Conservatives’ New Foe: Themselves : Southern Baptists: With no liberal in contention for the presidency of the convention, they have two candidates appealing to different factions.

After a decade of bitter fighting between moderate and conservative Southern Baptists, the conservatives have become entrenched enough to fight among themselves.

At least a three-way race has evolved for the presidency of the Southern Baptist Convention, including two pastors from the church’s ruling conservative wing.

The Rev. Nelson Price, a prominent preacher in the Atlanta suburbs, started the battle when he openly launched his campaign--breaking with conservatives’ recent practice of anointing a consensus candidate who then would invariably defeat a moderate challenger.

Price’s recent announcement that he would seek the job amounted to a preemptive strike against the Rev. Edwin Young of Houston, who was widely viewed as the conservative choice but had yet to enter the race. He since has, but the battle to lead the nation’s second-largest church is on.

Also running is the Rev. Jess Moody of Northridge, who is described as a “centrist” and says he wants to end lingering feuds in the SBC.

“The conservatives may have been united as long as there was a common enemy--namely the liberal-moderate faction,” said John C. Shelley, professor of religion at Furman University in Greenville, S.C. “Now that they have control of the convention . . . the differences that probably have been there all along will begin to show.”

The 15-million-member SBC will elect its new president in Indianapolis in June. Price, pastor of the 8,000-member Roswell Street Baptist Church in suburban Atlanta, is a distinctive candidate; many Southern Baptists have heard him preach on his widely aired Sunday services.

An unfailingly polite, dulcet-voiced preacher, Price has nothing but nice things to say about Young--even though he beat him to the punch. Young, pastor of Houston’s giant Second Baptist Church, is equally gracious, downplaying the campaign.

Young said that if he wins, he intends to emphasize evangelism and missions, particularly in Eastern Europe.

Price said that he wants to bring about some changes in the church’s hierarchy and operations.

Moody, meanwhile, accepts the “centrist” label, and says he still wants to bring feuding conservatives and moderates together.

“I like to say there’s no chance I’ll be elected, because I’m against both sides,” he said. “We have become odious in the secular world. We do have a message for them, and it’s not fighting about religious what-not.”