D.C. Baptists respond to SBC funding cut

WASHINGTON — The District of Columbia Baptist Convention (DCBC) is “not for sale,” Executive Director Jeffrey Haggray informed the convention’s 137 congregations in an open letter dated Aug. 1.

Haggray’s lengthy letter, published on the convention’s Web site and in The Capital Baptist, reacted to a recent announcement that the Southern Baptist Convention’s North American Mission Board would cut off about $476,000 in annual funding for the DCBC, beginning in 2003.

Haggray said NAMB’s defunding, based on a perceived “growing distance” in policies and priorities between the two bodies, showed “contempt” for the District of Columbia convention’s mission to unite Southern, American and Progressive National Baptists in the nation’s capital.

“The agents of disunity and strife have willfully intruded into the Washington, D.C., region seeking to destroy Baptist unity and missions,” he wrote. “Listen closely to their platform for they have only one agenda item: they oppose Southern Baptists on mission together with American Baptists and Progressive Baptists in the Washington, D.C., region.”

Haggray asked D.C. churches to “conduct intentional discussions” about ways to increase missions support for the D.C. convention. He said the DCBC would “continue to support the Cooperative Program of … so long as we consist of Southern Baptist churches.”