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Sanderson said that as a boy, he wanted to be a veterinarian, but at age 19, he heard God's call and switched course. His father, Raymond, now 89, taught that the Bible is God's inerrant and infallible word. Sanderson upheld that teaching even when moderates ruled the national and state conventions -- a trend he proudly said he resisted.

He failed his New Testament class the first time he took it at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in Wake Forest, then a more moderate school.

"I believed in the miracles and the Virgin Birth, but it wasn't being taught that way," Sanderson said.

He graduated with a master's in divinity in 1981, and became a staunch supporter of the seminary under the leadership of former President Paige Patterson, who, beginning in 1992, replaced most of the faculty with strict biblical literalists.

At a Wednesday evening discipleship class, Sanderson taught a group of seven men and women, using the Hebrew book of Judges. Each time the Israelites sinned, he pointed out, God punished them.

"What symptoms of spiritual and moral decay do we see in our country today?" he asked his class. As class members answered, "taking God out of the Pledge of Allegiance" and "immorality on TV and radio," Sanderson nodded.

"When we take God out, what's God going to do?" he asked, answering his own question, "He's going to spank our hind."

And so, Sanderson told his class, he is trying to do what he can to stem the moral free-fall around him. Proposing to exclude churches that sanction gay sex is the first step.

"We've got to stand for what we believe," he said. "Otherwise our nation is going down the tubes."

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