Carter Cuts Ties to Baptist Convention and Its ‘Rigid’ Conservatism

Former President Jimmy Carter severed his lifelong ties with the Southern Baptist Convention with an anguished rebuke on Friday of the denomination’s “increasingly rigid” conservatism.

Carter, probably the most famous Baptist Sunday school teacher in the country, who brought his born-again Christianity to the White House, said his decision was “very painful.”

He pointedly took issue with the denomination’s declaration last May that women should no longer serve as senior pastors in the nation’s largest Protestant denomination. He also told reporters that he objected to a 1998 statement that a wife “should submit herself graciously to the servant leadership of her husband.”

Both statements, which the Southern Baptist Convention’s leaders say are based on their reading of the Bible, are included in the Baptist Faith and Message, the official statement of beliefs issued by the convention, whose member churches claim 15.7 million members.

“I have come to the very painful decision that I can no longer be associated with the Southern Baptist Convention,” Carter wrote in a letter mailed to 75,000 Baptists by a moderate Baptist group in Texas.

“Over the years, leaders of the convention have adopted an increasingly rigid creed . . . including some provisions that violate the basic tenets of my Christian faith.”

In leaving the denomination after 65 years, Carter, 76, said he would continue to serve as a Sunday school teacher and deacon in his local congregation, the Maranatha Baptist Church in Plains, Ga.

Carter’s declaration came as no surprise to denominational leaders.

“President Carter has not in fact been much of a Southern Baptist for a long time,” said Paige Patterson, president of the Southeastern Theological Seminary in Wake Forest, N.C., and immediate past president of the denomination.

“I would imagine it will enhance our ministry overall and probably be the cause for not a few people who have questions about Baptists becoming Baptists,” Patterson said of Carter’s departure.

At the heart of the debate between conservatives and moderates in the denomination is the role of the Bible.

Historically, Baptists have held the belief that instead of adhering to a formal creed, church members should read the Bible for themselves to discern God’s will in their lives.

But Carter said the emphasis on personal interpretation has been steadily undermined by the convention’s leaders. The convention’s declarations have become “mandatory criteria” to be accepted by employees, members of denominational committees, and professors at Southern Baptist seminaries, Carter said.

The denomination’s leaders, for their part, insist their declarations merely reflect a plain, if literal, reading of Scripture.

“The moderates believe the Bible contains God’s holy word. Southern Baptist conservatives believe the Bible is God’s holy word,” said Morris H. Chapman, chairman of the denomination’s executive committee.

That stance, Carter said, leaves no room for individual interpretation and exalts the interpretations of the convention’s leadership ahead of “Jesus Christ, through his words, deeds, and personal inspiration, as the ultimate interpreter of the Holy Scriptures.”

The Southern Baptist Convention has been embroiled for years in a power struggle between moderates and conservatives. Conservatives won the battle a decade ago on the national level, but in states such as Texas, ferment continues.