Meeting of Moderate Baptist Unit May Hold Key to Separatist Talk : Convocation could decide whether to stay in the fundamentalist-run church as a dissenting body or to break away.

Now that moderates have lost their drawn-out fight with fundamentalists for control of the Southern Baptist Convention, the biggest question facing the nation’s largest denomination is whether a substantial separatist movement is afoot.

Will moderates calling themselves the Baptist Fellowship be content to remain a dissenting body within the 15-million-member denomination or decide to break away? The answer may be clearer after the group holds a three-day convocation in Atlanta starting today that is expected to draw about 5,000 people.

No less suspenseful is whether Baylor University, the largest Southern Baptist institution still under moderate control, will establish a seminary that would not be under the thumb of ultraconservative trustees. The school is envisioned as an alternative to the denomination’s six seminaries where trustees are increasingly stressing literal biblical interpretations.

Moderate leaders contend that such moves will depend partly on whether fundamentalist partisans not only continue to fire administrators who do not toe the line but also try to involve Southern Baptists in the agenda of the religious right.

Fundamentalist forces, who made hard-line loyalty to a literal Bible an issue in their successive convention victories over a dozen years, hold virtually all key executive posts. As a result, a subdued annual meeting is in store June 4-6 in Atlanta.

“It’s futile,” said the Rev. Daniel Vestal, the twice-defeated moderate presidential candidate. The Atlanta pastor said the cherished Baptist tradition of freedom of belief is still at stake, but that no moderate slate of candidates will be offered.

“It’s going to become increasingly obvious,” predicted Vestal, the principal organizer of the convocation, “that the present Southern Baptist leadership is still interested in rigid conformity, and I don’t think that’s what most Southern Baptists want.” Vestal said moderates do not plan to form a new church body at the May convocation, but that eventually a split is possible.

Many are skeptical, however, that Southern Baptists will join the fledgling Baptist Fellowship, a dissenting body of Southern Baptists, in significant numbers.

Another moderate group, the Southern Baptist Alliance, has discussed joining the American Baptist Churches even as it explores options within the Baptist Fellowship.

“Some congregations and pastors will switch to another denomination, but I don’t think it will be a big move,” said Mark Coppenger, vice president for public relations for the Southern Baptist Convention Executive Committee, based in Nashville.

And Coppenger said he doubted that a new denomination will emerge.

Relatively few churches are moving that way, indicated the Rev. Morris Chapman of Wichita Falls, Tex., president of the Southern Baptist Convention and a shoo-in for reelection in June.

“The Baptist Fellowship has announced that they have 125 participating churches,” Chapman said. “That compares to 35,000 churches that make up the Southern Baptist Convention. I think it is important to see both meetings from that perspective.”

Indeed, countless churches that decried the fundamentalist ascent to power have no taste for breakaway movements. Many pastors will “simply hunker down” and hope things will change, said church historian Bill Leonard of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky.

Yet, some moderate-leaning Southern Baptists feel safeguards must be taken. David Maddox, a Fullerton businessman who said he has no intention of leaving the Southern Baptists, has agreed to join the board of trustees of the seminary Baylor University may start.

“I feel we have to be in a position to conserve the roots of Southern Baptist work and belief without forcing views on professors and endangering the seminary’s accreditation,” said Maddox, who was chairman from 1985 to 1987 of the denomination’s Executive Committee.

Meanwhile, a church historian predicts that the June annual meeting will be “something of a fundamentalist love feast.”

Such harmony, however, would not be typical of Baptists. “Baptists are pretty individualistic people in their thinking,” Coppenger said.