Leaders of the North Carolina Baptist State Convention have beefed up a policy designed to oust local churches that affirm homosexuality or even tolerate gay church members.
Meeting in Asheboro, N.C., the convention's executive committee and board of directors both voted May 23 to approve the new policies. Because the policies require amendments to the convention's articles of incorporation, they have to be approved by a two-thirds majority of messengers at the convention's next annual meeting.
If approved, the policies would likely exclude more than 20 North Carolina churches affiliated with the progressive Alliance of Baptists, regardless of their individual policies on homosexuality.
The recommendation came in response to a motion that messengers approved at the convention's annual meeting in November, asking the board to clarify a 1992 policy that directed the convention to no longer accept financial gifts from any church that “knowingly affirms, approves, or endorses homosexual behavior.” The policy has been used to exclude four churches since then, most recently in 2003. That year, McGill Baptist Church in Concord, N.C., was kicked out of the Cabarrus Baptist Association for refusing to eject from its membership two men believed to be a gay couple.
The newest policy tightens that language, saying, “Among churches not in friendly cooperation with the convention are churches which knowingly act to affirm, approve, endorse, promote, support or bless homosexual behavior.”
The leaders also approved a set of guidelines for interpreting whether a church's actions fall under the policy. The guidelines include ordination of practicing homosexuals, hosting or allowing a minister to officiate at a same-sex wedding ceremony, affiliating with or supporting an organization that affirms homosexuality, or “accepting as members those whom the church knows have refused to repent of the sin of homosexual behavior.”
The criteria would likely snare nearly two dozen North Carolina churches—including large congregations in Asheville, Charlotte and Raleigh—affiliated with the Alliance of Baptists. The progressive group, which was the first splinter group to come out of the Southern Baptist Convention's fundamentalist-versus-moderate struggle in the 1980s, is officially welcoming and affirming of gays in all levels of church involvement. However, it does not dictate its member congregations' local policies on homosexuality.