ATLANTA (ABP)—Organizers for next January's New Baptist Covenant gathering announced the speakers for the historic three-day meeting—with former President Jimmy Carter making good on a pledge to enlist prominent Republican Baptists to complement the mostly Democratic headliners.
Republican Senators Lindsay Graham (S.C.) and Charles Grassley (Iowa) have been named participants for the Jan. 30-Feb. 1 New Baptist Covenant Celebration in Atlanta, billed as the broadest Baptist meeting in America since Baptists divided over slavery before the Civil War. Organizers hope to attract 20,000 people to the event.
Carter already has enlisted former President Bill Clinton and Al Gore, the former vice president who came within 537 Florida votes of succeeding Clinton. They all are Democrats. Broadcast journalist Bill Moyers, who served as an adviser to President Lyndon Johnson, another Democrat, also is on the program.
Although the meeting will occur in the heat of the presidential-nomination season, Carter eschewed any political intention for the gathering. Clinton's involvement sparked criticism the event would become a campaign rally for wife Hillary, the Democratic presidential frontrunner.
Carter acknowledged his effort was slowed initially by criticism the group was dominated by Democrats.
“It may have been a mistake to single out me and Bill Clinton as two politicians,” he said. But the group's effort to enlist Republican speakers was “completely successful,” Carter said. “Every Republican we have invited has agreed to come.”
But one Republican—presidential candidate Mike Huckabee—backed out after initially accepting an invitation to speak. Huckabee, a former Baptist pastor and governor of Arkansas, withdrew after Carter publicly criticized President Bush's foreign policy.
Six of the 13 speakers announced May 17 are politicians.
Three are pastors or preachers, including one woman—Julie Pennington-Russell, pastor of Calvary Baptist Church in Waco.
Two of the pastors are African-Americans—Charles Adams, pastor of Hartford Baptist Church in Detroit and past president of the Progressive National Baptist Convention, and William Shaw, pastor of White Rock Baptist Church in Philadelphia and president of the National Baptist Convention USA Inc.
Also included is Joel Gregory, preaching professor at Baylor University's Truett Theological Seminary and former pastor of First Baptist Church of Dallas.
Two social activists will address the gathering—Marian Wright Edelman, civil-rights veteran and founder of the Children's Defense Fund in Washington, D.C., who is a lawyer and Baptist pastor's daughter, and Tony Campolo, professor emeritus at Eastern University, an American Baptist school, and founder of the Evangelical Association for the Promotion of Education.
With two former presidents, two senators and one almost-president on the roster, political overtones are unavoidable at the January event. But Carter and Mercer University President Bill Underwood—the pair who dreamed up the covenant—say the intent is to enlist prominent Baptists who care about the group's agenda of compassion.
So far, 40 Baptist organizations in the United States and Canada have indicated a willingness to participate in the January celebration. The organizations, which include most of the Baptist denominations in North America except the Southern Baptist Convention, encompass about 20 million Baptists.
That's more than the 16 million members claimed by the SBC, the largest Baptist group in the world. SBC leaders, who have moved sharply to the political and theological right in the last 25 years, have criticized the New Baptist Covenant as a political effort.
Rather than the racial, theological and social conflict that has divided Baptists for decades, the covenant group plans to demonstrate Baptist unity around Jesus' compassion agenda, outlined in his inaugural sermon recorded in the fourth chapter of Luke's Gospel.
Those themes comprise the core of the “New Baptist Covenant,” a statement drafted in April 2006 in a meeting at the Carter Center attended by some of the same Baptist leaders. The statement says partners are “committed to promote peace with justice, feed the hungry, clothe the naked, shelter the homeless, care for the sick and marginalized, welcome the strangers among us, and promote religious liberty and respect for religious diversity.”