PASADENA, Calif. (ABP) — While celebrating the denomination’s broad ethnic, regional and language diversity at their biennial meeting June 26-28, members of the American Baptist Churches USA also exhibited their ideological diversity.
Delegates, meeting in Pasadena, Calif., torpedoed a major restructuring that had been backed by denominational officials but criticized by many progressive leaders and churches. They voted 377-217 in favor of the bylaws changes — failing, by a handful of votes, to muster the two-thirds majority required to pass them. The changes would have spun off the denomination’s two mission boards into quasi-autonomous entities, altered the form of representation on ABCUSA’s main governing board and changed the method by which American Baptists approve policy statements and resolutions.
In particular, progressive congregations and organizations feared that the changes would further marginalize their voice within the denomination and make it more difficult to rescind past ABC statements condemning homosexuality.
Grant Ward, a delegate from Central Baptist Church in Wayne, Pa., read a statement the church had approved opposing the bylaws revision. It primarily discussed the fact that the changes would make it more difficult to rescind official ABC actions with which the congregation disagrees, including a 1992 ABC General Board statement on homosexuality.
“Our principal concern regards the provisions of the new bylaws that transform all existing resolutions and policy statements into ‘Public Witness Statements’ of the ABCUSA, and that set a higher threshold to rescind these past statements than it will take to rescind future Public Witness Statements,” Ward said, quoting the church’s resolution.
Ward said Central Baptist Church was concerned specifically concerned about the impact the change might have on a 1992 resolution that states, “We affirm that the practice of homosexuality is incompatible with Christian teaching," and the 2005 General Board decision to include the statement in the official “Identity” document that describes the ABC’s core beliefs. Under the new bylaws, he said, those immediately become “Public Witness Statements” which can be rescinded only by action initiated by the Board of General Ministries and ratified by three-quarters of all regional and national boards. He said that is a higher threshold than the 66 percent majority of the General Board that enacted the resolution in 1992.
The Association of Welcoming and Affirming Baptists also expressed concern about an omission in the proposal, which contained no explicit affirmation that churches can choose to affiliate with a regional group outside the geographical areas in which they are located. In the last 20 years, a handful of pro-gay American Baptist congregations have been expelled from some regional ABC groups. Many of them have affiliated with more progressive regional groups outside their area — the only way for a local church to continue its affiliation with the national ABCUSA.
The rule allowing churches to affiliate with such so-called “non-geographic regions” would not have been part of the new bylaws, but would have been a standing rule of the proposed Board of General Ministries. The board could, at any time, choose to undo that rule by a simple majority vote.
June Totten, a delegate from Riverside Baptist Church in Washington, spoke for many opponents who objected to another aspect of the proposed restructuring. The proposal would have altered the way the denomination approves public-policy statements, initiating and approving them through the boards of the denomination’s regions and agencies rather than individual delegates to biennial meetings or local congregations.
“This is a little bit like swimming upstream, but here’s a reason why salmon do it — to ensure the next generation,” Totten said. “Some restructuring needs to be done, especially around finances and financial commitments, but there are many other options that could better serve our beloved ABC.
“We have the challenge of becoming a place where the church’s most difficult issues can be discussed and addressed. This means that discovering that our unity is a gift from God and not a result of human agreement,” she continued. “Under these bylaws we will not have a unified voice; Babel comes to mind. We will have many voices not needing to communicate with each other.”
Totten and other opponents said the proposed changes — including a reduction of the number of representatives on the denomination’s General Board, which would have been renamed the Board of General Ministries — were not in line with Baptist polity.
“The uniqueness of Baptist churches is our congregational polity. However, when I look to this document, I do not see this polity concept transferred to our denominational bylaws,” said George Hancock-Stefan, the pastor of Central Baptist Church in Atlantic Highlands, N.J. “These bylaws represent a different polity, a different model. While this model could be good for other Christian denominations, it does not represent well our Baptist congregational polity.”
Many opponents also expressed concern about the decision to “decouple” the denomination’s two major mission boards — the Board of National Ministries and the Board of International Ministries — from the ABC General Board.
Currently, their membership is picked from among members of the General Board. The proposal would have made their boards self-perpetuating, allowing them to set their own policy and create new governing documents.
“Separated boards and regions weaken our mutual accountability and leave our denomination vulnerable, as other denominations with separate boards have had them taken over one by one,” Totten said.
But heads of those agencies had argued to delegates that the proposed spin-offs would help their boards function more effectively and efficiently.
“People will be on a single, rather than two, boards,” said Annie Marie Lebarbour, current chair of the board of directors of ABC National Ministries. “We see that new structure as providing new freedom for National Ministries.”
However, she cautioned, the agency “has no desire to be freed from the denomination; this is who we are; it’s our DNA; it’s in our bloodstream — it’s in our very work. You are National Ministries along with us. We wish to and intend to remain firmly American Baptist. So what does it give us freedom to do? It’s freedom to concentrate on the strategic mission of National Ministries — to focus our time and ministry on the missional work of a single organization rather than two.”
With the failure of the bylaws changes, ABC leaders will now regroup and decide how to present a more palatable restructuring proposal to delegates at the 2011 Biennial, scheduled to meet in Puerto Rico.
ABC General Secretary Roy Medley, in a June 30 letter to members of the General Board, said he would meet with ABC leaders to consider how to proceed with a future restructuring proposal.
“I am considering this vote much like a first reading at the General Board,” he said. “We have received feedback that our efforts need further work, and this gives us the opportunity to work to bring as many people on board as possible as we revisit the bylaws. And to aid us in our work we have significant written feedback from the delegates that was requested in the second discernment [business] session.”
Medley said American Baptists can go ahead and begin implementing some non-formal parts of the restructuring — such as increased participation by the denomination’s several ethnic caucus groups at General Board meetings — now.
“You will agree with me, I am sure, that we do not want structure to consume the next two years,” he wrote. “There is too much important work that God is calling us to do to allow us to be diverted by that. The ABC officers and I will be discussing how we best move forward in this next phase to allow the necessary work to occur but not to fully dominate our time and deliberations.”
Robert Marus is managing editor and Washington bureau chief for Associated Baptist Press.