Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) messengers voted overwhelmingly June 15 to end the denomination’s 99-year relationship with Baptist World Alliance (BWA). Messengers also called on New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary to name the SBC as its sole member and adopted a $183.2 million Cooperative Program allocation budget for 2004–2005.
Major allocations for the budget include 50 percent for the SBC International Mission Board, 22.79 percent for the North American Mission Board and 21.64 percent for theological education.
If the budget goal is exceeded, the first $250,000 over budget will be earmarked to fund CP education efforts at the SBC’s six seminaries.
The action to withdraw from BWA follows several years of tension between the two organizations. SBC leaders repeatedly have accused BWA of affiliating with Baptist groups that espouse “aberrant theological views,” a charge denied by BWA officials.
Patterson on BWA
Paige Patterson, speaking on behalf of the SBC’s BWA study committee, told the messengers that committee members “have noted with sorrow in our hearts a continual leftward drift in the Baptist World Alliance.”
Citing the example of BWA’s affiliation with American Baptist Churches (ABC), Patterson said a group in that denomination is “committed to being a gay-friendly place for churches and people of that disposition.” The SBC “can no longer afford to be aligned in any way” with groups that are considered gay-friendly, he said.
But ABC General Secretary Roy Medley said Patterson’s assessment of the ABC’s stand on homosexuality is outrageous. Nowhere in any of the conversations with the BWA has such an excuse ever been given, he said.
“To characterize American Baptist Churches USA as being in favor of gay marriage goes beyond the pale,” Medley insisted. “Our policy statement on family life, adopted in 1984, maintains, ‘We affirm that God intends marriage to be a monogamous, lifelong, one-flesh union of a woman and a man.’”
BWA General Secretary Denton Lotz said in an interview after the vote, “We were shocked by Dr. Patterson bringing in the gay issue which was never on the table before.”
During brief discussion on the floor of the convention, Larry Walker, a messenger from First Baptist Church of Dallas, urged messengers to support BWA as “a united, worldwide community of Baptists.”
Walker said he views BWA “not as a theological incubator but as a nursery” where the SBC and other groups can help small, struggling Baptist bodies around the world.
“We may not need them, but they desperately need us,” Walker said. “Is there something we can do to resolve and reconcile this relationship?”
Immediately after Walker’s comments, messenger Wiley Drake of California called for the question, effectively cutting off further debate. Messengers then overwhelmingly voted by a show of hands for the SBC to withdraw its membership from BWA effective Oct. 1.
The action also will end the SBC’s $300,000 annual contribution to BWA. The SBC action specifies that the funds be earmarked for the convention “to develop and execute a new and innovative strategy for continuing to build strong relationships with conservative Christians around the world.”
When it came to New Orleans and sole membership, messengers voted by a 2–1 margin to “respectfully request” that trustees of the seminary amend the school’s charter, naming the SBC as the seminary’s “sole member.”
Messengers denied pleas by New Orleans president Chuck Kelley and seminary trustees to delay the matter to allow them to bring to the 2005 convention both a sole-member proposal and a yet-to-be-determined alternative the seminary board believes would ensure convention ownership of the seminary but take into account the unique nature of Louisiana nonprofit law and better protect Baptist polity.
Executive Committee Chairman Gary Smith said the Executive Committee made the sole-member request of New Orleans trustees seven years ago and that the seminary had long been the sole holdout of the 11 SBC institutions.
Executive Committee leaders said the convention action is intended to ensure the right of the convention to continue to elect seminary trustees, to guarantee ownership of the seminary remains with the convention and to protect the SBC from ascending liability.
But Kelley said “Louisiana law is different from that of other entity states and that difference makes sole membership more harmful than helpful for the SBC.”
The move calls for the seminary board to specify the SBC’s right to:
Elect and remove the seminary’s trustees.
Approve any amendment of the charter adopted by the board of trustees.
Approve any merger, consolidation, dissolution or other change in the entity’s charter.
Approve the sale, lease or other disposition of the corporation’s assets.
The convention expects the charter changes to be submitted for consideration by the Executive Committee in its February 2005 meeting, then presented to messengers to next year’s annual meeting for approval before it is filed with the Louisiana Secretary of State.
During his report, Morris Chapman, president of the Executive Committee, warned that convention leaders “must never cease to be vigilant against heresy.”
Chapman’s caution
Cautioning against both liberalism and hyper-independence, Chapman said, “If Southern Baptists steer too sharply to the right, we will end up on the road of separatism and independence. … If there’s ever been a time the devil would like to see the SBC crash and burn, it is now.
“We cannot let this convention be driven by politics,” he added, urging the convention “to return to some sense of normalcy.” Otherwise, he said, the SBC could “fall into the error of Pharisaism, … lifeless orthodoxy parading as true faith.”
“We can be both conservative and cooperative,” he insisted. God is looking for us to change the world and to do it now.”
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