ENID, Okla. (ABP) — As the quest for someone to challenge presidential candidate Ronnie Floyd goes unanswered, one interested observer is sounding ever-more-likely to fill the void.
Oklahoma pastor Wade Burleson suggested May 17 he would allow his nomination as president of the Southern Baptist Convention if no acceptable candidate surfaces in the waning weeks before the denomination's annual meeting June 13-14 in Greensboro, N.C.
“Unless a candidate arises that is willing to address the issues that I, and others, have articulated these last few months, I would allow my name to be nominated,” Burleson, pastor of Emmanuel Baptist Church in Enid, Okla., wrote in his weblog, www.wadeburleson.com.
Those issues, he has said repeatedly, concern exclusion — the narrowing of doctrinal parameters for biblical interpretation, baptism, church discipline, spiritual practices and conscientious dissent. He pleaded with the SBC's conservative leaders not to impose restrictions that go beyond the SBC's doctrinal statement.
“We must stop narrowing the parameters of cooperation in the area of missions and evangelism,” he wrote in a May 16 blog posting. “We cannot, we must not, define Southern Baptists in more narrow terms than our Baptist Faith and Message, and more importantly, we cannot disenfranchise committed, conservative Southern Baptists who hold to the integrity of the Scriptures but differ on the interpretations of minor doctrines of the sacred text.”
Among those at risk for exclusion, he has said, are Calvinists, charismatics and those with more lax baptism polices.
“Unless we stop shrinking the parameters of what it means to be a Southern Baptist, we will end up being a narrow, isolated sect within Christendom and lose our ability to reach the world for Christ,” the pastor wrote recently.
Burleson participated in the meeting of younger conservatives May 2-3 that produced the “Memphis Declaration,” a statement of repentance for the triumphalism, arrogance and isolationism the signers said threatens the SBC's integrity.
Since that meeting, some of those conservatives — as well as others in the convention — have been actively seeking a candidate to nominate for president, a post that has been crucial in determining the current conservative direction of the SBC.
So far, no one has stepped forward to accept the challenge. A handful of possible contenders have considered but declined, including South Carolina pastor Frank Page and Union University president David Dockery.
Meanwhile, the SBC's conservative establishment has rallied behind Floyd, pastor of First Baptist Church in Springdale, Ark., as the choice to continue the movement's hold on the presidency. In an unusual move, illustrating this year's high stakes, three SBC seminary presidents recently broke protocol to endorse Floyd.
The Arkansas pastor has been one of the most visible conservative leaders in the last decade, serving as president of the Pastors' Conference, chairman of the Executive Committee, trustee of an SBC board, and member of an elite panel that restructured the SBC bureaucracy in the late 1990s. He also is pastor of a 16,000-member church and a frequent presence on religious cable TV.
None of Floyd's possible challengers comes close to that kind of high visibility. But some SBC loyalists, disturbed by Floyd's sub-par financial support of the denomination, say the office should go to someone who has been less visible but more faithful to the convention.
Burleson, pastor of a modest church in a small Oklahoma town, nonetheless possesses the one thing every SBC president for three decades has shared — name recognition.
He owes his notoriety not to mega-pastor status but to his spat with fellow trustees of the International Mission Board over more restrictive guidelines for new missionaries. When Burleson blogged about the guidelines, the trustees accused him of breach of confidence — a charge Burleson denies — and tried to have him removed from the board.
Younger conservatives anxious for reform have urged Burleson to run. But he has remained steadfastly coy about his presidential aspirations. He told ABP in March he is not interested in denominational politics. But he has sounded more and more open to a possible nomination in his recent blog entries.
When Burleson was elected president of the Baptist General Convention of Oklahoma, he did not campaign for the position and did not announce his nomination until the last minute. He said he will follow the same pattern should he seek SBC office.
“… [S]ince there are four weeks until the convention, there is no need for me to announce I'm running, because I'm not running,” he wrote May 17. “I would, at that time, be ready to be nominated. I would, at that time, be willing to be nominated. But that time is not yet here. Further, when that time comes…if another candidate has arisen that I believe will address the issues our convention faces, I would support him and choose not to allow my name to be nominated.”
In another sign that he is planning for a presidential nomination, Burleson has withdrawn as a speaker at a convention-sponsored gathering of younger leaders immediately prior to the annual meeting, in order to avoid any charge of collusion.
Meanwhile, in his almost daily blogging, Burleson has sounded every bit the candidate — spelling out priorities for the convention, listing qualifications for a president, profiling his family, listing qualifications for agency trustees, and answering questions intended for Floyd.
In a May 2 post that read like a campaign speech, Burleson tried to deflect attention from his intentions: “I frankly am too busy for convention work. I don't want it, need it, or seek it.… If I believed a nomination to a position of service in the SBC would be detrimental to providing solutions to [the SBC's exclusivism], I would decline that nomination without hesitation. I will do what I believe is best for the convention — period.”
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