wfn.org | U.S. wrangle between Baptists spills over into Baptist World Alliance

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Note #7376 from PCUSA NEWS to PRESBYNEWS:

09-August-2002
02292

U.S. wrangle between Baptists spills over into Baptist World Alliance  
  
by Chris Herlinger
Ecumenical News International
  
NEW YORK - A long-standing dispute between two prominent United States Baptist groups has spilled over into the international arena and could affect the future of the Baptist World Alliance (BWA), the international fellowship of Baptist conventions and unions.  

The dispute centers on a decision by the alliance's membership committee to recommend accepting the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship (CBF) into membership if the body officially breaks away from the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC).  

The CBF, whose cause has been championed by former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, was formed in 1991 as a body of moderate U.S. Baptists.  

They opposed what they saw as the increasingly conservative stance of the SBC, the largest Protestant denomination in the United States.  

The CBF has taken issue with a number of SBC positions, including strict prohibition of the ordination of women as pastors.  

However, the CBF has not yet formed into a formal denomination or group fully separate from the Southern Baptists. It has initiated a number of its own  projects separate from the convention, including mission work, and decided to apply to join the BWA.  

The BWA's membership committee said it would recommend membership if the CBF separated from the SBC.  

The committee's recommendation was accepted by the alliance's general council when it met in Seville, Spain, from July 9-13.  

The decision immediately drew an angry response from a prominent Southern Baptist official, who called it premature and suggested the BWA was biased against the Southern Baptist Convention.  

"To say I am aggrieved is an understatement," Morris Chapman, the president of the denomination's executive committee, said on July 12 during the Seville conference.  

He added that he had worked with other denominational leaders for more than a decade "to establish a strong tie with the BWA."  

"In one swift and needless action by the membership committee, the valued relationship I thought we had built may have been damaged beyond repair," Chapman said.

"Frankly, all this leaves me puzzled and concerned as to the future relationship of Southern Baptists to the Baptist World Alliance," he said.  

With 10 million members, the Southern Baptists are the biggest group represented in the BWA, an organization founded in 1905, whose 200 member bodies have more than 44 million members.  

The Southern Baptists have considerable clout within the alliance, and reportedly fund nearly a quarter of the BWA's annual $2.1 million budget.  

Billy Kim, the BWA's president, quoted by the Baptist Times, published in Britain, said he did not want the Southern Baptists to leave the alliance, but he also believed the CBF had a legitimate right to join the international Baptist body.   

Kim said he would resign if he or the BWA were unable to resolve the dispute between the two U.S. Baptist groups.  

Denton Lotz, the BWA general secretary, told ENI in an interview he felt media coverage of the Seville conference unfairly dwelled on the controversy, saying it consumed only 30 minutes of a five-day meeting that focused on a host of international issues. 

He also said he did not believe the SBC was ready to leave the alliance.    

"There was no talk of that," he said. "We're not even close to that."  

Still, he told ENI, "We're going to do all we can do to keep unity within the fellowship."   

He said that he and other alliance leaders are planning talks with both U.S. Baptist groups to deal with any misunderstandings.  

Daniel Vestal, the coordinator of the CBF, said it was highly likely that the CBF would declare its separation from the Southern Baptist Convention, although the relationship of the CBF to the SBC still remained to be worked out.  

If the CBF did separate, he hoped the two bodies could continue to work together within the international alliance.  

"I would hope that the SBC would accept us as brothers and sisters in Christ," he told Associated Baptist Press, a news service aligned with the CBF.   

"We accept them as brothers and sisters in Christ and desire fellowship, partnership and serving God together in the Baptist World Alliance." 
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