December 5, 2023
Dear Editor:
I was troubled and offended by Andrew Gardner’s article “On the SBC, Alliance and CBF and Other Lost Causes.” It was clearly an opinion article and he is entitled to his opinion, but some of his opinions are not based on the facts. He did little research on the CBF founding documents and did not interview any of the founders of CBF to ensure the accuracy of his opinions.
I was a friend of Cecil Sherman. I was pastor of Central Baptist Church Bearden in Knoxville, Tenn., while Cecil was pastor of First Baptist Church of Ashville, N.C. We often met in Gatlinburg for lunch. When he called together the Gatlinburg Gang (the political group that fought the takeover of the SBC) I was invited to become a part of that gang. When Cecil moved to Broadway Baptist Church in Fort Worth, six months later I became pastor of First Baptist Church of Abilene, Texas. We would meet about once a month at the Dairy Queen in Ranger, Texas. We roomed together in San Antonio at the last meeting we attended of the Metro Ministers.
Cecil had just been asked to serve as the first coordinator of the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship. He was agonizing over the decision. He took a yellow notebook page, drew a line down the middle and wrote “stay” on one side and “go” on the other. He began to list the reasons he ought to stay at Broadway and the reasons he ought to go to CBF. After three days, he said to me: “I must go to Atlanta. But if I go you must help me. I want you to become Western Coordinator of CBF. I worked with him until he retired. You might say I knew Cecil well; he was like a brother to me.
Andrew wrote that we in the Gatlinburg Gang were sore losers because we wanted to control the SBC. We were losers to be sure, but we never wanted to control. We believed the world needed the Baptist principles and we wanted to preserve them in the life of the SBC. After a couple of losses, we realized there were more of them than us. Yet we continued our struggle out of convictions.
One year, we asked Judge Abner McCall, former president of Baylor University, to run for the presidency of the SBC. He replied, “You know we cannot win, but I could not look myself in the mirror when I shaved in the morning, if we didn’t try.” That expresses the attitude of the members of the Gatlinburg Gang.
I was in the room in New Orleans when Daniel Vestal asked 18 of us to gather and discuss “where do we go from here.” Out of that meeting, we decided we were effectively shut out of the SBC and needed to form something else to preserve Baptist principles. The convocation was planned for Atlanta, and out of that CBF was formed.
I write all of that to say I was a part of all the happenings that brought CBF into existence. I was a personal witness and know our motives for what we did.
Andrew said, “Neither group organized for the expressed purpose of affirming women in ministry.” That is partially true. Neither were we organized to elect women to play key roles in the organization, but both happened.
From the beginning, we affirmed the role of women. In one of our founding documents, “An Address to the Public,” we wrote: “He (Jesus) called women to follow him, he treated women as equally capable of dealing with sacred issues. Our model for the role of women is the Lord Jesus.”
Andrew correctly said Cecil was not opposed to women in ministry but did not publicly advocate for them. However, our real theology is in what we do, much more than what we say. Women always have played a key role in the life of CBF.
The interim steering committee had about as many men as women. We adopted a policy early on that the national moderator and Coordinating Council would be balanced between clergy and laity, male and female. And there have been about as many women serve as moderator as men.
In our infancy, Cecil hired a woman to serve as our placement person. She worked hard at trying to help women find places of service, especially pastors. Just over 7% of CBF churches have female pastors, but you cannot tell a search committee whom they can call; you can only encourage them, and we have done that from the beginning.
I am glad to have Andrew as a fellow struggler in the moderate Baptist movement. We came together originally to be with each other, as we wanted to be with people like us. Andrew, I am glad you are one of us.
Bill Bruster, Dallas