BUENA PARK, Calif. (ABP) — The Southern Baptist Convention expects very little from its vice presidents — nothing, in fact — unless the SBC president becomes incapacitated. Traditionally, those elected each year to the mostly honorary VP positions are seen but not heard.
But when Southern Baptists elected Wiley Drake second vice president in June, they should not have expected Drake to be quiet about it.
The irrepressible Drake — a Los Angeles-area pastor, radio crusader, SBC gadfly and self-proclaimed “champion of the little guy” — is making the most of his new title. And that's causing more than a little consternation in the SBC's Nashville headquarters.
When Drake recently created his own makeshift letterhead proclaiming “Southern Baptist Convention, Office of the 2nd Vice President” — and used it to endorse Republican Dick Mountjoy of California in his bid for the U.S. Senate — he got a stern warning from the SBC's top lawyer.
“If there has been political activity using letterhead, it should immediately cease, due (among other reasons) to its potential to place the Convention at the wrong end of an IRS investigation,” wrote attorney August Boto in an Oct. 4 letter, alluding to laws that make political activity by non-profit groups like the SBC illegal.
“Looking back, I shouldn't have done it,” Drake told Associated Baptist Press Oct. 26. “But no one told me what I should or shouldn't do.”
So Drake is asking the convention to spell out the responsibilities of the SBC's two vice presidents, and he is making a suggestion for his own role. How about “SBC Interfaith Ambassador”?
“I already function as an interfaith ambassador,” Drake said by telephone from his church office at First Southern Baptist Church of Buena Park. “I was only asking for it to be official.”
Drake pointed out he was asked by Yuri Shtern, a Jew and member of the Israeli Knesset, to pray for the official's failing health — which Drake did on radio Oct. 26. He says he also gets regular calls from the Israeli Embassy because of his role in the pro-Israel Christian Allies Caucus, which gives him an interfaith role.
In addition to supporting Israel, Drake uses his live, four-day-a-week radio and Internet broadcast to campaign for countless conservative Christian causes — former “Ten Commandments judge” Roy Moore, a Christian “exodus” from public schools, prayer and Bible teaching in public schools, and public prayer “in Jesus' name” in the military and in government meetings.
He also comes to the aid of numerous small-time Christian “culture warriors” — hence the name, Crusader Radio. And he's the chaplain for the Minutemen who monitor the U.S.-Mexican border and a regular participant in prayer sessions in the halls of Congress.
Around Buena Park, however, Drake is best known as the pastor who fought city hall for the right to turn his tiny 75-member church into a homeless shelter — and nearly went to jail for it.
Wiley Drake burst on the Southern Baptist scene about a decade ago when he led the charge for a boycott of entertainment giant the Disney Co., even though his church lies almost in the shadow of Disneyland.
His success in that initiative initiated his steady stream of speeches from the floor of recent SBC conventions for this or that cause, introducing more failed resolutions than probably anyone in recent SBC history.
The pesky Drake's love for attention irritates many Southern Baptists — “I'm as egotistical as the next guy,” he concedes. But he's a hero to others, particularly the small-church pastors who seldom get a voice in the 16 million member denomination, which has been led by a parade of megachurch pastors for almost three decades.
It was for those “little guys,” Drake said, that he agreed to be nominated to the previously obscure role of second vice president, which is almost an afterthought in the SBC's power structure. But Drake insists he was elected with a mandate of sorts.
“I'm trying to speak up for the small church and the little guy, because many of them have said to me they feel disenfranchised [by the SBC leadership],” said Drake, whose 75-member church is about the size of the average SBC congregation.
“The people who voted for me were saying: 'Our convention is in a mess and I'm about to leave. But it sounds like Wiley may do something about it. It sounds like [SBC president] Frank Page may do something about it.'”
At the June SBC annual meeting, Page and Drake each were narrowly elected on the first ballot against multiple candidates. The pair's candidacies were trumpeted by a new coalition of conservative Southern Baptist pastors and laity — led by young activist bloggers — who were upset with the leadership's narrow theology, power-hoarding practices and closed-door meetings. (The election of first vice president Jimmy Jackson of Alabama was seen as a victory for the established leaders.)
Page declined to be interviewed about Wiley Drake's role as vice president and his use of SBC letterhead. “I will defer to our counsel, Mr. Boto, as this is a policy issue,” Page, a South Carolina pastor, said in an e-mail.
Drake, when asked if use of his SBC title to endorse a political candidate implied he was speaking for the SBC, became philosophical: “That question has two answers. Yes, because I'm the second vice president of the Southern Baptist Convention and I think I am somebody. Was I speaking for the Southern Baptist Convention in an official capacity? No. But I do have a right to speak. I am a part of the Southern Baptist Convention. … And I think there are some people out there who want me to speak for them.”
Drake said he is a nobody who became a “somebody” by virtue of his election. “I want to be the 'somebody' who tells the other 'somebodies,' 'You need to listen to the little guys, otherwise they are going to leave the Southern Baptist Convention.'”
Drake said he has ceased using his makeshift SBC letterhead. But he has added the title of “2nd Vice President” to his church letterhead — and he will keep using it, whether or not SBC officials like it. “If they have a problem with that, they're going to have to sue me.”
SBC attorney August Boto, in a letter Oct. 4, instructed Drake not to use his title in correspondence, and he suggested Drake drop his quest for a job description too.
Two days later, Drake wrote an open letter to all Southern Baptists urging them to define the role of the vice presidents.
“So without any job description to direct me, I'm left with no option but to create one on my own,” he wrote. “The 2nd Vice President should be a servant role to the convention, not an honorary title. He should be a prayer warrior for convention causes, and the most faithful advocate of our missionaries. He should encourage pastors and reach souls. He should lead his church before he tries to lead the convention, feed the hungry before he feeds his ego, and listen before he speaks.”
Most Baptists haven't read the letter, however. Baptist Press, the SBC's news and public-relations service, said Oct. 23 it would not publish it.
Drake's attorney, Mel Laney of Washington, D.C., responded to Boto Oct. 21 with another letter, copied to all SBC Executive Committee members, asking for clarification about Drake's role — and suggesting the job of interfaith ambassador. The reaction from Executive Committee members has been mixed. Some offered Drake polite encouragement but several said his request was inappropriate and unappreciated.
Laney's letter, which noted he was speaking for Drake, expressed surprise the SBC lacks bylaws that give its officers duties. “Therefore, as I understand, Pastor Drake is totally free to pursue all of his normal pro-active ministry activities,” he concluded.
Laney added: “I see a critical need for [the] SBC to appoint [an] SBC Interfaith Ambassador, to reach out in goodwill to other religious denominations and movements. … In my opinion Pastor Drake would make a wonderful SBC Interfaith Ambassador.” Appointing Drake to that role “might also help to satisfy the current strong 'SBC feeling for change,'” he said.
Laney released a copy of Boto's letter, and his response, to ABP Oct. 26.
In his letter to Drake, Boto, general counsel and vice president for convention policy at the SBC Executive Committee, said he was “not speaking on behalf of the convention” but to “counsel you privately.” He suggested Southern Baptist officials in Nashville have bent over backwards to accommodate Drake's many unusual requests. “[For example], you have had some [travel] expenses paid and have been able to opine verbally on occasion,” Boto wrote.
“If a public discussion were to ensue about the role of the vice presidents, I would expect the outcome to be a statement or bylaw amendment formally limiting or diminishing the role, rather than expanding it,” he continued. “… At present, I believe the convention appreciates and enjoys what you bring to the table as a vice president. … Pushing the envelope may ultimately not only cause unnecessary public controversy disruptive to the convention's main mission but could divide our own people between you and the president and cause a formal and permanent bylaw change not previously seen as necessary. (Not that you intend to be pushing it – I understand).”
Drake told ABP Boto's letter is “sort of a threat.” But since a vice president has no power, Drake said, there is nothing to fear. “You can't fall off the floor, and I'm on the floor.”
Drake got off on the wrong foot with the Executive Committee from the start. He expected to attend the September meeting of the committee but was told there was no money to pay his expenses. “If the Southern Baptist Convention can't afford to send me to the Executive Committee meeting, something is wrong,” he said.
His only official duty is to succeed the first vice president and president if both are incapacitated, he said, but “how do I take over if I don't know what's going on? That's why I think I need to be at the meeting.”
The unspoken message from SBC leaders was clear, he said: “'You don't need to know anything, because the president doesn't need to know anything, because the president doesn't do anything either. We control everything.'”
“I really take my job as vice president serious,” Drake said. “The Executive Committee don't. And the convention, so far, don't.”
Drake said his experience with the Executive Committee and its staff is further evidence the SBC leadership is out of touch. “In all honesty, I knew there was some of that, but I didn't realize how much of it there was. And that's why they didn't want me to go to the meeting. I think they are out of touch with the average pastor.”
The SBC's leaders, clearly exasperated with Drake's first four months as an officer, might be counting the days until his term expires in June 2007. But Drake has news for them.
“I'm absolutely going to be nominated for vice president again next year,” he told ABP.
And if and when president Frank Page completes the traditional second one-year term in 2008, Drake added, “then I'm going to be nominated for president.”
“And if the Old Guard is able to nominate someone who unseats Frank Page next year, I'll run against him too.”
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— Photo available from Associated Baptist Press.