KINGSPORT, Tenn. (ABP) — Tennessee Baptists are gearing up to fight a battle that most Southern Baptist state conventions finished a decade ago. Many of the state's moderates feel it is no longer worth fighting.
Nonetheless, some conservatives and moderates are making plans to show up in force during the Tennessee Baptist Convention annual meeting, scheduled for Nov. 13-14 in Kingsport, Tenn. At stake is the election of trustees who will control convention institutions, including moderate-led Carson-Newman College.
Conservatives hope to give the convention president — an office presently occupied by one of their own — greater power to appoint members of the convention's powerful committee on committees.
They may also challenge some nominees to open positions on the convention's various boards and committees because they don't affirm the controversial 2000 revision of the Southern Baptist Convention's faith statement, the “Baptist Faith and Message.” At last year's convention meeting in suburban Memphis, Tenn., conservatives pushed through a statement endorsing the confession. They also passed a new rule requiring nominating committees to ask proposed nominees whether they affirm the document and to publish the answers as part of a report.
The report, which convention policies require to be published several weeks prior to the meeting, reveals that 17 nominees for this year's convention declined to endorse the confession.
Marvin Cameron, pastor of First Baptist Church in Kingsport, said he is concerned that conservatives will use those answers to institute “a litmus test” for trustee and committee positions in Tennessee Baptist life.
“If that is true, then that is a new and it's … an unwelcome day in Tennessee Baptist life for me, because we've never had litmus tests applied to persons who were going to serve Tennessee Baptists,” he said.
The only question asked of potential leaders in Tennessee Baptist life in the past was, ‘Do you love the Lord and will you help accomplish the Lord's work in Tennessee?'” Cameron said.
The “Baptist Faith and Message,” approved by the conservative-dominated Southern Baptist Convention in 2000, was the first major revision of the denomination's confessional statement since 1963. Many moderate Baptists decried the confession's new provisions on the role of women, including one declaring female pastors unbiblical and another saying wives should submit to their husbands.
But conservative leader Kevin Shrum, pastor of Inglewood Baptist Church in Nashville, Tenn., said he doesn't see what the big deal is about asking whether nominees affirm the confession.
“The issue at hand is, the convention voted to utilize the latest [‘Baptist Faith and Message'] document for people to declare how they stood on that issue,” said Shrum, who is president of the conservative group Concerned Tennessee Baptists. “And it passed by an overwhelming majority, and so I don't know that people are raising individual issues so much as they are a general fidelity to the things that Baptists have held dear and the things that a majority of Southern Baptists and Tennessee Baptists have voted to affirm.”
He continued: “Now, the convention cannot dictate to any church who they call, who they employ or any of that. That is a local, autonomous issue. What I think that is being looked for is, can you affirm this, and if you can't, why not? And there may be some question from the body as a convention as to whether they want that person to serve or not.”
Shrum said his group does not plan to offer an alternate slate of nominees on the convention floor to replace those who do not affirm the document. He said the group will not offer a motion requiring convention employees — including TBC Executive Director James Porch, a frequent target of conservatives — to affirm the document.
However, he cautioned, he could not predict what other conservatives and individual members of Concerned Tennessee Baptists might attempt during the meeting's business sessions.
“There may be a challenge to one or two [nominees], and I don't know that that would be officially from Concerned Tennessee Baptists,” he said. “That may be more from individuals who … are part of the organization but who have a concern about one or two of the nominees.”
Other conservative Tennessee Baptists are taking a more aggressive tack, however. Dresden, Tenn., pastor Larry Reagan, who serves as the group's newsletter editor, offered a successful challenge to one nominee at last year's meeting. The October 2007 edition of the CTB newsletter features an article by Reagan detailing which nominees did not endorse the “Baptist Faith and Message.”
The article suggests there will be more such challenges at the 2007 meeting.
“The messengers have demanded doctrinal accountability using the BF&M 2000 as a tool to test in basic Baptist doctrines,” Reagan wrote. “The committee on boards has now sent a strong message back to the messengers: ‘You can vote for doctrinal accountability all you want to, but we will not enforce it. We will nominate whoever we please no matter what they believe.' I expect the messengers will be amending this report again this year.”
Reagan also wrote that he believed all “ministry-related personnel” employed by the TBC should endorse the document. “If any of these staff persons refuse, their office should be vacated, and replaced with doctrinally qualified leaders,” he wrote.
The newsletter also strongly endorses the amendment to give the TBC president more power to appoint members to the committee on boards. They, in turn, nominate people for service on the convention's various boards, including its powerful executive board and the committee on committees, which nominates trustees.
Unlike many other state Baptist bodies, the TBC presidency holds little appointive power. While conservative takeovers of the Southern Baptist Convention and other state conventions quickly trickled down to board and agency trustees, several victories by conservatives in TBC officer elections in recent years have not had the same effect.
Concerned Tennessee Baptists leaders have long complained that the peculiar system — with the committee on boards and committee on committees nominating each other — has caused inbreeding in convention leadership. They claim it creates a system where moderate churches are disproportionately represented.
“What has happened is, it has given the appearance that the leadership — trustees, committee persons — have ended up coming from a small number of churches,” Shrum said. “And one of the desires is not … a power play or whatever; it is simply to recognize that there are quality leaders across the board from a larger number of churches and that there is the desire to … include more and more leadership across a broad spectrum of Tennessee Baptist life so that there isn't the appearance that some churches and some perspectives are being favored over others.”
But moderate leaders counter that the existing system actually creates better representation.
“I think, unlike other states, allowing the committees to do their work gives a broader representation of the state,” said Gene Wilder, pastor of First Baptist Church in Jefferson City, Tenn. “I don't think it attempts to exclude anyone. I do think allowing the president power to make nominees gives that office more control than it ought to have, regardless of whether the office is held by a moderate or a fundamentalist. It tends to foster special-interest nominations, whereas if you're dealing with a nominee from a full committee, it tends to be better balanced.”
Wilder's congregation is home to many faculty and administrators at nearby Carson-Newman College, a Tennessee Baptist school that has been a sticking point in the arguments between conservatives and moderates. He said his church intends to send its full complement of 10 messengers to the Kingsport meeting.
Convention leaders have also countered conservatives' arguments about nominees by noting that TBC rules require the committee on boards to consult with agency administrators for suggestions when filling open slots. And some moderate leaders have noted that many of the state's largest churches with long histories of support for Tennessee Baptist institutions happen to be moderate.
“In the past, if you had a really large church — no matter whether you were fundamentalist or moderate — it made sense to have more than one member serving” on convention boards, said Larry Fields, pastor of Central Baptist Church of Bearden in Knoxville, Tenn. He said his church is planning to send its maximum 10 messengers to Kingsport for this year's convention, although he is unaware of “any organized effort” on the part of moderates to get messengers to the meeting or to elect a particular slate of candidates.
Concerned Tennessee Baptists has endorsed a full slate of officer candidates, including Nashville-area pastor Tom McCoy for president.
Only one moderate leader consulted for this story offered a name of a potential presidential candidate. Cameron, the Kingsport pastor, said he has heard that Randall Adkisson, pastor of First Baptist Church in Cookeville, Tenn., will be nominated for the post. Adkisson did not return requests to confirm that nomination.
“I am no longer deeply involved in TBC life, and I know almost nothing about current developments in relation to the ‘Baptist Faith and Message' 2000, potential officers, and the like,” wrote Michael Smith, pastor of First Baptist Church in Murfreesboro, Tenn., in response to an interview request.
Likewise Brent Beasley, pastor of Second Baptist Church in Memphis, said his church will not make any effort to send messengers to the state's opposite corner to fight old battles.
“I — and I think I can speak for most of the people at Second — have really disengaged from these types of Baptist political conflicts,” he wrote. “It's not that the issues are not important, and I do understand and respect those moderates who are trying to protect important TBC institutions. But I feel like we at Second have worked so hard over the years to come to terms with our theological and denominational identity as a more progressive-minded kind of Baptist church.”
He continued, “Our church rejected the BF&M 2000 seven years ago, and it almost feels like going backward to get back into all that again.”
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Read more:
Conservatives win battles during Tennessee Baptist Convention (7/17/2006)