Some Southern Baptist Moderates Move Toward Separate Denomination

Baptist moderates who attended last week’s convention of the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship live a schizophrenic existence--one foot planted in the conservative-controlled Southern Baptist Convention and the other in their own moderate fellowship.

Now, impatient rumblings are building among some moderates who want to form their own denomination.

“It’s time we dropped this guise and say what we are--a denomination,” said retired Air Force Chaplain Bill Montgomery as he gathered with other delegates at the fellowship’s fifth annual convention.

“The fellowship and the Southern Baptist Convention are two different cats, and neither one of these leopards are going to change their spots.”

Montgomery proposed voting at next year’s convention on whether the fellowship should split from the Southern Baptist Convention.

His motion was ruled out of order on grounds that this year’s meeting could not set the agenda for next year’s meeting, but the campaign touched a nerve among representatives of the hundreds of churches attending the meeting.

The newly elected moderator of the fellowship, Patrick Anderson, a sociology and criminology professor from Lakeland, Fla., announced he will appoint a special committee to study whether the fellowship should become a denomination.

Already, even though only 1,300 of the nation’s 38,000 Southern Baptist congregations belong to the fellowship, the moderates have made an impact.

Although organized just four years ago, the Atlanta-based fellowship has a budget of $13 million, supports 80 missionaries and is donating $1.7 million to new “moderate” seminaries.

But the fellowship remains a “church within a church”--essentially a caucus of moderate Southern Baptists who are displeased with the strict “fundamentalist” stands taken by conservatives in the denomination on theological, political and social issues.

The moderate fellowship was formed after a 10-year “holy war” within the denomination, during which conservatives won a series of presidential elections that allowed them to take control of the religion’s six seminaries, publishing houses and vast missionary operation.

That led the Southern Baptist Convention, which had been run by moderate Baptists for more than 25 years, to change drastically.

Conservatives purged so-called “liberals” from their seminaries, particularly the Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in Wake Forest, N.C., and the denomination’s oldest seminary, Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky.

Leaders of the revolutionary conservative crusade were rewarded with key jobs in the denomination.

Still, most of the moderate leadership opposes formation of a separate denomination, saying such a move could have grave consequences, such as splitting some influential Southern Baptist congregations, which would be forced to decide whether to support the mother church or the fellowship.

Almost all the churches that support the fellowship also support the national Southern Baptist Convention, and there is often an uneasy coexistence of moderates and conservatives in those congregations.

Since Baptist churches are autonomous, their congregations can decide independently whether to send money to the national convention or the moderate fellowship.

Still, even those Baptist moderates who oppose a new denomination realize that the fellowship is evolving and may have to seek a new status.

“This is a critical day for the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship,” said outgoing moderator Carolyn Crumple, who opposes forming a new denomination. “We are moving into the future while driving along the highways of the past. We must decide individually and congregationally where we are going and with whom.”

One of the few moderate leaders who supports forming a new denomination is Jack Harwell of Atlanta, editor of Baptists Today, a moderate publication.

“I’m for it,” Harwell said. “It’s deceptive to not be a denomination.”