PALM BEACH GARDENS, Fla. (ABP) — While Morris Chapman says the fact retired Southern Baptist Convention leaders are now raising money for the Baptist World Alliance from SBC churches is “astounding and regrettable,” one of his predecessors as SBC chief executive, Duke McCall, says Chapman and others opened the door for those solicitations by defunding BWA.
“You should have told the SBC Executive Committee that severing connections with the BWA would leave us free to ask Southern Baptist churches and individuals to replace the funds withheld,” McCall, one of the most influential Southern Baptists in history, told Chapman, president of the SBC Executive Committee, in an open letter Dec. 21.
McCall, former president of BWA and former president of two SBC seminaries, convened a meeting of retired SBC leaders Dec. 4 in Atlanta to find ways to replace the money — until recently $425,000 a year — the Southern Baptist Convention used to provide BWA, an international umbrella group of 211 Baptist bodies.
The SBC was a founding member of the alliance in 1905 and its largest member and fund-provider. But conservative Southern Baptist leaders who led the defunding effort say BWA harbors theological liberalism, a charge denied by BWA and many of its member groups worldwide.
Chapman, in a statement released Dec. 13, said the makeup of the Atlanta meeting, as well as other indicators, demonstrate the moderate theological slant of BWA. “When you connect the dots, it is clear that the BWA leadership will remain moderate-leaning in its relationships and theology and opposed to the best interests of Southern Baptists,” Chapman wrote.
In his open letter of response Dec. 21, McCall said Chapman “invented charges” of liberalism against BWA and Denton Lotz, its general secretary, in order to convince Southern Baptists to break off their 99-year relationship with the group. The SBC's real motivation for the break, McCall said, was that it opposed admission of the rival Cooperative Baptist Fellowship into BWA.
“The truth is that Chapman and his colleagues were members of the BWA General Council,” McCall wrote. “But they could not run the BWA as they do the SBC.”
McCall, 90, who retired as president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in 1982, said he worked with or against “almost every Southern Baptist leader in the 20th century,” including infamous fundamentalist J. Frank Norris and Baptist statesman Louie Newton.
“I have never questioned the integrity of any of them…,” he wrote, but he added, “This new gang plays rough and twists the truth into lies.”
McCall said the SBC leaders misrepresented the views of CBF, American Baptists and other BWA member groups. Chapman, he added, “attacks Dr. Denton Lotz, the general secretary of the Baptist World Alliance, with innuendoes and untruths. Lotz is a biblical fundamentalist, as am I, who believes the Bible should be read under the guidance of the Holy Spirit. The Bible is not an ammunition dump of verses and phrases to defend one's turf or attack opponents.”
“Remember, 'mud slung is ground lost,'” McCall added. “The SBC is a great body of Christians who ought to make decisions on the basis of truth.”
But in a statement Dec. 29, Chapman responded, “I regret that McCall chose to speak against the decision of the committee and the convention and in support of the BWA, but I honor his right to do so. At the same time, his personal attack upon the integrity of the committee members and the process is unwarranted. McCall is speaking from a vacuum. He has not been an active participant in the BWA in recent years. He is parroting what he has been told by BWA officials. In contrast, most of the study committee members have been active participants in the BWA and have had close interaction with those from whom McCall is getting his information.
“Contrary to McCall's accusations, members of the study committee had no reason to “invent charges” and “twist the truth into lies,” said Chapman. “His charge that the committee recommended withdrawal because its members could not run the BWA has no basis in fact.”
In his Dec. 13 statement, Chapman said McCall and the other retired SBC leaders broke trust with Southern Baptists by raising money for BWA from SBC churches.
“Now former leaders of the Southern Baptist Convention have come out of retirement to ask churches to give to the BWA, a request they never would have made when they were SBC leaders, leading organizations that were dependent largely upon Cooperative Program gifts,” Chapman said in his statement. “That they would be willing to call for anything that has the potential to decrease Cooperative Program giving in favor of support to an organization outside the convention is astounding and regrettable.”
“BWA officials were never told they could not solicit funds from local churches and individuals,” Chapman added later. “They were told, however, if they did solicit funds, they could not expect to continue an ongoing exchange of good will and fellowship with the Southern Baptist Convention, a desire they had expressed in the process of the convention's withdrawal.”
Chapman accused Lotz of organizing the Dec. 4 meeting of former SBC leaders. “If there were any doubts in the minds of Southern Baptists about the moderate theological perspective embraced by BWA staff leadership, the latest action of the BWA general secretary is enough to dispel those doubts,” Chapman said.
“It seems that at every turn, Denton Lotz is working to undermine the missions, ministries and theology of Southern Baptists,” Chapman added.
Although Lotz participated in the Dec. 4 meeting, McCall said he — not Lotz — organized it. At the time, Lotz declined to comment about the Atlanta meeting.
This is not the first time Lotz has drawn criticism from Chapman for fund-raising within the SBC. Last September, Lotz and then BWA president Billy Kim sent letters to SBC churches asking for donations to offset the lost SBC funding. Chapman responded with an open letter to Lotz and Kim asking them to cease immediately.