By Robert Marus and Greg Warner
Southern Baptist Convention leaders will meet with international Baptists leaders in July to create an alternative to the Baptist World Alliance, according to an SBC agency head.
Richard Land, president of the SBC Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, told a Washington audience, “I am going to a meeting with other Southern Baptist leaders and with Baptist leaders from around the world in Warsaw, Poland, this July to form a new alternative to the Baptist World Alliance.”
Land, addressing a Jan. 18 panel discussion on an unrelated subject, defended the SBC's decision last year to withdraw from the worldwide umbrella group for Baptists.
Southern Baptist leaders, who recommended the SBC withdraw from the Baptist World Alliance over an alleged “liberal drift,” have said they want to create an alternative for “like-minded” Baptists, but they have not announced any details. A July meeting would compete with the Baptist World Congress July 27-31 in Birmingham, England, when the BWA will celebrate its 100th anniversary.
Morris Chapman, the SBC's chief executive, confirmed the July meeting in Poland will take place, but added: “To call the meeting with some of the European Baptist leaders an ‘organizational' meeting would be a mischaracterization. Over the next several years we hope to travel to several continents meeting with like-minded Baptist leaders with the thought of developing a network or fellowship.”
Meanwhile, Denton Lotz, general secretary of the Baptist World Alliance, said he was “shocked” SBC leaders would attempt to form an alternative body to the BWA.
“I would hope that the SBC and its people would not further divide the Baptists of the world by trying to start a competitive organization to the Baptist World Alliance,” he told Associated Baptist Press. “It goes against everything they've told us in meetings that we've had-that they would not start another world organization.”
Land's statement came in a question-and-answer session Jan. 18 during a panel discussion on the role of religion in public and political life. Leslie Tune, Washington news director for the National Council of Churches and a Baptist minister, asked Land how the decision to withdraw from BWA squared with Land's assertion that Southern Baptist leaders are happy to work with people of differing views of faith and public discourse.
Tune said the BWA decision seemed like it would cause the SBC to become “more of a cocoon unto itself in terms of working with other people of faith who are Christians. … How are the conversations going to happen if the Southern Baptist Convention is pulling out of the table where the conversation could happen?”
Land responded that the feeling among Southern Baptists “was that the Baptist World Alliance was moving in a liberal theological direction by and large, and it was not serving a lot of the needs of a lot of the Second- and Third-World countries. We have the same phenomenon in Baptist life that you have, for instance, in Anglican life, where Anglicans in the Second and Third World are somewhat appalled by the liberalism of Anglicans in Northern Europe and North America.
“And we are not cocooning ourselves,” Land continued. “In fact, I am going to a meeting with other Southern Baptist leaders and with Baptist leaders from around the world in Warsaw, Poland, this July to form a new alternative to the Baptist World Alliance.
“We just felt like that, when the majority of the Baptist World Alliance wanted to go in one direction and we wanted to go in another and we were paying 80 percent of the bills, then we had the right to try to form something that was more in line with what our belief system is. … [I]n no way, shape or form should this be seen as a withdrawal from a commitment to fellowship with Baptists in other countries and other continents.”
In 2004, messengers to the Southern Baptist Convention meeting adopted the recommendation of a special study committee, which included Chapman, to withdraw from the BWA. SBC leaders cited a “drift” toward liberalism and “anti-American” attitudes among BWA leadership as justifications for the split.
Land's assertion that BWA is not responsive to the needs of the Second- and Third-World countries is a new charge.
BWA's Lotz called that assertion “ridiculous.” He said BWA's “work in Eastern Europe for religious freedom was known more than anything else during the Cold War and the communist period.” He also said he had never heard the charge previously in his discussions with SBC officials.
Nor had he heard about the July meeting in Poland, Lotz added. If the SBC intentionally planned a meeting to set up a competing group around the same time as the Baptist World Congress, he said, “then that would be a slap in the face to Baptists in the rest of the world.”
Before making any further comment, Lotz said, he “would like to receive an official report that this is happening.”
Phil Roberts, president of Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Kansas City, Mo., is in charge of arranging the trip for SBC leaders, said Chapman, president of the SBC Executive Committee in Nashville. Chapman told Associated Baptist Press the meeting is open to members of the Great Commission Council, the SBC's interagency group.
Roberts was not immediately available for comment.
A spokesman for Land said Jan. 18 he was unaware of the Poland meeting and did not know any further details about it.
Chapman said the SBC has “no desire” to compete with the Baptist World Alliance. “In fact, we hope for the BWA God's blessings in every work they do for the Kingdom's sake and pray for them a meaningful and fulfilling World Baptist Congress in England this summer.”
He added: “All along we have said that while the convention voted to withdraw its membership from the BWA, it by no means voted to withdraw our fellowship from Baptists around the world. If anything, we hope to have a closer relationship with our Baptist brethren by developing a more personal and cohesive fellowship with those whose primary goal coincides with ours, the evangelization of the masses. …”
Associated Baptist Press
Robert Marus is chief of ABP's Washington bureau. Greg Warner is executive editor of ABP.