The Great Depression and Southern Baptist Spiritual Recreation

Abstract

During the Great Depression, leaders in the Southern Baptist Convention interacted with the idea and the problem of leisure in indirect and subtle ways. The SBC sought to avoid problematic uses of leisure through its organized system of denominational activities and organizations. These organizations, such as the Baptist Training Union, the Baptist Brotherhood, and the Women's Missionary Union, were aimed at encouraging religious orthodoxy and social conservatism. Throughout the Depression the Southern Baptist Convention effectively preserved its orthodoxy and evangelistic zeal, but the growth of leisure called for new recreational methods to attain the expressed spiritual ends. Southern Baptist organization and adaptation during the thirties allowed the Convention to experience numerical growth throughout the fiscal constraints of the Depression, and also sowed the seeds for the growth of the SBC in the latter half of the twentieth century.