His father was the vice president of Exxon and his mother helped found the Baptist church the family attended.
[4] The Southern Poverty Law Center describes CNP as a shadowy, secretive group that "is a key venue where mainstream conservatives and extremists mix.
"[5] Anne Nelson's 2021 book, Shadow Network, alleges that Pressler convinced the senior Republican Party leadership to attempt the same practices to establish minority as in the SBC, one-party control of the United States federal government.
[7] In 1978, Pressler along with W. A. Criswell, Adrian Rogers and Paige Patterson, met with a group of determined conservative and Republican pastors and laymen at a hotel near the Atlanta airport to launch the resurgence.
[8] The Atlanta group determined to elect Rogers, pastor of Bellevue Baptist Church in Memphis, Tennessee, as the first Conservative Resurgence president of the convention.
[9] During his time as a leader of the SBC, Pressler was instrumental in pushing its 47,000 churches to adopt literal interpretations of the Bible, strongly denounce LGBTQIA+ acceptance, ban women from preaching, align with the Republican party's political stances and goals, and help members of the GOP get elected into public office.
[13] In April 2018, the Houston Chronicle reported that Pressler was accused by Toby Twining and lawyer Brooks Schott of sexual misconduct in separate court affidavits.
[10] In 2017, Pressler's former assistant Gareld Duane Rollins Jr. filed a lawsuit claiming he was regularly raped by the conservative leader.
[18] In 2019, after the scandals of sexual abuse accusations involving Pressler and sexual abuse cover-ups involving Paige Patterson, the Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary removed the stained glass windows depicting the actors of the conservative resurgence, located in the MacGorman Chapel and opened in 2011.