Frank Stagg (theologian)
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Through Civil and political rights, Gender and Ageing
No one...has ever taken the New Testament more seriously than Frank Stagg, who spent his entire life wrestling with it, paying the price in sweat and hours in an unrelenting quest to hear the message expressed in a language no longer spoken and directed toward a cultural context so foreign to the modern reader.
— Malcolm Tolbert, Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary
Personal
Dr. Frank Stagg was born October 20, 1911, on his grandfather's rice farm near the small community of Eunice, Louisiana. Although the family name comes from an English ancestor, the Stagg family was of French Catholic descent, commonly called Cajuns. His grandfather and his uncle were the first of the Staggs to become Evangelical Christians. His uncle became a preacher who ministered in the native "Cajun" dialect. Frank was proud of his Louisiana French heritage and of his upbringing in the home of a Baptist deacon and Sunday School teacher.
In his junior year at Louisiana College, Frank met his wife: Evelyn Owen of Ruston, Louisiana, who would become an integral part of his future endeavors. They married in 1935 and raised three children—Ted, Bob and Ginger.
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Beliefs
Counted among the "best-known progressive activists," Stagg addressed a variety of contemporary issues. These included civil rights, gender equity, Vietnam, the First Gulf War, ecumenism and aging. He also argued for the Bible's relevance. "The Bible is relevant," Stagg said. "We don't have to make it relevant." He said that the First Gulf War presented the ideal opportunity for Southern Baptists to "reassess and reject" the just war doctrine and embrace pacifism as the appropriate Christian response to all wars. He opposed Reformed points of doctrine such as predestination and other Calvinist beliefs in Southern Baptist life.
Library collection
Through the years, Dr. Stagg amassed an extensive library and wealth of knowledge and scholarship in the form of correspondence, writings, articles, speeches, commentaries, book reviews, photographs, sermon notes and even private musings. The Papers of Dr. Frank Stagg, 1938–1999 now reside at Samford University in Birmingham, Alabama. The 36 feet (11 m) represent more than a half century of his life's journey and Christian pilgrimage. His collection shares prominence in the library with the manuscript collection of English theologian and preacher Charles Spurgeon.
Recognition and honors
Frank Stagg is included in various lists of distinguished twentieth century Baptist theologians: E. Y. Mullins, W. T. Connor, W. O. Carver, Frank Stagg, W. W. Stevens, Dale Moody, Dallas Roark, James Wm. McClendon, Morris Ashcraft, E. Frank Tupper, Warren McWilliams, A. J. Conyers, and Curtis Freeman. He also has been called "one of the foremost interpreters of the New Testament among Baptists in the twentieth century."
At the Louisville seminary he held the prestigious James Buchanan Harrison Chair of New Testament Theology.
The Stagg-Tolbert Forum for Biblical Studies is an annual event named in his honor. It is designed to make excellence in biblical scholarship accessible to the lay person.