ATLANTA (ABP) — Southern Baptist officials harshly rejected Jimmy Carter's effort to unite all Baptists in North America under a compassion agenda, calling the ambitious plan “voodoo ecumenism” and a thinly veiled Democratic strategy to woo values voters.
But other Southern Baptists, including some reform-minded younger conservatives, called the SBC response un-Christ-like and prejudicial criticism from “fundamentalist elites.”
On Jan. 9, leaders of 40 Baptist denominations and organizations in the United States and Canada — led by Carter and “cheered” on by Bill Clinton — announced a commitment to put aside social and theological differences to unite behind an agenda of compassionate ministry. The effort will begin with a Celebration of a New Baptist Covenant, a gathering set for January 2008.
The presence of two former Democratic presidents at the forefront of the ambitious plan triggered allegations that a political motive lurks behind the talk of Baptist unity.
SBC ethics official Richard Land said most Southern Baptists voted against Clinton and Carter, as well as failed presidential candidate Al Gore — all Baptist Democrats. “I suspect that Mr. Carter and Mr. Clinton are upset about that,” Land, president of the SBC's Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
Noting most Southern Baptists disagree with Democratic support for abortion rights, Land said the Carter-led Baptist coalition “might be the 'Pro-choice Baptist Convention.'”
In an editorial in Baptist Press, the SBC's communications arm, seminary dean Russell Moore called the Carter-Clinton effort “voodoo ecumenism.”
“The unity of which news reports speak is a unity based on social action and ethical engagement,” said Moore, theology dean of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. “Even apart from questions of [Clinton's] personal ethics and about the long-ago debates over alleged high crimes and misdemeanors, what about the official social agenda of the former president? This is, after all, a man who vetoed legislation protecting unborn infants from partial-birth abortion, and then blamed his abortion-rights ideology on what he says he learned from his former pastor at a Little Rock Southern Baptist congregation.”
Southern Baptist blogger Jerry Grace, a Republican layman from Satartia, Miss., was one of many commentators who dismissed the New Baptist Covenant as the political machination of the two former presidents.
“To be consistent, I despise both of these men,” Grace wrote Jan. 11 on sbcouthouse.blogspot.com. “Jimmy Carter may be the most naïve man on the planet…. Bill Clinton is far smarter than that, with every word coming out of his mouth either designed to promote his need for power or to pick up women.”
“None of us need to speculate about its content,” Grace said of the New Baptist Covenant, a statement based on Jesus' compassion agenda in Luke 4. “It will be a reflection of the Democratic Party platform designed to promote other great religious leaders like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton to deliver the black vote to Hillary Clinton, that torchbearer of maternal virtue and humble leadership.”
The Southern Baptist Convention rooted out its moderate leaders in the 1980s and more recently severed ties with the pan-Baptist global network known as the Baptist World Alliance because of allegations of liberal influence. As with the independent and fundamentalist Baptist groups, Southern Baptists are skeptical of any pan-Baptist coalition that would include more progressive members.
So the leaders who joined Carter to launch the New Baptist Covenant, representing an estimated 20 million believers, were resigned to the fact — and somewhat relieved — that the Southern Baptist Convention won't be making the journey with them.
Those leaders steered clear of criticizing the Southern Baptist Convention — which wasn't invited to participate — while publicly offering an olive branch to individual Southern Baptists or others who want to join the cause. Still, they said, America needs “a broader Baptist witness” that is known more for compassionate ministry than “negative” pronouncements.
Southern Baptist leaders rejected that implied criticism and signaled the 16 million-member SBC, easily the continent's largest Baptist denominational group, is happy to go it alone.
In the official SBC response, released through Baptist Press Jan. 10, chief executive Morris Chapman and current president Frank Page said the Southern Baptist Convention already is ethnically diverse, is ministering to the needy, and enjoys favorable public opinion.
“Instead of engaging in a war of words, let's do a reality check,” said Page, pastor of First Baptist Church in Taylors, S.C. “Word games are fine, but reality says Southern Baptists are presenting a positive life-changing message, impacting our culture with our ministries and sharing the Good News of Jesus Christ.”
Added Chapman: “Zogby International conducted a survey for the SBC that showed adults view Southern Baptists favorably, equally to their views about Catholics and United Methodists.”
Chapman said Carter, who left the SBC in 2000 to join the moderate Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, “has been one of the most vocal critics of Southern Baptists, using ‘fundamentalist' as a pejorative and drawing a caustic comparison between Ayatollah Khomeini's rise to power in Iran and the resurgence of conservative leadership being elected in the SBC.”
Chapman said the SBC has a good record of addressing social needs, citing the denomination's $5.8 million donation in 2006 to fight world hunger. “The great difference in our approach from liberals is that in ministering to the body, we do not neglect the needs of the soul…,” he added.
Not all Southern Baptists were ready to dismiss the New Baptist Covenant and the effort to reunite the fractured Baptist family, however.
Wade Burleson, a leader in the network of reform-minded conservatives who elected Page as president, said Chapman's and Page's criticisms are uncalled-for.
While not familiar with Covenant and it's leaders, Burleson said, “it would be difficult for me to criticize any evangelical Christian movement whose stated goals are to live out the gospel through doing justice and loving mercy.”
“There comes a time when we as Southern Baptists should simply remain silent if we cannot say anything supportive of other Baptist attempts at addressing pressing social and cultural issues in a prophetic manner,” Burleson, an Oklahoma pastor, told Associated Baptist Press. “To provide a public defense of our convention's record, while at the same time criticizing others, seems to be acting in a manner contrary to the spirit of our Lord and the good of His kingdom at large. I wish nothing but success for all Baptists who seek to live out the gospel for a world in need of a Savior.”
Ben Cole, another leader of the young reformers and a blogger at baptistblog.wordpress.com, also criticized his SBC colleagues.
“I am not surprised to see a response movement beginning to develop to provide balance to the fundamentalist tire-slashers who have managed to arrest the microphone of public witness among Southern Baptists,” Cole said in a statement to ABP. “Neither am I surprised to read the prejudicial criticisms already being lobbed at Carter and Clinton by some of my fundamentalist brethren.”
“Southern Baptists had better be careful when it comes to criticizing efforts to unite people of faith who seek social justice for the poor and oppressed,” said Cole, a Southern Baptist pastor in Arlington, Texas “The role of the Levite or the priest in Christ's parable of the Good Samaritan is not one to be preferred. It could be that men whom the Southern Baptist fundamentalist elites regard as undesirable are the very ones who gain heaven's blessing in their efforts to bind up the wounds of those in our society who have fallen among thieves.”
Cole said he shares the Covenant group's desire for more Baptist voices to be heard.
“The Southern Baptist Convention has gained a great deal of media attention in the last quarter-century, and our spokesmen have not always reflected with fairness the diversity of Baptist identity on issues of political or social importance,” he said.
David Dockery, a Southern Baptist supporter and president of Union University in Jackson, Tenn., likewise was hesitant to question Carter's motives. “I think everyone admires President Carter's ongoing efforts to promote unity among Baptists,” he said. “I believe it truly reflects his heart. Even when people disagree with Mr. Carter, I think they still admire him as a person of integrity.”
Dockery, who participated in Carter's previous attempt to reconcile Baptists, said the New Baptist Covenant echoes some of the themes of that 1998 effort. But he predicted few Southern Baptists will join the latest movement.
“To the degree that Baptists can work together in the areas of racial reconciliation, in promoting compassion, and Christian unity, we should do so,” Dockery told ABP in a statement. “Those themes, however, it seems to me need to be balanced by a renewed commitment to truth in an age of relativism and religious pluralism, to doctrinal fidelity, and to faithfulness to the Christ-centered message of the gospel.
“Unfortuantely, the harsh words that President Carter has used on occasions about Southern Baptists since 2000 seem to me to make it hard for most Southern Baptists to join in these efforts with him. If this “new covenant” effort is used of God to advance the gospel and to extend the kingdom of God, we should all give thanks to God.”
Organizers of the New Baptist Covenant predicted the movement may achieve unity among Baptists in North America for the first time in a century and a half. With Southern Baptists on the sideline, however, the Covenant may also reveal the clearest division yet between Baptists on the left and right.
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