INDIANAPOLIS (ABP) — Messengers to the Southern Baptist Convention June 15-16 in Indianapolis will vote on a proposal to withdraw money and membership from the Baptist World Alliance — and possibly a call to withdraw children from public schools.
The 2004 annual meeting also marks the 25th anniversary of the historic rightward swing in the nation's largest Protestant denomination. Conservatives will commemorate the “conservative resurgence” with a public reunion on the eve of the convention, which will feature some of the key players in the movement.
During business sessions, SBC messengers will vote on a recommendation to pull out of the Baptist World Alliance Oct. 1 and stop funding the 99-year-old international fellowship. The convention currently provides about one fourth of the income for the BWA, which represents 211 Baptist bodies worldwide with a combined membership of 43 million people.
Messengers also will vote on a recommended change in the Annuity Board's name and scope of work and may consider a technical motion to clarify SBC control over New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary.
Jack Graham, pastor of Prestonwood Baptist Church in Plano, will preside over the two-day SBC meeting. Graham is completing his second and final term as the convention's chief elected leader.
Bobby Welch, pastor of First Baptist Church in Daytona Beach, Fla., is the only announced nominee to succeed Graham as president.
Southern Baptists led in founding the Baptist World Alliance in 1905, and the SBC has been its largest financial contributor, providing up to $425,000 a year. But a study committee, chaired by SBC Executive Committee President Morris Chapman, recommended the withdrawal, charging the BWA with a “leftward drift” and an “anti-American tone.”
Denton Lotz, BWA general secretary, disputed the charges leveled against the BWA, saying his organization has “rejected the theology of liberalism” and has affirmed historic Christian doctrines such as the divinity, atoning death, resurrection and second coming of Christ.
Last year, SBC messengers voted to cut BWA funding by $125,000 to $300,000. The latest recommendation — endorsed by the Executive Committee — will complete the defunding and create a new organization of “conservative evangelical Christians around the world.”
Convention messengers almost certainly will approve some kind of resolution on public education. But they will have to wait until they arrive in Indianapolis to see how the SBC Resolutions Committee reconciles two opposing statements on the subject.
One resolution, submitted by attorney Bruce Shortt from North Oaks Baptist Church in Spring, Texas, and T.C. Pinckney of Virginia, urges Southern Baptist parents to remove their children from “godless” public schools. The other, proposed by Tennessee pastor Jim West, affirms Christians who serve in public education.
From 1947 to 1978, Southern Baptists passed seven resolutions supporting public education and opposing government funding for private schools. Since the SBC moved sharply to the right in 1979, however, SBC messengers have passed nearly twice that many resolutions supporting government funding of private education, endorsing home schooling and criticizing public schools for everything from teaching sex education to promoting secularism.
Although resolutions have been proposed in past years calling for an “exodus” from public schools, they have not garnered the endorsement of the resolutions committee. Unlike those earlier proposals, the Shortt-Pinckney statement has received widespread pre-convention publicity. Nonetheless, SBC president Graham predicted it will be rejected by messengers.
Messengers also may consider whether the SBC should be the “sole member” of the New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary corporation. The seminary is the only convention institution or agency that has not amended its charter to declare the convention as the sole member of its corporation, clarifying SBC ownership.
The SBC Executive Committee urged all convention entities to adopt the sole membership corporate model to ensure that they not leave the convention's control, as some institutions related to state Baptist conventions have done.
But New Orleans Seminary leaders insist the Executive Committee is violating historic Baptist polity by seeking to centralize authority. They say sole membership would present special problems under Louisiana law and increase SBC exposure to legal liability.
At their April meeting, the seminary's trustees voted to present to SBC messengers next year two alternatives to assert convention ownership of the seminary — either the sole membership approach or an as-yet-undetermined alternative legal means. But with the Executive Committee pressing for the issue to be resolved, messengers might vote on the matter this year.
Messengers will vote on an Executive Committee recommendation to change the Annuity Board's name to GuideStone Financial Resources. The recommendation will include allowing the renamed entity to offer financial planning and investment services not only to employees of Southern Baptist churches and institutions, but also to staff members of other evangelical ministry organizations.
In addition to considering Welch as president, messengers also will vote on a full slate of officers. Gerald Davidson, pastor of First Baptist Church in Arnold, Mo., will be nominated for first vice president. Three nominees have been proposed for second vice president — John Hays, pastor of Jersey Baptist Church near Columbus, Ohio; Mark Stephen Hearn, pastor of Northside Baptist Church in Indianapolis; and David Young Hwan Gill, pastor of Concord Korean Baptist Church in Martinez, Calif.
Preachers include Franklin Graham, president of Samaritan's Purse and the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association; Roy Fish, evangelism professor at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary; Steve Gaines, pastor of First Baptist Church in Gardendale, Ala.; David Jeremiah, pastor of Shadow Mountain Community Church in El Cajon, Calif.; and Jay Strack, president of Student Leadership University in Orlando, Fla.
The conservative reunion, set for June 14, from 9 p.m. to 11 p.m. at the Indiana Convention Center, is sponsored by Criswell College of Dallas and the W.A. Criswell Legacy Project. Criswell, legendary pastor of First Baptist Church in Dallas, was a key figure in the SBC's conservative movement.
Jerry Johnson, president of Criswell College, said because many current and future leaders of the SBC did not live through the SBC's conservative revolution, there is a danger that “liberalism” could again rise from within to threaten the convention. “After 25 years, we want to remind the current generation of this cyclical past so that we will not be condemned to repeat it, he said.
Speakers for the event include Paige Patterson, president of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, and retired Texas judge Paul Pressler of Houston — the two architects of the conservatives' political strategy to gain control of the SBC and its agencies. Also speaking are Graham and Richard Land, president of the SBC Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission.
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