LifeWay Christian Resources

LifeWay Christian Resources traces its origin to the SBC's Sunday School Board, founded in 1891. For over a century it was the denomination's primary educational publishing arm — curriculum for children's Sunday school, vacation Bible school, adult Bible studies, small group materials, devotional resources, and pastoral training tools. It was also the SBC's primary retail bookseller through its chain of LifeWay Christian Stores. The institution's significance lies in understanding what it was before and after the Conservative Resurgence's capture of SBC trustee boards: **Before capture:** The Sunday School Board published materials reflecting the pre-resurgence SBC's theological diversity — some authored by women, some reflecting moderate perspectives on gender and biblical interpretation, all operating within a tradition that understood Sunday school as community formation, not doctrinal enforcement. **After capture:** As the resurgence installed aligned trustees throughout SBC agencies from the mid-1980s through the 1990s, LifeWay's curriculum reflected the new denominational commitments: inerrancy as the standard, complementarianism as required doctrine, and theological alignment with the resurgence's leadership. What reached the Sunday school class changed — not because the delivery mechanism had changed, but because those who controlled it had. Beth Moore became LifeWay's most commercially successful Bible study author over three decades. Her studies reached millions of evangelical women through LifeWay's distribution network. When she began publicly pushing back on SBC leadership culture in the Trump era — on the treatment of women, on Paige Patterson, on evangelical political alignment — the relationship deteriorated. By 2020, LifeWay had effectively stopped stocking her materials. The pipeline that had built her platform withdrew it when she declined to follow where the pipeline was going. The mechanism LifeWay represents is precise: the Sunday school class is where the congregation receives its theological formation outside of the Sunday sermon. One pastor can reach one congregation; LifeWay curriculum reached 47,000 congregations simultaneously. Control the curriculum flowing into those classes and you control the week-to-week theological diet of millions of churchgoers — not through anything as visible as a sermon, but through the materials a church volunteer prepares on a Tuesday night to teach on Sunday morning. LifeWay renamed itself from the Sunday School Board in 1998. It closed its retail store chain entirely by 2019 under financial pressure as the evangelical publishing market fragmented across digital platforms.

Documented themes

• Christian Nationalism
• Patriarchy
• Gender & Patriarchy
• politics-and-the-pulpit

Connections from LifeWay Christian Resources

• influenced → Beth Moore (1994) — Beth Moore's platform as the most widely read evangelical Bible study author of her generation was built almost entirely through LifeWay Christian Resources' distribution network. LifeWay published her studies, sold them through its retail chain, and made them the default curriculum for millions of SBC women's small groups. The relationship lasted approximately thirty years. When Moore began publicly pushing back on SBC leadership culture — on Patterson's handling of the rape allegation at Southwestern, on evangelical Trump alignment, on the treatment of women in the denomination — LifeWay quietly stopped stocking her materials. The pipeline that had made her one of the most trusted voices in the SBC withdrew its distribution when she declined to follow the pipeline's political direction. Her departure from the SBC in 2021 made the severance complete.

Connections to LifeWay Christian Resources

• SBC Conservative Resurgence influenced (1990) — The Conservative Resurgence's strategy of electing SBC presidents who would appoint ideologically aligned trustees eventually reached the Sunday School Board — later LifeWay Christian Resources — the denomination's curriculum and publishing arm. As the resurgence installed aligned trustees through the late 1980s and early 1990s, LifeWay's editorial and acquisitions standards shifted to reflect the new denominational commitments: inerrancy as defined by the resurgence, complementarianism as required doctrine, and alignment with the resurgence's theological priorities. The materials flowing into 47,000 SBC churches through LifeWay's distribution network changed accordingly — not all at once, but progressively, as the institution was reshaped by the people who now governed it.

Sources

• Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation — Kristin Kobes Du Mez (2020), pp. 144–175
• Takeover: The Long War for the Soul of the Southern Baptist Convention — Bob Allen (2011), pp. 1–280