The certainty summit
In 1978, a who’s who of conservative evangelical leaders met in Chicago to draft a statement on biblical inerrancy. It would change the course of church and state.
Century illustration (Source images: Getty and Creative Commons)
On October 25, 1978, about 250 White men strode across the orange carpet of the Chicago Hyatt Regency O’Hare’s lobby with a ten-dollar theological word on their minds: inerrancy. The weekend conference was invite only, a closed-door event organized by 39-year-old R. C. Sproul of Ligonier Ministries and backed by a grant, officially anonymous, from the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association.
Two of the men on the planning committee of Sproul’s new International Council on Biblical Inerrancy, executive director Jay Grimstead and chairman James Boice, described the conference’s goal as assembling “a theological ‘army’ of scholars” to “offer a reasoned defense of the highest possible view of Scripture.” They hoped to fortify Christianity against the triple threats of cultural relativism, liberal scholarship, and the squishy, neoorthodox position of “limited” inerrancy.
Organizers had handpicked invitees according to their influence. It was a who’s who of conservative evangelicalism: best-selling authors and speakers; professors and manuscript translators; founders of parachurch ministries, denominations, and megachurches. One by one, Grimstead called them with a simple pitch: In one weekend, they would compose a landmark statement to define, once and for all and in the clearest terms, exactly what a Christian’s relationship to the Bible must be. Did they want to play a part in history?
