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, 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.
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 ….”
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.
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 suggests there will be more such challenges at the 2007 meeting.
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.
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.