For generations, Southern Baptists used a simply strategy to control any truly dangerous outbreaks of controversy.<\/p>\n\n
No matter how bad things got at the Southern Baptist Convention, a respected patriarch or matriarch could always go to a microphone and propose a surge of prayer, church planting, foreign missions or evangelism. The motion would pass quickly, hot issues would vanish into a committee and everyone would hug and pose for photographs.<\/p>\n\n
Insiders referred to these as \u201cWe love God\u201d resolutions. Who could vote \u201cno\u201d?<\/p>\n\n
It\u2019s been a long, long time since anyone managed to get one of these to fly. However, former President Jimmy Carter \u2014 a veteran of long-odds diplomacy \u2014 recently convinced a diverse circle of Baptists to sign their names on a declaration of cooperation.<\/p>\n\n
While \u201cunresolved issues\u201d remain, these Baptists expressed a common desire to set aside differences that might prevent a \u201cspiritual awakening in our nation and around the world.\u201d They urged believers to share a \u201ccommon prayer effort in a spirit of Christian love\u201d and to follow St. Paul\u2019s call to \u201cBe ye kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ\u2019s sake hath forgiven you.\u201d They pledged to demonstrate mutual respect in \u201cour personal devotions and public acts.\u201d<\/p>\n\n
The list of signatories includes major names from both sides of a denominational civil war that began in the late 1970s, while Carter was in the White House. Bitter theological and political fights have continued ever since, in recent years fueled in part by disputes about another Southern Baptist, President Bill Clinton. A group of \u201cmoderate\u201d Baptists traveled to the Carter Center in Atlanta last November, while \u201cconservatives\u201d went in February. Carter prepared a consensus document and submitted it to participants for their suggestions.<\/p>\n\n
The Rev. Tom Elliff, the SBC\u2019s current conservative president, signed it and so did the Rev. Daniel Vestal, leader of the progressive national network, the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship. Southern Baptist Sunday School Board President Jimmy Draper signed, as did SBC Executive Committee President Morris Chapman. On the other side are leaders such as the Rev. Jimmy Allen, the last \u201cmoderate\u201d SBC president, and Clinton-camp insider James Dunn of the Baptist Joint Committee on Public Affairs. One name will cause more raised eyebrows than any other \u2014 the Rev. Paige Patterson of Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, one of the creators of the conservative movement that seized the SBC reins in 1979.<\/p>\n\n
The document\u2019s final statement pledges: \u201cWe will seek other ways to cooperate to achieve common goals, without breaching our Baptist polity or theological integrity, in order that people may come to know Christ as Savior, and so that God may be glorified in ever increasing measure.\u201d<\/p>\n\n
Who could vote \u201cno\u201d? Of course, this document may simply mean that some \u201cmoderates\u201d recognize that the national battle to control America\u2019s largest non-Catholic flock is over and that they have more to gain by negotiating a pledge of civility. Conservative leaders may be ready to put a softer edge on their public image, since they need increasingly independent-minded local churches to support national SBC programs.<\/p>\n\n
It\u2019s crucial that this updated version of a \u201cWe love God\u201d resolution addresses only two social issues \u2014 pledging united efforts to promote racial reconciliation and to \u201cend religious persecution in all nations and to encourage unfettered religious liberty for all peoples.\u201d It avoids references to abortion and sex outside of marriage. It is silent on the issue that has so divided Southern Baptists \u2014 \u201cbiblical inerrancy,\u201d or the belief that the Bible is without errors of any kind. References to these issues would have torpedoed the project.<\/p>\n\n
Carter told the Associated Baptist Press, the news agency supported by \u201cmoderate\u201d Baptists, that it\u2019s embarrassing that Southern Baptists have become so infamous because of their arguments.<\/p>\n\n
\u201cI think it hurts our missionary work overseas. I think it hurts our personal testimony,\u201d he said. \u201cEven in the early church days there were sharp differences on theological and even organizational matters, but they worked side by side in the name of Jesus. \u2026 I think 95 percent of individual Baptists deplore the differences that have arisen.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
For generations, Southern Baptists used a simply strategy to control any truly dangerous outbreaks of controversy. No matter how bad things got at the Southern Baptist Convention, a respected patriarch or matriarch could always go to a microphone and propose a surge of prayer, church planting, foreign missions or evangelism. The motion would pass quickly, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":610,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1020","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n