ATHENS, Ga. — A group formed 10 years ago to oppose fundamentalism in the Georgia Baptist Convention has decided to close up shop. The Baptist Heritage Council of Georgia’s board of directors voted in September to close the organization at the end of 2010, Executive Director Becky Matheny reported in the group’s final newsletter dated November 2010.
Matheny said the economic downturn and changing denominational landscape led the board to decide “that the organization had done its job for this time and place.”
“Certainly we are not saying that the task of educating Baptists in Georgia has ended,” Matheny said. “All of us need to keep telling the story of Baptist history and the principles that have been the building blocks of our denomination in America.”
Formed in April 2000, the Baptist Heritage Council is one of a number of statewide groups forming the Mainstream Baptist Network. The network comprised moderate Baptist groups that worked on the state level to prevent the “conservative resurgence” that captured the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) in the 1980s from trickling down to SBC-affiliated Baptist state conventions.
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