Southern Baptist Moderates Planning Center for Ethics

A Baptist Center for Ethics is being created by Southern Baptist moderates in the latest example of dissidents establishing agencies that parallel existing structures in the 15-million-member denomination.

Southern Baptist moderates who are dissatisfied with the fundamentalist direction being taken by national agencies of the convention continue to insist that they are not forming a new denomination. During the past year, however, they have established a Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, a separate mission budget and three giving plans as alternatives to the Southern Baptist Cooperative Program and are planning to open a seminary in Richmond, Va., in September.

In a letter to several Southern Baptist pastors, former denominational executives and laypersons, the Rev. Wilmer C. Fields of Nashville, who chairs the advisory council of the new ethics center, said it is not being established in opposition to the Christian Life Commission, the denomination’s official ethics agency. However, Fields said it is being established because of “perceived deficiencies in the Christian Life Commission.”

Fields, who retired as director of Baptist Press in 1987, said that in recent years the Christian Life Commission has become “so preoccupied with abortion that they’ve left unattended a lot of issues.”

The Rev. Robert Parham has submitted his resignation as associate director of the Christian Life Commission effective Sept. 1 to become executive director of the new center. He indicated that it will address issues of personal ethics, “consensus issues” such as racial reconciliation and substance abuse, and “cutting-edge issues” such as health care and endangerment of the Earth.

The Rev. Richard D. Land, executive director of the Christian Life Commission, said he finds it “surprising” that the organizers of the new center believe his agency has been too limited in its concerns. He pointed out that since he became executive director of the commission in October, 1988, it has sponsored national seminars on race relations, biomedical ethics and addictions and family crises and has planned three future seminars on Christian citizenship and religious liberty, genetic engineering, and families in crisis.

“It’s true we have emphasized the abortion issue,” Land said. “If we are being charged with putting a major emphasis on what is the most crucial and defining issue of our time, we plead guilty.”

Fields said the new center has a “tentative budget” and will be appealing to individuals and churches for financial support. He said it will be based in Nashville but will initially be operating from a post office box since it has not yet obtained an office.

A 21-member board of directors will map out the center’s positions on issues and set policies. So far, 13 people have agreed to serve as associates, all of whom have doctoral degrees in ethics or related fields. In contrast, Parham was the only member of the Christian Life Commission to have a doctorate in ethics.

Fields said the center will “be very much cooperative with other Baptist bodies than the SBC and with other religious groups.”

In contrast, Land asserted that the Christian Life Commission “represents the majority of rank-and-file Southern Baptists.”