GREENSBORO, N.C. (ABP) – Blogs have already revolutionized secular politics, and whether a subset of them have revolutionized Baptist politics will be seen at the Southern Baptist Convention's annual meeting June 13-14 in North Carolina.
The meeting, in Greensboro, will feature the first seriously contested SBC presidential election in a decade and several other controversial business items. The combination will likely produce the most contentious convention meeting since 1991, when moderates left after an epic struggle with fundamentalists over control of the nation's largest Protestant denomination.
But this time, the struggle is between fellow conservatives. Internal tensions have been thrust into the SBC spotlight mainly by bloggers — the ever-expanding network of ideological entrepreneurs who analyze and pontificate on their own websites.
In the year since the SBC last met, reform-minded bloggers in the denomination have begun to form their own community on the Internet — and they have had a lot to discuss. Since 2005's annual meeting, Southern Baptists have witnessed:
— The top executives at one of their mission boards resign amid scandal
— The president of another SBC mission board embroiled in conflict with trustees
— An unprecedented attempt by those trustees to remove one of their colleagues
— A decline in the number of baptisms among the denomination's
churches.
Presidential race
At the top of the conflict list is a race for the presidency that pits the representatives of two different philosophies of denominational involvement against each other. For the first time since 1994, a candidate other than one anointed by the denomination's leadership elite has a serious chance at being elected SBC president.
The first announced nominee, Ronnie Floyd, apparently has the support of many of the denomination's most powerful leaders — including one of the architects of the conservatives' SBC takeover plan. Floyd, who is pastor of First Baptist Church in Springdale, Ark., has received endorsements from three seminary presidents — a move the president of the SBC Executive Committee publicly deemed inappropriate. Some critics have said the unusual moves could signal desperation on the part of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary President Paige Patterson and other conservative leaders, who are accustomed to their friends and allies being elected to denominational leadership positions without challenge.
Many of the bloggers have criticized Floyd's weak support of the Cooperative Program, the SBC's unified budget for supporting denominational ministries at the national and state levels. An SBC panel recently called for officers and other convention leaders to come from churches that contribute at least 10 percent of their undesignated receipts to the program. In 2005, Floyd's church gave 0.27 percent of its $12 million in undesignated funds to the Cooperative Program.
Floyd's candidacy was announced shortly after another prominent SBC pastor with less-than-stellar Cooperative Program credentials pulled out of the running. Johnny Hunt, pastor of First Baptist Church in Woodstock, Ga., had initially said he would run, but later withdrew.
One of Floyd's opponents, meanwhile, appears to have the support of many bloggers and other SBC reformers. Frank Page initially declined to allow himself to be nominated, saying he “didn't have a peace about it.” But he reversed course shortly afterward, saying “an overall malaise among many people” in the convention prompted him to accept the nomination.
Page, who is the pastor of First Baptist Church of Taylors, S.C., was courted as a candidate by prominent SBC blogger Wade Burleson and other reform-minded conservatives. Last year, Page's church gave 12.1 percent of its $4.4 million in undesignated receipts to the Cooperative Program.
And on June 6, Baptist Press confirmed that Jerry Sutton, pastor of Two Rivers Baptist Church in Nashville, Tenn., would also be nominated for president. Most critics believe Sutton will likely split the vote of those loyal to the convention's elite with Floyd.
William Maxwell, the church administrative director, told ABP that in the fiscal year for 2005, Two Rivers gave $73,627.87 of a total $4,104,377 in undesignated receipts — roughly 1.7 percent — to the Tennessee Cooperative Program. Baptist Press reported that total giving to state and national components of the Cooperative Program was $183,482.
The winner of the presidential race will replace Bobby Welch, who served two terms as SBC president. Welch recently announced retirement plans from First Baptist Church in Daytona Beach, Fla., where he has served as pastor for 32 years.
During his tenure as president, Welch emphasized revitalization of SBC evangelism, challenging Southern Baptists to convert and baptize 1 million new Christians from October 2005 through September 2006 — a program called “Everyone Can.”
Baptism decline
Despite the grassroots effort, statistics from the SBC's 2005 survey of member congregations reveal a decline in baptisms for the fifth time in six years. The annual statistics show that baptisms last year dropped from 387,947 to 371,850, a 4.15 percent decrease.
The decrease of more than 16,000 baptisms came after a gain of 10,000-plus baptisms the previous year. But that gain was preceded by four consecutive years of baptism declines, decreasing from more than 419,000 baptisms in 1998-99.
More importantly, the baptism figures reflect little change over the past 50 years, with the numbers of baptisms holding relatively steady while the denomination's overall membership figure has continued to rise. This is despite the fact that one of conservatives' main rallying cries in gaining control of the SBC was that the moderates who previously ran the denomination were insufficiently evangelistic.
After his re-election last year as SBC president, Welch told reporters that the nation's largest Protestant group has seen decreased results in evangelism because of a lack of effort and “unity of purpose.” Welch did not return phone calls requesting comment for this story.
Vice-presidential races
As meeting participants — known as messengers — vote for president, that unity of purpose could play a role in their decision for first vice president as well: a potential three-way race pits a neo-Calvinist against an evangelist and a pastor with connections to the denomination's elite.
Mark Dever, pastor of Capitol Hill Baptist Church in Washington, D.C., and a popular leader among SBC Calvinists, acknowledged May 24 that he would allow himself to be nominated for the VP post. Keith Fordham, an evangelist from Fayetteville, Ga., will also run for the slot, according to a May 22 Baptist Press report. Fordham is the former president of the Conference of Southern Baptist Evangelists. And BP reported June 2 that Jimmy Jackson, pastor of Whitesburg Baptist Church in Huntsville, Ala., will also be nominated for the post. He is a trustee at Patterson's seminary, a former SBC Executive Committee member and has served as an SBC parliamentarian.
Messengers will also have a choice in the race for second vice president. Pastors J. D. Greear, Jay Adkins, Bob Bender and Wiley Drake have all said they will be nominated for the position of second vice president.
Greear is pastor of the Summit Church in Durham, N.C., and is expected to be nominated by Daniel Akin, president of Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in Wake Forest, N.C. Greear is likely to have the support of the SBC's power structure, since Akin is one of the three seminary presidents to endorse Floyd's candidacy.
Bob Bender pastors First Baptist Church of Black Forest, in Colorado Springs, Colo. He will be nominated by Mark Edlund. Jay Adkins is the pastor of First Baptist Church in Westwego, La. Nominated by Joed Rice, he will graduate from New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary with a Master of Divinity degree in May 2007.
Drake, pastor of the tiny First Southern Baptist Church of Buena Park, Calif., has earned a reputation as something of a denominational gadfly. His greatest notoriety came in 1997, when he convinced the convention to boycott the Disney corporation for alleged anti-family policies and products.
Bloggers and the International Mission Board
The advent of the SBC blogosphere has brought pre-existing internal tensions in the denomination to the surface. Many of the bloggers are under 50 years of age — “younger” by the standards of Baptist leadership — and there is a generational aspect to the conflict in the denomination.
In recent years, SBC officials have worked to cultivate younger pastors and other leaders, and bring them into service on denominational boards and offices. But the plan may have backfired to some extent, since some of the new recruits are leading the revolution against the old-guard establishment.
The small but influential group — Burleson's blog (www.wadeburleson.com), for instance, has had nearly 200,000 visitors as of the afternoon of June 5 — has attacked everything from controversial new restrictions on missionaries to perceived cronyism among trustees.
Burleson is probably the most widely read of the new SBC bloggers, whose ranks also include Georgia pastor Marty Duren (sbcoutpost.blogspot.com) and Texas pastor Benjamin Cole (baptistblogger.blogspot.com). His blog got started as a way to criticize actions taken by a majority of his fellow trustees at the International Mission Board. Trustees attempted to remove the Enid, Okla., pastor after he refused to stop discussing controversial new board policies online.
The move — had it been approved by SBC messengers — reportedly would have been the first time an SBC agency trustee was forced out of office in the middle of a term. After a firestorm of Internet and newspaper controversy over the move, trustees backed down, instead barring Burleson from serving on any IMB committees and adopting rules prohibiting trustees and staff from dissenting publicly from any board decisions.
Burleson agreed to live under those restrictions, but during a subsequent trustee meeting, chairman Tom Hatley announced Burleson again had violated the secrecy of a closed-door trustee session May 22 by blogging about a proposed task force that would study doctrinal qualifications for IMB missionaries.
As punishment for Burleson's “breach of confidentiality,” the board's executive committee barred him from attending any future closed-door sessions of the board and recommended that its newly elected chairman continue that prohibition.
Burleson said he will refuse to abide by those restrictions unless they are ratified by the SBC. He is calling for the convention to investigate “manipulation” and “coercion” by his fellow IMB trustees.
Part of the controversy that continues to follow IMB actions involves two issues: baptism in the mission field and glossolalia — speaking in tongues — used as part of a “private prayer language.” The tongues debate emerged last November, when IMB trustees adopted a policy banning the future appointment of missionaries who engage in the practice. IMB policy already excludes people who speak in tongues in public worship from serving as missionaries.
Although the new policy was not retroactive, some trustees said the action was part of a plan to oust IMB President Jerry Rankin. He confirmed prior to his 1993 election that his private prayer life included occasional experiences of “praying in the Spirit.” SBC insiders have for years said privately that Patterson has lobbied against Rankin's leadership.
Burleson has promised to present a motion during the annual meeting calling for a denominational ad hoc committee to investigate various allegations of improper conduct by his fellow IMB trustees, Patterson and other SBC leaders. While many such motions are made annually at SBC meetings, they almost always are ruled out of order or referred to the agency that they concern, with a report expected by the annual meeting. However, Burleson has said he may invoke a rule that will force the convention to vote on the motion at that meeting — although it requires a supermajority for approval.
North American Mission Board woes
As for the SBC's other missionary agency, the North American Mission Board, President Bob Reccord resigned April 17 after a trustee investigation produced a scathing report of numerous examples of poor management. Allegations of massive waste, cronyism and other troubles under Reccord's leadership first surfaced in a February expose by Georgia Baptists' newspaper, The Christian Index.
The investigation faulted Reccord for autocratic decision-making, extravagant spending on failed projects, apparent conflicts of interest and creating a “culture of fear” that prevented staffers from questioning the abuses. It also said Reccord spent resources on projects unrelated to NAMB's mission and was gone so much he couldn't adequately manage the agency, which directs and coordinates Southern Baptist mission work in the United States and Canada.
Some trustees were most upset by Reccord's blurring of the line between NAMB and personal interests, such as his extensive non-NAMB speaking schedule and a trip to London for Reccord and his wife to attend the premiere of the Chronicles of Narnia movie. The trip cost NAMB $3,800.
NAMB's trustees, after their own investigation, put Reccord under strict “executive-level controls” March 23, which many observers thought would prompt his resignation. On April 13, several unidentified trustees called for Reccord to resign or face a possible ouster at their May 2 meeting. Three days later, he resigned.
Other items
In addition to the internal unrest, messengers attending the meeting — the Greensboro Convention and Visitor's Bureau expects more than 12,000 of them — may address a resolution on staging a mass exodus from public schools.
For the third SBC annual meeting in a row, Texas attorney Bruce Shortt will attempt to get the denomination on record calling for Christians to remove their children from public schools. His previous resolutions have been quashed or heavily altered by the SBC Resolutions Committee. At last year's meeting, messengers approved a resolution the committee presented citing concerns about the acceptance of homosexuality by public schools and calling on Southern Baptists “to hold accountable schools, institutions and industries for their moral influence on our children.”
However, the committee stopped short of including Shortt's call for a public-school boycott. In 2004, SBC messengers rejected a Shortt proposal urging Southern Baptists to remove their children from “godless” and “anti-Christian” public schools.
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