WASHINGTON (ABP) — A Dec. 5 Baptist Press story on a new clergy political group has earned a strong rebuke from the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship and others.
The story concerned the Clergy Leadership Network, an organization formed in November by a group of moderate and progressive clergy. Its founders include several prominent moderate Baptists. (see ABP, Nov. 21, 2003)
The Baptist Press story mentioned several non-Baptist board members of the new group that have connections to organizations that support gay rights or abortion rights.
The story included extensive quotations from Missouri Baptist layman Roger Moran. In the late 1990s, Moran used such “exposes” on the alleged connections of moderate Baptist leaders to fuel a successful movement to bring the Missouri Baptist Convention under fundamentalist control.
“The recent formation of the Clergy Leadership Network is just one more example of religious liberals working frantically to put a religious face on the agenda of the political far left,” Moran said, according to Baptist Press. “The heavy involvement of prominent Cooperative Baptist Fellowship personalities in liberal groups like the CLN should raise serious concerns among Bible-believing Southern Baptists about the nature of the battles that have now come to the various SBC state conventions.”
Moran is a member of the Southern Baptist Convention Executive Committee, the agency that funds and administers Baptist Press. Moran did not respond to a request for comment by press time Dec. 9.
A spokesperson for the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship blasted Moran's charges and the story's implications about CBF, dismissing them as a “guilt by association” tactic intended to harm the work of the Fellowship.
In a Dec. 9 phone interview, Ben McDade, CBF's director of communications, told ABP the group's membership includes both Republicans and Democrats, and that simply because some CBF supporters or leaders serve on a board alongside those who support abortion rights or gay rights does not imply anything about CBF's social agenda.
“Anyone who has an authentic interpretation of historic Baptist principles knows that no one Baptist speaks for all Baptists,” McDade said. “To try to smear a movement of God in base political terms we think is un-Christian.”
McDade said Baptist Press did not contact CBF for comment prior to releasing the story.
Art Toalston, editor of Baptist Press and co-author of the Dec. 5 article, did not respond to a request for comment from Associated Baptist Press. Tammi Ledbetter, the other co-author, could not be reached.
One of the Baptist founders of the Clergy Leadership Network also rebuked Moran and Baptist Press. Reached by telephone Dec. 8, Wake Forest Divinity School professor James Dunn said the story is an example of Moran and other SBC leaders “straining at a gnat to establish a non-existent camel of relationships to their concepts of evil.”
In the past, Baptist Press has issued similar stories attempting to demonstrate links between moderate Baptist leaders and individuals and organizations that are supportive of gay rights or abortion rights.
According to Brenda Peterson, executive director of the Clergy Leadership Network, the group has no plans to take positions on abortion and homosexuality, leaving those to its individual members to decide.
However, CLN president Albert Pennybacker did tell ABP, “Certainly, discriminatory and anti-human-rights positions with regard to anybody is a position that we repudiate.” But Pennybacker, a former executive with the National Council of Churches, said at the organization's kick-off press conference that CLN would refuse to “get drawn into” debates over such divisive issues as abortion and homosexuality.
The Baptist Press story made extensive references to connections between moderate Baptist leaders and the Washington-based Interfaith Alliance. The story said the Alliance has “taken various pro-homosexual stances,” such as a board statement allegedly endorsing the recent Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court's decision to legalize same-sex marriage in that state.
But Interfaith Alliance spokesperson John Peterson said that was a mischaracterization of his group's position on gay marriage. “The board affirmed the civil rights of people to pursue a civil union. We did not affirm any religious aspect of these relationships — that's not our job,” Peterson told ABP, adding that the statement “was arrived at following thoughtful, deep discussion amongst our board members.”
John Peterson, who is married to Brenda Peterson, CLN's executive director, also noted that his group is “not affiliated with the Clergy Leadership Network.” Interfaith Alliance President Welton Gaddy issued a statement Nov. 21 criticizing the CLN's formation.
Peterson and Pennybacker said Baptist Press reporters did not contact them for comment prior to the Dec. 5 story's appearance.
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