Southern Baptist Moderate Wing Consolidates

Moderates in the Southern Baptist Convention have consolidated their potential breakaway movement by electing national officers and a coordinating council, establishing a mission budget and approving three giving plans as alternatives to the Southern Baptist Cooperative Program.

But leaders of the newly named Cooperative Baptist Fellowship insist that they are not organizing a new denomination, pointing out that many Southern Baptists sympathetic to their aims wish to remain in the larger convention.

“It’s too easy to say A plus B plus C equals a new denomination,” said the Rev. John Hewett of First Baptist Church in Asheville, N.C., who was elected moderator of the group by the 6,000 people attending last week’s Atlanta meeting.

“Let me say it clearly,” said Nancy T. Ammerman, director of Baptist studies at Emory University’s Candler School of Theology and a member of the interim steering committee. “Choosing to do something new with other Baptists does not mean we are choosing to leave the Southern Baptist Convention. Nor does it mean we are trying to form a new denomination.”

The movement was sparked by bitter, losing battles between moderates, who were edged out of leadership positions in the Southern Baptist Convention, and the fundamentalist majority. Fundamentalist presidents were elected for 12 straight years and they have appointed ultraconservative trustees and officers to various governing boards and agencies.

Many observers feel the nucleus of a breakaway group was formed here. But most moderate leaders are not advocating a break.

The Rev. Walter Shurden, professor of church history at Mercer University, read a statement from the interim steering committee saying, “This does not require that we sever ties with the old Southern Baptist Convention. It does give us another mission delivery system, one more like our understanding of what it means to be Baptist and what it means to do gospel.”

Shurden and the Rev. Cecil Sherman, pastor of Broadway Baptist Church in Ft. Worth, were the primary writers of the statement, titled, “An Address to the Public From the Interim Steering Committee.” Shurden said the statement was designed to be similar to one issued in 1845 to explain the purpose and bylaws of the newly organized Southern Baptist Convention.

The document also sets forth ways in which the fellowship differs from the fundamentalist leadership of the Southern Baptist Convention.

On biblical inerrancy, which fundamentalists have made a key teaching, the moderate statement says, “The Bible neither claims nor reveals inerrancy as a Christian teaching. Bible claims must be based on the Bible, not on human interpretations of the Bible.”

On the subject of mission, the statement says, “Fundamentalists make the mission assignment narrower than Jesus did. They allow their emphasis on direct evangelism to undercut other biblical ministries of mercy and justice. This narrowed definition of what a missionary ought to be and do is a contention between us.”

Only 211 of the 37,700 congregations in the Southern Baptist Convention have joined the fellowship since it began organizing in Atlanta last August, and contributions from churches have only been $1.6 million.

However, the fellowship is still hoping that sympathizers will divert $4 million or more from the donations normally sent to the $140-million Cooperative Program budget to a new fund that will pay for Baptist projects without fundamentalist control.

“I’m disappointed they have taken this tack,” said the Rev. Richard Land, director of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Christian Life Commission in Nashville. “I’m appalled at some of the people who are leading the effort, people who used to head SBC agencies and who used to preach the Cooperative Program and bitterly opposed anyone who raised questions about it.”

The Fellowship approved a $520,000 budget for its administrative arm, of which about $125,000 will be an emergency fund to support denominational employees who are fired for political reasons.

The group also announced that it will hold a national meeting each year, with the next one scheduled for April 30-May 2, 1992, in Ft. Worth.