By Editor Bob Terry
History can sometimes be informative when pondering a present-day problem. This might be such a time. Recalling lessons from our past might shed light on the present-day question of appropriate actions by Baptist entity leaders related to convention politics.
The role of entity leaders became an issue when Paige Patterson, president of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, Texas, endorsed Arkansas pastor Ronnie Floyd as a candidate for president of the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) earlier this year.
That action drew a rebuke from Morris Chapman, president of the SBC Executive Committee. Chapman said, “When a president of an entity publicly endorses a potential nominee or nominates a candidate for elected office, he potentially alienates some who otherwise hold him in high esteem because they differ with the person he has embraced publicly for an elected office.
“Nominating or being nominated for an elected officer of the SBC, or endorsing a nominee for an elected office, in my opinion, lessens the importance of the work to which the entity head has been called.”
Despite Chapman’s reaction, two other seminary presidents, Al Mohler at Southern and Danny Akin of Southeastern, publicly declared their support for Floyd. Akin also nominated a candidate for second vice president who lost the election.
Southern Baptists have a precedent for an entity leader choosing sides in a presidential campaign. In 1985, Keith Parks, president of the Foreign Mission Board (now the International Mission Board), publicly opposed the re-election of Charles Stanley, pastor of First Baptist Church, Atlanta. Parks said the independent missions strategy of the church and the church’s minimal support of the Cooperative Program (CP) undermined the way Southern Baptists do missions.
Stanley won anyway and served a second term as SBC president. After the election, Parks went to the platform and publicly pledged his cooperation with the new president, but Parks’ public opposition to Stanley cost him dearly. He was roundly criticized for injecting missions into the election. Speeches were made far and wide condemning him and the idea of an SBC entity head injecting himself and the ministry committed to his care into convention politics.
Twenty-one years is not so long ago that this episode should be forgotten, it seems to me.
Chapman took his rebuke a step further, challenging the advisability of an entity head serving as president of the SBC. Patterson served two years as SBC president (1999 and 2000) while president of Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in Wake Forest, N.C.
Chapman added, “The potential for conflict exists if the president of an SBC entity is at the same time the president of the Southern Baptist Convention.” The president serves ex officio on the SBC’s most powerful agency boards including the SBC Executive Committee, which votes on funding for the agencies and entities, Chapman noted.
Bylaws of the SBC acknowledge this potential conflict. The bylaws declare, “No salaried official of the Convention or of any of its entities or any member of any board or board of trustees or commission of the Convention or any salaried official of any state convention or of any entity of a state convention may be a member of the Executive Committee.”
This strong declaration is followed by an exception, “These restrictions shall not apply in case of the president, the president of Woman’s Missionary Union, and the recording secretary of the Convention.” Thus the door is open for SBC entity heads to serve as president and to sit on the budget-making body that recommends CP allocations for the respective entities.
Patterson is the only SBC entity head to serve as president since L.R. Scarborough — who was also president of Southwestern Seminary — served as SBC president in 1939 and 1940.
Alabama Baptists have a more recent example. In 1963 and 1964, Leon Macon, editor of The Alabama Baptist newspaper, served as state convention president. Some felt it was inappropriate for a state convention entity executive to serve as chairman of the administrative committee of the Alabama Baptist State Board of Missions and thus play a critical role in the allocation of funds.
A year after Macon went out of office, Alabama Baptists amended the convention constitution by adding, “No salaried employee of the Convention or of its several institutions or agencies shall be eligible to serve as president or vice president.” That provision remains today.
In my judgment, it is a good provision, one that should be followed by the SBC. Surely, among our more than 16 million members across the nation, we have good and godly men and women capable and worthy of convention leadership and service without breaching the safeguards of potential conflicts of interests.
Chapman is right. Entity heads and others whose salary is paid through the CP should not serve as convention officers or become embroiled in convention elections through public endorsements.
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