Southern Baptist Moderates Unite

A group of Southern Baptist moderates have announced formation of an organization to challenge fundamentalist control of the nation’s largest Protestant denomination.

The Rev. Henry Crouch, president of the new Southern Baptist Alliance, which will be based in Charlotte, said the group was formed as an alternative to the narrow views of the current leadership.

Crouch said the new organization is not intended to be political. It will not field a candidate to oppose re-election of President Adrian Rogers at the Southern Baptist Convention’s annual meeting in St. Louis in June.

“All we’re interested in is making a vehicle possible for representing those who feel they have been disenfranchised,” Crouch said. “It may be the beginning of a new denomination, but we don’t think so,” said the pastor of Charlotte’s Providence Baptist Church..

In addition to Crouch, officers for the alliance include vice chairperson Susan Lockwood Wright, pastor of Cornell Baptist Church in Chicago; secretary Richard Groves, pastor of Wake Forest Church in Winston-Salem, N.C.; and treasurer Bruce Morgan, pastor of First Baptist Church of Greenville, S.C.

Crouch said the group is composed of clergy and laypeople from 14 states and has had preliminary meetings since last July.