By Greg Warner
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 email 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 email. “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.
Several Baptist leaders in Europe agreed the SBC won't find many 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 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 the 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 the 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 the 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?”
Last month, the BWA's General Council adopted a new “identity statement” that embraced orthodox Christian doctrines.
Associated Baptist Press
Greg Warner is executive editor of ABP.