Wiley Drake, a self-proclaimed “champion of the little guy” known for his perennial presence at Southern Baptist Convention Annual Meeting microphones, died Jan. 27. He was 82.
Over the past three decades Drake spoke more than 70 times from the SBC Annual Meeting floor, becoming a legend among convention insiders and occasionally drawing cheers from messengers as soon as he announced his name and church. He helped launch the convention’s boycott of the Walt Disney Corporation in 1997 and served as SBC second vice president in 2006-07.
“Wiley Drake is the SBC,” Texas pastor Bart Barber posted on social media a few years ago. “He’s the guy who isn’t the president, and isn’t going to become the president, who is passionate about the convention and wants it to be the very best that it can be. So, instead of carping and complaining, he gets involved.”
Pastor of First Southern Baptist Church in Buena Park, Calif., for more than 25 years, Drake was known in his Southern California community as a friend to the needy. He engaged in a years-long legal battle with local authorities over his desire to use the church building as a homeless shelter. In 1997, he was convicted of violating building and property codes with a ministry that housed up to 70 people per night and distributed 30,000 pounds of food monthly. “As long as I am pastor, we will provide shelter, food and love to the homeless,” he told The New York Times at the time. In 2017, the city condemned his church’s shelter.
Drake told The Dallas Morning news in 2007 he was a “champion of the little guy.”
At times, Drake sparked controversy with his public comments on an array of topics. He received a cease-and-desist letter from the SBC Executive Committee in 2006 after endorsing a U.S. Senate candidate on letterhead identifying Drake as SBC second vice president. He claimed to be among founders of the so-called “birther” movement and filed a 2008 lawsuit claiming Barack Obama was ineligible to serve as president because he was not a natural-born U.S. citizen. Drake also said he prayed imprecatory prayers against Obama.
At SBC annual meetings, messengers wondered what Drake would propose at the next introduction of new business.
He set his sights on Disney in the mid-1990s as the family entertainment giant promoted homosexuality and other unbiblical lifestyles. In 1996, he successfully amended a resolution urging “prayerful consideration” before purchasing Disney products to add warning of a boycott if Disney continued its “anti-Christian and antifamily trend.” The next year, Drake submitted a resolution to the SBC Resolutions Committee that eventuated in the official Disney boycott.
Following an unsuccessful run for second vice president in 2005, he was nominated again the following year and won on the first ballot over three other candidates, including future SBC president J.D. Greear. In nominating Drake, Kentucky pastor Bill Dodson called him “a foot soldier” in the SBC’s return to theological conservatism who “represents those like you and me.”
As pastor of a church with fewer than 100 active members, Drake fought to enable other small church leaders to pursue SBC offices. During the annual meeting concluding his vice-presidential service, Drake moved that the convention cover “reasonable” travel expenses for SBC officers. He told The Dallas Morning News the expense of attending SBC events played a role in his decision not to seek a second term since his church couldn’t afford to help him travel. The following year, the Executive Committee responded to his motion by agreeing to pay travel expenses for future officers whose churches didn’t have funds for convention-related travel.
Twice Drake was nominated for the SBC presidency – once by himself – though he never won the office.
He ventured into secular politics in 2008, running for vice president of the United States with American Independent Party presidential candidate Alan Keyes. He ran for president in 2012 and 2016 as an Independent, saying, “It’s time we got back to our history of ministers of the Gospel running for office without a party.”
But for many Southern Baptists, Drake’s most memorable venture into presidential politics came in 2015, when he made a motion at the SBC Annual Meeting requesting that then-convention president Ronnie Floyd run for president of the United States. The motion was ruled out of order.
A native of Arkansas, Drake dropped out of school in the ninth grade to enter the circus and rodeo, he told Baptist Press in 2008. Sidelined by a bull-riding injury, he worked on a crew building missile silos before he joined the U.S. Navy. During a tour of duty in Vietnam, he accepted Christ as Savior. Drake attended Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary among other schools.
He was preceded in death by his wife Barbara. He is survived by five siblings, four adult children, 12 grandchildren and eight great-grandchildren with one on the way.
David Roach is a writer in Mobile, Ala.