DECATUR, Ga. (ABP) — Next January's “Celebration of a New Baptist Covenant” will be the most important Baptist event since before the Civil War, an emotional Jimmy Allen told Cooperative Baptist Fellowship leaders Feb. 16.
Allen, the last moderate to serve as president of the Southern Baptist Convention, spoke at a CBF Coordinating Council meeting at First Baptist Church in Decatur, Ga. He stressed that the two Democratic former presidents leading the charge for the historic pan-Baptist gathering — Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton — want to avoid politics at the rally.
“Be assured we will have Republican speakers in the plenary session,” said Allen, program chairman for the Jan. 30-Feb. 1, 2008, event. “We will have at least two speaking as of right now. You will not be free of the accusation about [the event] being Democrat. You're going to have that. But the answer is that neither of these folks wants it to be a political event. We don't want that. We don't want to be partisan. We want to speak to the issues.”
Allen declined to name confirmed Republican speakers for the event.
Some Southern Baptist leaders have criticized the gathering, which aims to draw as many as 20,000 people from all of North America's major Baptist denominations to Atlanta next January to talk about more cooperative efforts and improve Baptists' public image. Besides the ex-presidents, it involves leaders of the North American denominational and para-denominational groups affiliated with the Baptist World Alliance.
Leaders of the Southern Baptist Convention, which is not involved in the New Baptist Covenant, have dismissed the event as merely another chance for disgruntled moderate and progressive Baptists to thumb their noses as the more conservative SBC. Some have also pointed to the event's election-year timing and Clinton and Carter's involvement as evidence it is designed to stir up Baptist support for Democrats — and especially the presidential bid of Clinton's wife, New York Sen. Hillary Clinton.
Leaders of the event have denied those charges.
Allen said the presidents are involved because they are probably the world's most famous Baptists. Nobody, he contended, could have compelled so many denominational presidents and Baptist leaders to meet “in the same room to talk about the issues except one man — a politician named Jimmy Carter.”
He continued: “[God's] Spirit is moving in a new, energetic way in which we don't try to do anything about turf. We're not trying to start conventions and bureaucracy. We're trying to create an atmosphere in which networking can be accelerated.”
Instead of creating a new denomination or political coalition, Allen and CBF Coordinator Daniel Vestal said, they hope the covenant forms the foundation to a new Baptist network.
“I hope that we'll get so involved with each other … that we'll have a major clearinghouse of information,” Allen said. “I hope that out of this comes a new energy for the issues that face us in our world.”
With a “silent majority” of 24 million people worldwide involved in the Baptist World Alliance, it could be quite a network.
But it'll take a lot to create it. Mercer University, with President Bill Underwood at the helm, has taken a “great risk” in its role in the 2008 meeting in Atlanta, Allen said. The proposed budget is $1.4 million, and that's “doing it on the cheap.” And critics must be answered — or at least acknowledged.
“Whenever God gets ready to do something big, there are going to be people throwing rocks at it,” Allen said. “And the right people are getting mad, so we must be doing something right.”
Allen himself said God must be laughing because the event's organizers are trying to do the impossible. They've planned the conference to dovetail with a joint meeting of the four major historically African-American Baptist denominations. That gathering is expected to draw more than 10,000 people.
“Less than a year from now, we're taking over the whole [Georgia World] Congress Center,” Allen enthused. Event organizers said they will launch a website, www.newbaptistcovenant.org, in the next two weeks.
The potential for thousands to participate in the covenant event presents what could become organizational chaos. But Allen assured CBF council members that multiple administrative factors have already fallen into place.
“If you have to, you can do it. And right now we have to. And we have to because right now is the time for it,” he said. “It's just a matter of harnessing the power. It's not a matter of creating it.”
Vestal agreed. He has already participated in planning meetings for the January convocation, and he urged council members to release an official statement supporting the covenant.
“If CBF is going to do this, I think as the governing body there needs to be some point when you say that,” he said. “In some way, among a lot of other things, this is one of those moments for which CBF has come to be. We are a renewal movement. And this, as I see it, is a part of that ongoing renewal.”
Council members agreed to consider the covenant and release a corporate statement of support later this spring.
And while critics are taking a wait-and-see attitude, others — including many at the CBF Coordinating Council meeting — are enthusiastic about the possibilities.
“If you're tuned in, there's a moving of God about this,” Allen said. “It's one of those things where God sort of interrupts us and says 'By the way, I've got something more important than you knew.'”
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