(ABP) — Baptist leaders in Europe predict the Southern Baptist
Convention will have a hard time drawing Baptists from the continent into a new international network that, some say,
will compete with the Baptist World Alliance.
When the SBC withdrew from the BWA in June, charging the group with a “liberal drift,” convention leaders announced
plans to start and fund a new international “fellowship” of like-minded conservatives.
In early July, nine Southern Baptists leaders met with 12 European Baptists in Warsaw, Poland, for what SBC executive
Morris Chapman predicted “may prove in time to have been the inaugural meeting of a network that shall extend to every
corner of the earth, creating a close fellowship among like-minded conservative Christians.”
The 12 Europeans, who were not named in an SBC news release, came from six countries, most in eastern Europe and
among the most conservative in the region — Bulgaria, Germany, Hungary, Moldovia, Poland and Romania.
But while many European Baptists are as conservative — or more so — than Southern Baptists, they are “very
unlikely” to join the SBC's new network, said Bulgarian pastor Theo Angelov, outgoing general secretary of the
European Baptist Federation.
“There are many conservative Baptist leaders in East Europe, and I am happy that none of
them were there,” Angelov said of the July 1-2 meeting — held less than a month before 13,000 Baptists from
100-plus countries met in England to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Baptist World Alliance.
Angelov said only two of the Europeans who participated in the July 1-2 meeting are official representatives of
Baptist unions — Paul Negrut, president of the Baptist Union of R.S. Romania, and Vasil Vangelov, president of the
Baptist Union of Bulgaria.
Negrut, president of a Romanian seminary in Oradea that receives funding from conservative Southern Baptists, was the
only European union president to support the SBC's withdrawal from BWA. He also was responsible for enlisting Europeans
to participate in the Poland meeting.
Vangelov, the Bulgarian president, “does not speak English and he did not realize what the meeting would be about,”
Angelov, Vangelov's predecessor, told Associated Baptist Press in an e-mail interview. “He was very naïve and thought
that there would be discussions about the strategy of [the SBC International Mission Board]. And he wanted to know more
about it, because there are IMB missionaries in Bulgaria. I talked to him after he has returned, and nobody from
Bulgaria is supportive of the policy of [the] SBC.”
Angelov predicted the SBC's efforts likely won't cause a split in the Baptist World Alliance, but it will sow
division within world Baptist ranks, he said. “I am only afraid that if the SBC leaders decide to use money that
American churches are giving for mission work as a tool in this battle, then some Baptist unions will be tempted to
cooperate. This behavior is not a Baptist approach. It is simply an ideology.”
Tony Peck, Angelov's successor as general secretary of the European Baptist Federation, which encompasses 51 unions
including Romania, also said the SBC-backed network could prove divisive.
“… [W]e would see any attempt to divide the Baptist witness in Europe and the Middle East as undermining
missionary effectiveness at a time when we need to unite our Baptist efforts to bear witness to the gospel on our
continent,” Peck said.
“I received some assurances from the SBC that this meeting was not intended to start an alternative network to the
BWA,” Peck continued, “and therefore I was surprised to read the reported comments of Morris Chapman that 'the
possibility of building a fellowship network of conservative Baptists around the world created a genuine and heartfelt
excitement.'”
Chapman, president of the SBC Executive Committee, said the proposed conservative network poses no threat to BWA.
“Southern Baptist leaders do not envision a formal organization with a constitution and bylaws,” he told Associated
Baptist Press by e-mail. “We hope to build a network or fellowship with conservative Baptists wherever they exist in
the world and strengthen our communication with them.”
Chapman declined to identify the participants in the Poland meeting.
“We felt each representative should have the choice to release his own news article, having the choice of whether to
include or exclude their names,” he explained. “Since this was an exploratory meeting, our announcing names really
served no purpose unless we deliberately wished to create tensions between them and BWA, which was and is not our
objective.
“Once we have had opportunity to explore the possibilities with conservative Baptist leaders on other continents,
deliberate decisions obviously will have to be made by the leaders from other countries about identifying with the
network. Then, in my opinion, is the time to announce the names of organizations and leaders who have determined to
participate in the fellowship.”
Negrut, who has cultivated personal and financial ties with conservative Southern Baptists for more than a decade,
did not respond to several requests to discuss the Poland meeting.
Southern Baptist representatives at the meeting were Chapman; O.S. Hawkins, president of Guidestone Financial
Resources, the SBC's retirement and benefits agency; retired Houston judge Paul Pressler; Jerry Rankin, president of
the International Mission Board; and five SBC seminary leaders — Chuck Kelley, president of New Orleans Baptist
Theological Seminary; Paige Patterson, president of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary; Philip Roberts, president
of Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary; Craig Blaising, provost of Southwestern; and Bill Wagner, professor at
Golden Gate Baptist Theological Seminary.
The EBF's Peck said the Europeans at the meeting represent “a few conservative seminaries which are not part of the
EBF Consortium of European Baptist Theological Schools.”
While he downplayed the significance of the Poland meeting, Peck said the European Baptist Federation “welcomes all
genuine partnerships” that produce more effective ministry in Europe.
But Keith Parks, former president of the IMB (then known as the Foreign Mission Board), said the SBC approach will
cause splintering in Baptist life.
“I do not think that it will be a mass movement,” Parks said of the new network, but it “will lead to a
fragmenting of the BWA.”
The reason is money, he continued. Southern Baptists can offer sympathetic groups money to attend meetings, pay for
seminary, build schools and start churches — and withhold funds from those who embrace BWA or don't endorse the SBC's
doctrinal statement, suggested Parks, who led the global missions effort of the moderate Cooperative Baptist Fellowship
after leaving the IMB.
“The IMB has already severed relationship with many Baptist unions [and] conventions. Most missionaries have been
required to distance themselves from local Baptist leaders and leave the membership of the local churches in most
countries, because the churches are described by SBC leaders as having 'contaminated DNA.'”
“The greater tragedy than the potential division of the BWA is the divisiveness that will result within the local
Baptist unions [and] conventions,” added Parks. “… What a tragedy to inject such diversion and disruptiveness at
such a time as this, especially in small unions struggling against great odds.”
“What a sad day for Christians of the world when a group of Southern Baptist leaders set out on a plan to divide
Baptists of the world,” he added. “There have always been varying emphases on different doctrines and practices among
Baptists all over the world. When we are at our best we have depended on persuasion rather than coercion. The early
Christians apparently believed the proclamation 'Jesus Christ is Lord' was an adequate basis for Christian fellowship.
How tragic this is not enough for these leaders.”
Several Baptist leaders in Europe agreed the SBC won't find many Baptists unions that will embrace the conservative
agenda, since most unions — including the more conservative ones in the east — have long accepted theological
diversity on the continent.
But Southern Baptists likely can find a conservative minority in most Baptist unions that will welcome the SBC's
approach, several observers said. “Anyone can go with any doctrinal position anywhere in the world and get response,
especially if they are officials of large, rich Baptist institutions and a huge convention,” Parks said.
But one Baptist leader from eastern Europe said the imbalance in the Poland meeting — with top SBC leaders paired
with ad hoc conservatives — “speaks loudly of whose interests the meeting serves and what are the desired outcomes of
it.”
Angelov, the outgoing EBF general secretary, said he and two BWA officials — general secretary Denton Lotz and
then-president Billy Kim of South Korea — met in May 2004 with Negrut to discuss his problems with BWA. “Our meeting
did not bring any positive results, and we understood that he will go this way,” Angelov said of Negrut's support of
the SBC. “We know that not all Baptist leaders in Romania are sharing his opinion.”
Added Peck: “As EBF general secretary, I have made repeated offers to meet with him and his [union's] executive to
discuss these concerns and am still prepared to do so. But so far these offers have not been taken up.”
Last year, Negrut said the SBC split from BWA caused “sadness in my heart.” He said he had been monitoring
“liberalism” in the Baptist World Alliance for more than a decade, and he faulted BWA for not clearly defining its own
theological views. “They would want us to accept everything — do not have an identity, do not have principles or moral
standards, just embrace everything. Then why do we need Christianity?”
“For a number of years, various Baptist bodies in Europe have embarked on a more liberal theology, and the Baptist
witness in Europe has suffered a lot,” he said in 2004. “What was once the continent of the Protestant Reformation and
the great revival has become one of the most secular and dark continents in the world. [Meanwhile,] churches that are
committed to the Bible as the inerrant, infallible Word of God are the churches that are growing.”
At its meeting last month in England, BWA's General Council adopted a new “identity statement” that embraced
orthodox Christian doctrines.
Chapman, who was at the forefront of the SBC effort to withdraw from the Baptist World Alliance, declined to
criticize BWA after the Poland meeting: “We pray God's blessings upon the BWA in any and all endeavors to proclaim the
saving power of Jesus' death on the cross to an unbelieving world. Our exploratory meetings with international
conservative Baptist leaders have nothing to do with BWA and everything to do with better getting to know those
throughout the world whose faith and practice is like our own.”