ATLANTA (ABP) — Organizers for next January's New Baptist Covenant gathering announced the speakers for the historic three-day meeting — with former President Jimmy Carter making good on a pledge to enlist prominent Republican Baptists to complement the mostly Democratic headliners.
Republican Senators Lindsay Graham (S.C.) and Charles Grassley (Iowa) join Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee as recently named participants for the Jan. 30-Feb. 1 New Baptist Covenant Celebration in Atlanta, billed as the broadest Baptist meeting in America since Baptists divided over slavery before the Civil War. Organizers hope to attract 20,000 people to the gathering.
Carter already has enlisted former President Bill Clinton and Al Gore, the former vice president who came within 537 Florida votes of succeeding Clinton. They all are Democrats, as is ‘60s-era presidential adviser Bill Moyers, now a journalist and author.
Although the meeting will occur in the heat of the presidential-nomination season, Carter eschewed any political intention for the gathering. Clinton's involvement sparked criticism the event would become a campaign rally for wife Hillary, the Democratic presidential frontrunner. But the only presidential candidate on the program is Republican Huckabee, a former Baptist pastor and governor of Arkansas.
Carter acknowledged his effort was slowed initially by criticism the group was dominated by Democrats. “It may have been a mistake to single out me and Bill Clinton as two politicians,” he said. But the group's effort to enlist Republican speakers was “completely successful,” Carter said. “Every Republican we have invited has agreed to come.”
Six of the 13 speakers announced May 17 are politicians.
Three are pastors or preachers, including one woman — Julie Pennington-Russell, pastor of Calvary Baptist Church in Waco, Texas.
Two of the pastors are African-Americans — Charles Adams, pastor of Hartford Baptist Church in Detroit and past president of the Progressive National Baptist Convention, and William Shaw, pastor of White Rock Baptist Church in Philadelphia and president of the National Baptist Convention USA Inc., largest of the four main black Baptist denominations.
Also included is Joel Gregory, one of the nation's most renowned preachers. Gregory is preaching professor at Truett Theological Seminary at Baylor University and former pastor of First Baptist Church of Dallas.
Two social activists will address the gathering — Marian Wright Edelman, civil-rights veteran and founder of the Children's Defense Fund in Washington, D.C., who is a lawyer and Baptist pastor's daughter, and Tony Campolo, professor emeritus at Eastern University, an American Baptist school, and founder of the Evangelical Association for the Promotion of Education.
With two former presidents, one presidential candidate and one almost-president on the roster, political overtones are unavoidable at the January event. But Carter and Mercer University President Bill Underwood — the pair who dreamed up the Covenant — say the intent is to enlist prominent Baptists who care about the group's agenda of compassion.
The larger goal is to improve the “negative” and judgmental image of Baptists in North America and unite the majority of Baptists into a loose-knit network to address social ills.
So far, 40 Baptist organizations in the United States and Canada have indicated a willingness to participate in the January celebration. The organizations, which include most of the Baptist denominations in North America except the Southern Baptist Convention, encompass about 20 million Baptists.
That's more than the 16 million members claimed by the SBC, the largest Baptist group in the world. SBC leaders, who have moved sharply to the political and theological right in the last 25 years, have criticized the New Baptist Covenant as a political effort.
Rather than the racial, theological and social conflict that has divided Baptists for decades, the Covenant group plans to demonstrate Baptist unity around Jesus' compassion agenda, outlined in his inaugural sermon recorded in the fourth chapter of Luke's gospel.
Those themes comprise the core of the “New Baptist Covenant,” a statement drafted in April 2006 in a meeting at the Carter Center attended by some of the same Baptist leaders. The statement says the Covenant partners are “committed to promote peace with justice, feed the hungry, clothe the naked, shelter the homeless, care for the sick and marginalized, welcome the strangers among us, and promote religious liberty and respect for religious diversity.”
Meeting with a planning group May 17, Carter lamented the “increasing degree of division, separation and animosity” among the world's Christians, “not only among Baptists.” He said his previous failed attempts to bridge Baptist divisions have been “a torturous experience for me.” In contrast, he said, the yearlong Covenant effort has been “emotional and inspirational for me.”
Carter also has encouraged individual Southern Baptists to be involved in the meeting. “I've talked to the president of the Southern Baptist Convention [Frasnk Page] twice about our meetings and to see if he has any questions, and his response has not been negative.”
Carter said there is no intention of forming one overarching Baptist convention. “We have enough conventions already,” he said. Instead, he wants to bring together “as many Baptists as possible” into a loose-knit network to accomplish the mission of Jesus, which could set an example of unity for Christians worldwide.
Carter acknowledged it is unclear what structure or long-term agenda will result from their efforts, but one desirable outcome would be “a new concept of what Christian ministry is and what our Christian faith means.”
He said he senses among Baptists in North American “a deep, penetrating soul-commitment” to model the ministry of Jesus. While Baptists have different views about women pastors, gay marriage, pastoral authority and creedalism, he said, “I hope those might be put completely aside.”
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