Moderates Escalate Southern Baptist Holy War

Hundreds of Southern Baptist congregations are threatening to withhold contributions from the fundamentalist-dominated church hierarchy in a major escalation of the holy war wracking the nation’s largest Protestant denomination.

As many as 500 moderate pastors will meet next month in Atlanta to discuss how to bypass the Southern Baptist Convention to pay for the church’s worldwide missions and seminaries. At stake is control over millions of dollars in donations.

“The average Baptist is beginning to see the light,” said the Rev. Bill Sherman, moderate pastor of the 3,000-member Woodmont Baptist Church in Nashville. “The fundamentalist agenda is to control the church, and they will destroy anybody who gets in their way. We will not allow them to do their mischief with our money.”

Southern Baptist fundamentalists and moderates have feuded bitterly for decades over interpretations of the Bible. Moderates held sway in the 1960s and ‘70s, but a fundamentalist has been elected president of the 15-million member Southern Baptist Convention each year since 1979.

In June, the Rev. Morris Chapman of Wichita Falls, Tex., was elected president with 58% of the vote, the largest margin of conservative victory in any year in which no incumbent was running. Since then, fundamentalists have enraged moderates with two actions.

First, they pumped an extra $341,000 into the Christian Life Commission, which promotes conservative political causes. Then last week, the 77-member Southern Baptist Convention Executive Committee fired two editors of the Baptist Press, the news service that distributes stories to church newspapers around the country.

Fundamentalists accused the editors, Alvin Shackleford and Dan Martin, of displaying moderate bias. Moderate church leaders charged that fundamentalists intend to turn the Baptist Press into a “propaganda machine.”

Emotions ran so high that the Southern Baptist Convention hired armed guards to stand watch over the Executive Committee’s closed meeting to fire the editors. Outside, about 300 moderate pastors and church members shouted taunts as the meeting’s doors were shut, then sang hymns in protest.

Since the meeting, an increasing number of moderate pastors have declared their congregations will withhold donations from the Executive Committee, which decides the budgets of six seminaries and 3,850 missionaries in 115 countries.

“We are distressed by the authoritarian methods taking place now,” said the Rev. Larry Dipbouy of the First Baptist Church in Oak Ridge, Tenn. “This has nothing to do with Christianity. It has everything to do with power.”

Moderate pastors led by the Rev. Daniel Vestal of Dunwoody, Ga., the losing candidate in June’s presidential election, will hold a three-day meeting starting Aug. 23 in Atlanta to begin organizing a way to funnel contributions directly to seminaries and missions.

“What they are trying to do is send a message that they don’t like what they refer to as taxation without representation,” said Toby Durin, associate editor of the Baptist Standard in Dallas, the church newspaper for Texas.

“What they contend is that the moderate side of the convention has been shut out for the past 10 years in appointments for various boards and the like. They say if they are not going to be given a say-so in how the money is spent, they’re not going to support it,” he said.