NASHVILLE (ABP) — Despite pleas from their Baptist brethren worldwide, Southern Baptist Convention leaders show no sign of abandoning their plan to withdraw from the Baptist World Alliance. But that isn't stopping Florida retiree Bob Casey from trying to change their minds at the last minute.
During its meeting next Monday and Tuesday in Nashville, the SBC Executive Committee will hear a study committee's recommendation to end the 99-year-old relationship with the BWA, which Southern Baptists helped found and continue to fund. The committee accused the Baptist World Alliance of being too open to liberalism — allegations strongly denied by BWA leaders and many of the 211 affiliated Baptist unions worldwide.
Bob Casey is already in Nashville, where he has begun a weeklong fast and daily prayer-walk around the SBC headquarters building in a Joshua-like attempt to prevent the denomination from leaving the BWA — which many observers of Baptist life say is already a foregone conclusion.
Casey embarked on his quest with the encouragement of his church — Parkview Baptist Church in Gainesville, Fla. — one of many Southern Baptist congregations that passed resolutions pleading with their denominational leaders to reconsider.
The retired pastor and physician told Associated Baptist Press his unusual protest was inspired by an Old Testament story.
“I based it on the biblical story of Joshua and the city of Jericho, where people marched around [the city] once a day for six days,” so that the city's walls would fall and the Israelites could conquer it, Casey said.
“I'm not calling for destruction of the Southern Baptist Convention, but I'm calling for destruction of a bad idea, which is to separate from the Baptist World Alliance,” he added. The plan for withdrawal, if approved by the Executive Committee next week, will come before the entire Southern Baptist Convention for a vote in June. If messengers favor it, then all SBC funding of BWA — until recently, $450,000 a year — will end Oct. 1.
The SBC, with 16 million members nationwide, is the largest member of the Baptist World Alliance, which counts 47 million Baptists worldwide.
The planned withdrawal has received support from a handful of top Southern Baptist leaders, but otherwise response within the denomination has been muted. Meanwhile, it has sparked almost universal opposition from international Baptist leaders.
Casey, who is also a Korean War veteran and has served as a Republican member of the Florida House of Representatives, said he believes in the BWA cause because he's a “freedom fighter.”
“I'm fighting for the freedom of Baptists throughout the world,” he said. “I just think it's a big mistake to withdraw fellowship from fellow Baptists…. The Southern Baptist Convention leadership is trying to drive a wedge between Baptists of the world.”
Casey, who is diabetic, began fasting from food and water Feb. 11. He is marching around the SBC building in downtown Nashville once a day, carrying a cross made of grapevines he gathered in his backyard. On the last day, like Joshua at Jericho, he will march around the building seven times.
He will end his demonstration Feb. 18, one day after the Executive Committee is expected to vote on the recommendation. He has asked for permission to address the body, although as of press time Feb. 12, that permission had not been granted.
Casey said he has received assurances from officials that the resolution will be placed in the hands of Executive Committee chairman Gary Smith.
Since the study committee's recommendation was announced in December, the Baptist World Alliance has been a hot topic among Baptists worldwide.
One of the SBC's central allegations — that a German Baptist theologian speaking at a BWA-sponsored meeting espoused an unorthodox view of salvation — has been vehemently denied by the theologian and others in attendance.
Meanwhile, Helge Stadelmann, rector of an evangelical seminary in Germany, told a conservative Baptist publication in Missouri that liberalism “has damaged the Baptist church in Germany” and influenced the BWA there. “I would think that any evangelical-minded denomination, being criticized for what it stands for and is only good for paying into the [BWA] organization, would want to take this into consideration,” said Stadelmann, an ordained Baptist minister who recently was a guest at the SBC seminary in Kansas City, Mo.
The SBC study committee is resting its case against BWA on the liberalism allegations. and its report said nothing about the BWA's controversial decision last year to admit the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship into membership.
But a member of the study committee — SBC International Mission Board President Jerry Rankin — acknowledged Feb. 2 that the CBF issue influenced the committee's decision.
Southern Baptist leaders strongly oppose the Fellowship, which was formed by Southern Baptists dissatisfied with the denomination's fundamentalist direction.
– Photo available from Associated Baptist Press
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