By Bob Allen
Twenty-five Georgia Baptists including staff members of the Decatur-based Cooperative Baptist Fellowship joined a pastor in disputing claims that a Georgia Baptist Convention official spoke for Georgia Baptists when he testified in support of legislation to allow guns in church.
Julie Pennington-Russell, pastor of First Baptist Church in Decatur, Ga., wrote state senators March 10 claiming Mike Griffin, the public affairs representative for the Georgia Baptist Convention, didn’t speak for her when he told a House committee Feb. 6 he was there on behalf of 1.3 million Georgia Baptists in more than 3,600 churches across the state.
Other Georgia Baptists endorsed her letter in a separate document signed by individuals including Mercer University professor and ABPnews/Herald senior columnist David Gushee, Baptist Women in Ministry head Pam Durso and Devita Parnell, Bo Prosser and Aaron Weaver, who all work at the CBF national headquarters office located across the street from Pennington-Russell’s church.
Griffin, senior pastor of Liberty Baptist Church of Hartwell, Ga., recently named public-affairs representative for the Georgia Baptist Convention, voiced support for proposed legislation to allow people with concealed carry permits to bring guns into public venues including bars and churches.
Griffin told lawmakers he was there on behalf of 1.3 million Georgia Baptists in more than 3,600 churches across the state, saying the denomination’s insistence on local-church autonomy means that congregations, not the state, should decide whether to allow guns in their sanctuaries.
Asked if all Georgia Baptists are in favor of the bill, Griffin said: “I am representing them as I was given the responsibility given by the convention, by the executive director, yes, so we do speak on their behalf. I wouldn’t be here if they didn’t want me here.”
Pennington-Russell said many Georgia Baptists found Griffin’s claim “astonishing” because “it is unthinkable for any Baptist to claim to speak for even one other Baptist, much less 1.3 million.”
“Contrary to what you may have been led to believe, Baptists are not a sheep-like or sheepish bunch,” she wrote. “We are committed to seeking God, led by Scripture, the Holy Spirit and our own experience of God’s presence in our lives and in the world. Our seeking often leads us to divergent conclusions and we respect our differences as we follow Christ together.”
First Baptist Church concluded in 2007 that Pennington-Russell, a veteran Baptist minister with previous pastorates in California and Texas, would be their new pastor. The Georgia Baptist Convention voted in 2009 to end a 148-year-old relationship with the congregation, declaring it “not a cooperating church,” because “a woman is serving as senior pastor.”
Pennington-Russell told lawmakers there is no doubt that some Baptists in Georgia support HB 875, dubbed by opponents the “guns everywhere” bill, but “there are many, many Baptists throughout our state whose faith leads to a decidedly different conviction.”
Names of those endorsing her letter include David Key, director of Baptist studies at Candler School of Theology, and pastors including Mimi Walker of Druid Hills Baptist Church in Atlanta, another congregation kicked out of the Georgia Baptist Convention in 2010 for rejecting the convention’s official consensus that, “While men and women are gifted for service within the church, the office of pastor is limited to men as qualified by Scripture.”
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Georgia Baptists support guns in church