The Southern Baptist Convention (SBC), the largest member and contributor in the Baptist World Alliance (BWA), will withdraw its membership and money from the worldwide fellowship of 43 million Baptists if a study committee’s Dec. 19 recommendation is approved.
Southern Baptist leaders complain the BWA, which the SBC helped found in 1905, is not conservative enough and cite several theological concerns as the core reason for the recommendation. The SBC wants to use the funding now allotted for BWA to create a more conservative international body.
BWA General Secretary Denton Lotz said the SBC action is “a sin against love” that will split the worldwide Baptist family.
During the SBC annual meeting in June 2003, Southern Baptists voted to reduce funding of BWA from $425,000 to $300,000 for the 2003–04 budget year. The $125,000 was redirected to a new SBC “Kingdom Relationships” global initiative. A month later BWA accepted as a new member the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship (CBF). After that vote, Charles Kelley, a regular participant in BWA meetings and president of New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary, said it could be “the last straw” for the strained relationship.
CBF not mentioned
While the committee did not address CBF’s membership into BWA, BWA President Billy Kim said, “Adding CBF was the straw that broke the camel’s back, I think. But there was a majority vote.” Kim was referencing a 75–28 vote to accept CBF into BWA in 2003.
The SBC’s BWA Study Committee — initially formed in 1997 to monitor SBC/BWA relations — accuses BWA of “advocating aberrant and dangerous theologies” and refusing to hear Southern Baptist objections.
The proposal to withdraw accuses BWA of questioning biblical inerrancy, promoting women as pastors and downplaying the doctrine of salvation only through Jesus.
“Continuing to allow presentations that call into question the truthfulness of Holy Scripture, refusing to support openly the idea that all who are saved must come to the salvation through conscious faith in Jesus Christ, and promoting women as preachers and pastors are among the issues that make it impossible to endorse the BWA as a genuinely representative organization of world Baptists,” said the report of the BWA Study Committee.
“The BWA rejects categorically this false accusation of liberalism,” Lotz responded. “Of course there is a spectrum of theological thought in all of our conventions, just as in local churches, but we belong to one another because we belong to Christ.
“Every pastor and every deacon knows that nobody in their church agrees on everything,” Lotz said. “The main orthodox beliefs are crucial — the Trinity, the divinity of Christ, the cross, the resurrection, the second coming — that’s who we are as Baptists.”
Noting that current Southern Baptist leaders are not united on such issues as Calvinism vs. Arminianism, Lotz asked, “Who is aberrant in theology there?
“SBC doctrine is a call to unity among its churches,” Lotz said. “Why then separate from the world of Baptists? In the end it became a question of power and control and the desire of forcing Baptists of the world to fit into one particular mode or mold or interpretation of thinking. This is contrary to all Baptist understanding of the competency of the individual of soul liberty.”
The SBC’s exit from the BWA “will bring a schism within the life of our worldwide Baptist family and thus it is a sin against love,” Lotz said. “Schism is a sin against the prayer of Jesus who prayed that ‘they all might be one so that the world might believe,’” Lotz continued. “And thus schism is a sin against that unity which is necessary for evangelism.” Schism also is a sin against the New Testament teaching that there is one body, one Spirit, one Lord, one baptism, one God and Father, Lotz said.
But Jimmy Draper, president of LifeWay Christian Resources, said the doctrinal problems within the BWA “just seemed to get more intense and more blatant” in recent years. “It seemed like at each of the meetings there would be something — almost a deliberate affront to Southern Baptists — and then if we raised an issue, they criticized us for raising issues and would not allow a dialogue to deal with the issues.”
The committee’s recommendation, if approved by the Executive Committee during its Feb. 16–17 meeting in Nashville, would be forwarded to messengers at the June SBC annual meeting in Indianapolis, Ind.
The SBC would maintain its current funding of the BWA until Oct. 1 of this year, according to the committee. Southern Baptists have always provided most of BWA’s budget, which totaled $1.69 million in 2003.
The deleted funds would be used “to develop and execute a new and innovative strategy for continuing to build strong relationships with conservative evangelical Christians around the world as together we witness to the saving power of our Lord Jesus Christ,” according to the report.
Morris Chapman, president of the SBC Executive Committee who chaired the study committee, said, “We do not seek to separate ourselves from others but desire to work directly with fellow Baptists around the world rather than through the BWA,” Chapman said. “The BWA was always intended to be a fellowship among Baptists rather than the denomination-like organization that it is becoming. It makes no sense for Southern Baptists to duplicate through the BWA what we are doing already in our international missions effort to reach the world for Christ.
“Given the wide range of theological views represented by the BWA, we are convinced that it is best that Southern Baptists work directly with likeminded unions and conventions around the world rather than through the BWA.”
The committee said, “Our fervent hope is that the exodus of Southern Baptists from the BWA will galvanize other member bodies scrupulously to examine and to correct the present trajectory of the BWA. Whatever the case, we wish heaven’s blessing on the BWA and its constituent conventions in every noble work for the Savior.
“We pray for the day when the BWA will return to the faith on which it was founded and which has been historically held by Baptists for centuries. We pray for the restoration of fellowship that such a return will bring,” the committee also stated.
“I don’t worry about the future of the Baptist World Alliance because our future is as bright as the promises of Christ,” Lotz said. “We worry more about the unity of the Baptist witness in the United States.
“We, of course, will be very sad if indeed the Southern Baptist Convention withdraws from the Baptist World Alliance. I think it will be bad for the SBC and will further isolate their missions work overseas,” Lotz said. “How will [Southern Baptist missionaries] relate to national conventions that are members of the [BWA]?
“I fear for the Southern Baptist Convention,” he continued, “because this decision follows in a long line of other decisions that, I believe, will ultimately lead to the dissolution and self-destruction of the SBC.”
Along with Chapman and Draper, the committee includes Tom Elliff, Paige Patterson, Paul Pressler, Jerry Rankin, Gary Smith, Bob Sorrell and Joe Reynolds. (ABP, BP, RNS)
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