Baptists from across North America will convene in Atlanta early next year to emphasize their compassion rather than the racial, theological and social conflict that has divided them for decades.
Former presidents Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton—two of the world's most famous Baptist laymen—announced the Celebration of a New Baptist Covenant, tentatively set for Jan. 30-Feb. 1, 2008. The announcement came Jan. 9, after the ex-presidents had met with about 80 leaders from 40 Baptist organizations in the United States and Canada at the Carter Center in Atlanta.
The 2008 convocation, which organizers expect will attract 20,000 people, will be “one of the most historic events at least in the history of Baptists in this country, maybe Christianity,” Carter predicted.
Billy Howard
Former President Bill Clinton looks on as Former President Jimmy Carter introduces a gathering of more than 30 Baptist leaders at The Carter Center on Jan 9. The group announced a “Celebration of a New Baptist Covenant” adopted by the groups last April. Directly behind Clinton is John Upton, executive director of the Baptist General Association of Virginia.
Baptist harmony was broken, at least in the United States, in the mid-1800s. That's when divisions between Northern and Southern Baptists overwhelmed the missionary spirit that previously brought them together, Carter said, lamenting the schism that lasted for generations.
“We hope to recertify our common faith without regard to race, ethnicity, partisanship and geography,” in the 2008 meeting, he said.
Participants in the meeting surrounding the announcement reflected his wish. They included representatives of groups connected to the North American Baptist Fellowship, a 20 million-member regional affiliate of the Baptist World Alliance. Leaders of the four largest African-American Baptist conventions attended, as did leaders of U.S.-based Hispanic, Japanese, Laotian and Russian-Ukrainian Baptist groups, plus Canadian Baptists and heads of Baptist state conventions in Missouri, Texas and Virginia.
Their goal is to demonstrate Baptist harmony, based around the themes of Jesus' inaugural sermon, recorded in the fourth chapter of Luke's gospel. Quoting the prophet Isaiah, Jesus said: “The Spirit of the Lord … has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim that captives will be released, that the blind will see, that the oppressed will be set free, and that the time of the Lord's favor has come.”
Those themes comprise the core of the North American Baptist Covenant, a statement drafted last April in a meeting at the Carter Center attended by some of the same Baptist leaders. At the time, they announced their intention to find a way to unify Baptists around Christ's compassion for people he once described as “the least of these” in society.
The overall endeavor is the brainchild of Carter and Bill Underwood, president of Baptist-related Mercer University in Atlanta and Macon, Ga. Carter recently enlisted Clinton to lend his star power to the pan-Baptist effort.
Compassion mandate
The leaders acknowledged Baptists could be divided by their history of racial tension and theological dissension. But they agreed Jesus' compassion mandate, as well as their shared heritage and core commitments, provide a platform for working together.
“Baptists—North and South; from the U.S. and Canada and Mexico; black, white and brown; progressive, moderate and conservative in theology—can focus on issues that bind us together as followers of Christ,” Underwood told reporters.
In addition to building Baptist unity and collaboration, the group hopes to offer an alternative voice to “the Baptists who have the microphone,” Underwood told leaders of the North American Baptist Fellowship one day earlier. The only image most North Americans have of Baptists, he said, comes from right-wing leaders who frequently appear on television news shows or other media, representing some of the most negative rhetoric, most conservative political views and most fundamentalist theology.
“They are increasingly defining the Baptist witness in North America,” Underwood told the NABF leaders, who range from conservative to progressive. “North America desperately needs a true Baptist witness. … There's no organization in this room that has a strong enough voice … but the organizations in this room together do have a strong enough voice.”
Help with social problems
The 2008 convocation in Atlanta will build on the themes of the covenant document unveiled last April. According to Jimmy Allen, the Southern Baptist Convention's last moderate president and chair of the program-planning team, plenary sessions will address large issues—like unity, diversity and justice—while breakout seminars will offer specific ways for Baptists to make a practical difference in solving the social problems Jesus addressed.
Topics for the seminars will include prophetic preaching, ecology, sexual trafficking, racism, religious liberty, poverty, HIV/AIDS, dealing with religious diversity, public policy, youth issues, evangelism, stewardship and the spiritual disciplines.
“Every person who comes ought to be able to find some specific way to put their faith into action,” Allen said.
Clinton expressed hope for what he said might become “a movement” among Baptists. He offered the resources of his foundation to help participants get involved in solving the social ills they will discuss in Atlanta.
“This is an attempt to answer: What would our Christian witness require of us in the 21st century?” Clinton said. “It is a part of our faith obligation. But it also is a part of our common life .… This is an important event in the history of Christianity—how faith should relate to public life.”
William Shaw, president of the predominantly African-American National Baptist Convention, USA, Inc., echoed Clinton's observations.
“One of the challenges this places before us as Baptists and as believers is to live up to our faith,” Shaw said. “God is moving to make faith real, addressing the issues we face in non-political ways and non-partisan ways but in prophetic ways. We look forward to this with tremendous celebration.”
DeWitt Smith, new president of the Progressive National Baptist Convention, pointed to the Old Testament prophet Micah as a guide for how the 2008 convocation and its resulting activity should be patterned.
“If we say we love God, we will ‘do justice and love mercy,' ” Smith said. “Lip service is fine, but we are looking for ways to put feet to our faith. It is possible to be together and differ on opinions. But when it comes to what matters to humanity … it will work.”
The convocation will move Baptists forward, Carter stressed. “Our goals are completely positive … and all-inclusive,” he said. “We call on all Baptists who share these goals to join with us.”
Conspicuously absent from the gathering were representatives of the Southern Baptist Convention, which with 16 million members on its rolls is the largest single Baptist body in the world. Although SBC leaders were not invited to the Atlanta meeting, Carter and Clinton said they are welcome to join.
“We'd be thrilled to have them,” Clinton said.
In recent years, Southern Baptists withdrew from the Baptist World Alliance and its North American Baptist Fellowship because of alleged liberalism—a charge both groups and the BWA's affiliated Baptist bodies flatly denied.
Southern Baptists attended
Underwood said an invitation hadn't been formally extended to SBC officials because the North American Baptist Fellowship's membership provided the core of the Carter Center gathering. “But it's important to say that a number of people here are Southern Baptists,” he added.
Carter noted Southern Baptist officials participated in meetings he initiated in the 1990s to try to reconcile Baptist factions.
Both Carter and Clinton said they were encouraged more recently by the conciliatory tone struck by the new SBC president, South Carolina pastor Frank Page, and both called Page to tell him so.
They agreed that enlisting more conservatives and more Republicans will be important to the endeavor. “Our goal will be to extend an invitation to all Baptists,” Carter concluded.
Underwood emphasized Carter and Clinton were not speaking in their capacity as political leaders or Democrats, but as Baptist Christians.
“We anticipate that there will be other Baptists who will participate in this endeavor who happen also to be Baptists but also happen to be Republicans,” Underwood said.
Carter is a longtime member, deacon and Sunday school teacher at Maranatha Baptist Church in his hometown of Plains, Ga. The church recently ordained his wife, Rosalynn, as a deacon—a move most Southern Baptist leaders oppose.
Although he attended Washington's Foundry United Methodist Church with his Methodist wife, Hillary, during his years in the White House, Clinton is a longtime member of Immanuel Baptist Church in Little Rock, Ark.