Southern Baptists Turn Down Plan to Alter Name, 53% to 47%

California Southern Baptists, meeting in Oxnard this week, voted down, 53% to 47%, a proposal to drop “Southern” from the name of their state organization, a proposed change that only narrowly missed two-thirds majority approval a year ago.

Although state conventions in Georgia, North Carolina, Texas and Louisiana elected moderate or unaligned presidents this week in what one moderate called a “turning point day” in the denomination’s internal fights dominated lately by fundamentalists, the California convention lacked moderate-fundamentalist conflicts, said Mark Wyatt, public relations director.

The Rev. John Swartz, pastor of Bethel Baptist Church, Escondido, was reelected to the customary second one-year term as president. Southern Baptists have 376,000 members in more than 1,100 churches in the state--the largest Protestant body in California.