RELIGION / JOHN DART : Pastor Falls Short in ‘Ross Perot’ Drive for Southern Baptist Post

Porter Ranch Pastor Jess Moody finished a surprising second in a three-man race this week for president of the 15.2-million-member Southern Baptist Convention, but the anti-insider mood in American politics didn’t extend to that denomination.

Prior to the meeting, Moody, 66, senior pastor of the Shepherd of the Hills Church, was being touted as the “Ross Perot” of the Baptists’ race.

Like the Texas billionaire set to challenge presidential nominees of the Republican and Democratic parties, the Texas-raised clergyman is regarded as an outsider. Moody had distanced himself from the 12-year, bitter theological and political fight between triumphant fundamentalists and fading moderates, a battle now concluded.

The Rev. Ed Young of Houston, a candidate backed by the denomination’s dominant fundamentalist leadership, won as expected Tuesday with 9,981 votes. Moody was runner-up with 3,485 votes and finishing third, with 2,619 votes, was the Rev. Nelson Price, a fundamentalist pastor from Georgia.

“Young was the candidate ‘anointed’ by the leadership,” Moody said. “He also got to deliver a sermon during the pastors’ conference before the annual meeting, and Price and I didn’t.”

Moody’s finish ahead of Price and the margin of Young’s election victory--62%--were surprising, according to Herb Hollinger, news director for the denomination. The three-day meeting in Indianapolis concluded Thursday.

Moody indicated that he had no hard feelings. The other candidates were close friends, he said, “and that is not false love with hugs and reservations underneath.”

He said he ran to offer an apolitical candidate who might reconcile opposing factions and put more focus on evangelism.

Coincidentally, on the same day in Milwaukee, comparisons to Perot were aptly made at another church-body election. The Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) elected a Texas minister, the Rev. Clark Chamberlin, as the new chief executive. Chamberlin was nominated from the convention floor and defeated a well-known incumbent. Just as startling, Chamberlin abruptly announced Wednesday that he was withdrawing from the job without an explanation.

“I think the Presbyterian General Assembly wanted to see something fresh happen, so it elected Chamberlin,” said convention delegate Craig Hall, pastor of Shadow Hills Presbyterian Church in Sunland. “Not that we knew much about Chamberlin, but delegates wanted to move past the personal and political conflicts on the national level.”

Moody, a preacher who made his name in Southern Baptist circles decades ago as a West Palm Beach, Fla., pastor, later had an often-difficult pastorate at Van Nuys First Baptist Church.

He aligned the congregation with the Southern Baptists for the first time, then moved the thinning flock to Chatsworth while a new facility was built.

Under its new name, the Shepherd of the Hills congregation began worshiping in the fall in a newly built facility in Porter Ranch.

In religious and social views, Moody is not that different from other conservative Southern Baptists. He said that he agreed with Vice President Dan Quayle’s widely reported remarks at the convention on traditional family values and with his criticism of the “cultural elite.” Predicting that President Bush can win reelection in November if he follows Quayle’s lead, Moody described himself as a Democrat until five years ago when that party “left me.”

Moody’s bid to lead the Southern Baptists was taken in good humor because of the pastor’s joking manner and the knowledge that he was going to be nominated by country comedian Jerry Clower, an active Southern Baptist layman.

“Clower will get more laughs than votes from his nomination speech for Moody,” predicted James Hefley last month in his conservative Southern Baptist newsletter out of Hannibal, Mo.

In his nominating speech, however, Clower adopted a serious tone, arguing that the nationwide denomination’s voice would be enhanced by a president who was not based in the South.

Clower also said that he constantly meets church members who see the Southern Baptist struggle as a pastors’ battle and that Moody would better represent lay people tired of the infighting and consolidation of power in denominational boards and institutions.

“There are 39,000 of y’all,” said Clower, referring to Southern Baptist pastors, “but there are 15 million of us and we want it stopped.”

Moody, who was also defeated for the Southern Baptist presidency in 1966, said this week that this was definitely his “last hurrah.”

“Frankly, I never thought I’d be elected,” Moody said.

“But when the vote was announced, my wife sounded like a tire that had just run over a nail,” he said in an interview. “What a sigh of relief. Doris was terrified that I might be elected.”