STOWE, Vt. (ABP) — State Baptist newspaper editors, during their annual meeting Feb. 13, declined an offer from a foundation to fund an independent inquiry into the Southern Baptist Convention's reasons for defunding the Baptist World Alliance.
Meeting in the ski resort town of Stowe, Vt., members of the Association of State Baptist Papers declined to accept an offer from retired Southern Baptist leader Duke McCall to fund a study into an SBC committee's decision to withdraw membership and funding from the worldwide umbrella group.
The SBC Executive Committee voted Feb. 17 to end the SBC's 99-year-old relationship with the BWA, which Southern Baptists helped found and continue to fund. The SBC, with 16 million members nationwide, is the largest member of the Baptist World Alliance.
If approved, the plan for withdrawal will come before the entire Southern Baptist Convention for a vote in June. If messengers favor it, then all SBC funding of BWA — until recently, $450,000 a year — will end Oct. 1.
The committee accused the Baptist World Alliance of being too open to liberalism — allegations strongly denied by BWA leaders and many of the 211 affiliated Baptist unions worldwide.
In a Feb. 3 letter, McCall offered the editors up to $100,000 to fund expenses related to conducting “a full investigation of the relations of the Southern Baptist Convention and the Baptist World Alliance which either support or rebut the withdrawal of the SBC from membership in the BWA.”
McCall is a former BWA president, Executive Committee head and president of two Southern Baptist seminaries. The funding would flow through McCall's family foundation.
The editors' group is made up of both moderate and fundamentalist editors of the newspapers historically affiliated with SBC-related state conventions. McCall said he felt the editors would have the most credibility in investigating the BWA matter.
“My personal goal is to get an uncommitted investigation by able Baptists who place the cause of Christ above institutional concerns,” McCall wrote. “The state paper editors appear to me to be such a group with experience in looking for the truth in an environment of disagreement. Their job requires them to have the ability and experience to sort facts from fiction.”
In discussion on the offer, the editors disagreed over whether embarking on such an endeavor would amount to an admission that their papers hadn't already covered the SBC-BWA issue adequately. “I share a lot of the sentiments that Dr. McCall shares,” said Alabama Baptist editor Bob Terry, who serves as the group's executive director. “But I'm not sure that this association is the right vehicle for doing the study that he seeks.”
Current ASBP president Trennis Henderson, editor of the Kentucky Baptist Convention's Western Recorder, spoke in favor of the recommendation. The association doing an in-depth investigation of the issue, Henderson said, “is [not] the same as saying that individual Baptist newspapers have not adequately covered the story.”
But Texas Baptist Standard editor Marv Knox, who serves as the chairman of Associated Baptist Press' board of directors, suggested that approving such a study might exacerbate an already-existing rift within the ASBP — exhibited by the fact that several of the most conservative editors did not attend the Stowe meeting to instead attend a simultaneously scheduled meeting of state convention executive directors.
“Us here voting to do this would be another polarizing issue within this group,” Knox said.
The editors ultimately voted to decline McCall's offer, but did discuss suggesting alternative organizations — such as secular news services or journalism schools — to McCall.
In other action, the editors approved resolutions of appreciation to three of their members who are leaving their positions.
Bob Maddox's position as editor of the Capital Baptist was cut in a money-saving move by the District of Columbia Baptist Convention. Maddox also serves as pastor of Briggs Memorial Baptist Church in Bethesda, Md. The editors also recognized Will Pollard, who is retiring as editor of the Ohio Baptist Messenger, and Mark Wingfield, who resigned as managing editor of the Baptist Standard to accept an associate pastor's position at Wilshire Baptist Church in Dallas.
-30-