INDIANAPOLIS (ABP) — Southern Baptists will remain Southern Baptists.
After a lively debate during the annual Southern Baptist Convention meeting, messengers voted 55 percent to 45 percent (1,731 to 1,391) against forming a committee to study changing the convention's name. The motion to create a study committee was the only motion to make it to the floor of the convention for debate out of a record 29 motions.
“Southern Baptists are ambivalent about their name,” said Richard Land, president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission. “They love being Southern Baptists and all that it means.” There is a strong loyalty to the name, he said, even though many know the name is a hindrance in some areas of the country.
Claude Thomas, pastor of First Baptist Church of Euless, Texas, had proposed the study committee “because we have gone beyond our Southern regional characteristics.”
Messengers lined up on both sides of the issue and were still lined up at the convention microphones to debate the issue when the time for debate expired.
Some who opposed the study questioned the cost, both to study the name change and to implement it. SBC president Jack Graham said, “We don't know the cost of [the study]. It will require an investment to do the right kind of research. It will require a budget.”
Dottie Selman of Dayton Ohio, said, “You've come to us asking for a study committee but have no idea what it will cost. That is not good business.”
Byron Ingles of Georgia said the money would be better spent on seminaries and missionaries. But the pastor of a New York mission church said, “I would rather spend the money than have a name that … has become an impediment to sharing the gospel. … The word Southern Baptist is almost evil.”
Herb Stoneman of Salt Lake City noted that the SBC now exists in two nations — Canada and the United States — so it needs a name “that would better reflect who we are.”
Ed Taylor of Virginia said, “It is a waste of time to study because no matter what we change our name to, the media will let the secret out that we really are Southern Baptists.”
Glen Peck of St. Louis, Okla., added, “We are proud of our hard-won heritage. We know and project our doctrine by our name. We have media, for or against, immediately identifying who we are and what we stand for. There is no good time for a bad idea. This is a bad idea.”
But Lane Yarborough of Michigan said he served on the committee that studied a name change in the 1980s. “This has not been studied in quite some time. If the name is a hindrance, we should consider changing it.”
The ballot vote on the name-change study was one of the few closely contested issues during the two-day SBC meeting.
Wiley Drake, pastor of First Southern Baptist Church of Bueno Vista, Calif., appealed to the chair when two of his motions were ruled out of order — one of which would have commended Walt Disney Pictures for producing the movie “America's Heart and Soul.” Drake was an outspoken critic of Disney when the SBC initiated a boycott of the company in 1997.
SBC president Graham said Drake's motions were ruled to be resolutions by the committee on order of business and therefore out of order.
But Drake objected: “I want a specific action commending them for what they are doing. If [the committee is] going to rule things out of order because they don't want to do anything, then we are getting back to the way we were years ago when us conservatives were having our mics turned off on us. I will appeal to the body to overrule the chair. Let the messengers vote.”
But the messengers voted to support the committee's decision.
Other motions submitted by messengers either were referred to an SBC agency or ruled out of order.
One motion referred to the North American Mission Board asks for reconsideration of the requirement that Southern Baptist chaplains be ordained by a local church.
A motion to consider a boycott of Carnival Cruise Lines and require the SBC Annuity Board to sell its Carnival stock as soon as possible was referred to the Annuity Board and the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission.
Motions ruled out of order included a proposal to keep the King James Bible preeminent in churches and in church resources.
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