(RNS) — Henry J. Lyons, the former president of the National Baptist Convention, USA, who was imprisoned on charges of fraud a decade ago, is one of two candidates running to be the convention’s next president this September.
The other candidate, Julius R. Scruggs of Huntsville, Ala., confirmed Feb. 19 that he and Lyons are the two certified candidates who were announced at the NBCUSA’s mid-winter meeting in January.
Lyons resigned from the presidency of the historically African-American denomination in 1999 after being convicted of swindling millions from corporations wanting to market products to church members. He was released from prison in 2003.
Lyons could not be reached for comment, nor could the convention’s current president, William J. Shaw, who is completing his second five-year term.
Scruggs, the vice president-at-large of the denomination, declined to address his feelings about Lyons’s run and past imprisonment.
“I have no comment on that,” he said.
To become certified, candidates for the denomination’s presidency had to turn in letters of support from 100 churches by Jan. 1, he said.
Lyons is pastor of New Salem Missionary Baptist Church in Tampa, Fla. His new presidential run is not his first attempt to regain a position in his denomination.
In 2007, he ran again for the presidency of the Florida General Baptist Convention but was defeated.
Cheryl Townsend Gilkes, professor of African-American studies at Colby College in Maine and an assistant pastor of a Massachusetts church with ties to the NBCUSA, said it would be inappropriate for Lyons to lead the denomination again.
“If the National Baptist Convention wants to be relevant in the 21st century … they need new leadership,” she said. “While we forgive him, we embrace him and we love him and he stumbled and made a mistake — and people do make mistakes — sometimes, as Paul says, everything is lawful but not everything is helpful. His becoming president … again would not be helpful.”
Scruggs, the pastor of First Missionary Baptist Church in Huntsville for more than 32 years, said he is running in hopes of expanding the mission work of the denomination beyond Africa and other locations.
“Some of our individual churches do mission work in Haiti,” he said. “I’d like to see our convention have a presence there."
Scruggs also said he’d like to see the denomination develop a public policy commission to better address issues such as health care and public education.