitiker 1890–1933. Einzelveröffentlichungen der Historischen Kommission zu Berlin, vol. 44. Berlin: Colloquium Verlag, 1984.
 Frederick William IV and the Prussian Monarchy 1840–1861. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995.
 Transatlantic Images and Perceptions: Germany and America since 1776. Co-edited with Elsabeth Glaser-Schmidt. Cambridge University Press, 1997.
 Between Reform and Revolution: German Socialism and Communism from 1840 to 1990. Co-edited with Eric D. Weitz. Berghahn Books, 1998.
 Schaut auf diese Stadt. Der unbekannte Ernst Reuter. Translated by Ilse Utz. Berlin: Siedler Verlag, 2000.

References
 Kalamazoo College
 The German Studies Association

1948 births
Living people
Stanford University alumni
Kalamazoo College faculty
21st-century American historians
21st-century American male writers
American male non-fiction writers

David E. Barclay


Paul Howard "Dizzy" Trout (June 29, 1915 – February 28, 1972) was an American professional baseball player. He played in Major League Baseball as a right-handed pitcher from  to , most notably as a member of the Detroit Tigers team that finished either in first or second place in the American League pennant races between 1944 and 1947 and won the 1945 World Series. The two-time All-Star player was the American League wins leader in 1943 and, was the league ERA leader in 1944. In , Trout made a brief comeback attempt at the age of 42 with the Baltimore Orioles. He also played for the Boston Red Sox.

1939–1942
Trout was born in Sandcut, Indiana. He first played professionally in 1935 with the Terre Haute Tots in the Three-I League before signing with the Tigers in 1939. In his first four seasons (1939–1942), Dizzy Trout never had a winning record and totaled 33 wins and 44 losses. Even in 1940, as the Tigers won the American League pennant, Trout finished 3-7.

1943–1947
Dizzy Trout was classified 4-F due to hearing impairment  and was not accepted for military service during World War II.  It was during the war years that Trout had his best seasons.

Trout had a losing record in his first four seasons, but in the next four years (1943–1946) he turned into one of the best pitchers in the American League, winning 82 and losing 54.

Dizzy Trout led the American League in wins (20) in 1943, but his best season was 1944, when he won 27 games and lost 14.  He led the American League that year in ERA (2.12), complete games (33), shutouts (7), and innings pitched (352-1/3).  He also finished second in the league to his Detroit teammate, Hal Newhouser, in wins (27) and strikeouts (144). The Tigers' pitching duo of Trout and Newhouser won 56 games in 1944 and finished 1-2 in ERA, wins, innings pitched, strikeouts, complete games, and shutouts.  Newhouser and Trout also finished 1-2 in the American League MVP voting, with Trout trailing Newhouser in the voting by only 4 votes.

Trout's pitching totals were not as impressive in 1945, but he was a workhorse in the pennant drive. He pitched six games and won four over a nine-game late-season stretch. In Game 4 of the 1945 World Series, Trout beat the Cubs 4-1 on a five-hitter. The Tigers won the 1945 World Series, and Trout went 1-1 with an ERA of 0.66 in the Series.

1947–1952
From 1947–1949, Trout's performance dropped off, as he failed to achieve a winning record, and had a total record of 23-31. Aside from his pitching, Trout could hit for power.  He hit 20 home runs, tying him for 11th all-time in home runs by pitchers.  He hit a 9th inning grand slam against the Washington Senators on July 28, 1949, helping the Tigers to a victory.

In 1950, Trout and the Tigers both turned things around.  Trout won 13 and lost only 5, and the Tigers won 95 games and narrowly lost the American League pennant to the Yankees.

On June 3, 1952, Trout was sent to the Boston Red Sox in a blockbuster trade that sent Walt Dropo, Don Lenhardt, Johnny Pesky, Fred Hatfield, and Bill Wight to the Tigers for Trout, George Kell, Hoot Evers, and Johnny Lipon. Trout started only 17 games for the Red Sox, and retired at the end of the 1952 season.

Trout was a very good hitting pitcher in his 15-year major league career. He posted a .213 batting average (205-for-961) scoring 99 runs with 28 doubles, 7 triples, 20 home runs, 110 RBI and drew 59 bases on balls. He was in double figures in RBI in five seasons, with a high of 24 RBI in 1944.

Retirement
After retiring from baseball, Trout called play-by-play for the Tigers on radio WKMH and TV WJBK-TV from 1953–1955. He also hosted The Knot-Hole Gang, a sports show aimed at children. Trout broadcast the Tigers games with Van Patrick and became popular with Detroit fans for his self-effacing humor, scrambled syntax, and folksy demeanor.

In 1956, Trout ran unsuccessfully for sheriff in Wayne County as a Republican, losing to long-time incumbent Andrew C. Baird.

He attempted a return to baseball with the Baltimore Orioles in 1957 at age 42. Trout made two appearances, allowed three earned runs, and retired one batter, for an 81.00 ERA. After being released by Baltimore, he joined the Chicago White Sox as a pitching instructor and then worked with that organization's front office until his death from stomach cancer at the age of 56 on February 28, 1972 at Ingalls Hospital in Harvey, Illinois. He was buried at Homewood Memorial Gardens in Homewood, Illinois.

He was inducted into the Indiana Baseball Hall of Fame in 1981.

Trout's son, Steve, pitched for 12 years in the major leagues.

See also
Best pitching seasons by a Detroit Tiger
 1945 Detroit Tigers season
 1950 Detroit Tigers season
 List of Major League Baseball annual ERA leaders
 List of Major League Baseball annual wins leaders
 List of Major League Baseball all-time leaders in home runs by pitchers

References

Dizzy Trout – A Major League Talent

External links

1915 births
1972 deaths
American League All-Stars
American League ERA champions
American League wins champions
Baseball players from Indiana
Beaumont Exporters players
Boston Red Sox players
Baltimore Orioles players
Deaths from cancer in Illinois
Deaths from stomach cancer
Detroit Tigers announcers
Detroit Tigers players
Indianapolis Indians players
Major League Baseball broadcasters
Major League Baseball pitchers
People from Vigo County, Indiana
Toledo Mud Hens players
Vancouver Mounties players

Dizzy Trout