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2000-185

Texas Baptists slash funding for national Southern Baptist agencies

By Jan Nunley

      (ENS) In a strong reaction to conservative control over the national 
Southern Baptist Convention, consolidated over the last 21 years, Texas Baptists 
have voted by at least a 3-to-1 margin to slash funding for the six Southern 
Baptist Convention (SBC) seminaries, beginning in January. The delegates (called 
"messengers") meeting in Corpus Christi on October 30 also voted to defund 
completely the SBC's Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission and to eliminate all 
but $10,000 for the SBC Executive Committee. However, the 6,664 messengers 
defeated a motion that would have cut all funding for SBC agencies.

     The votes represent a combined shift of more than $1 million, and mark the 
most dramatic reallocation of funds by a state Baptist convention since 1925. 

Naivete--or distortion?

     "I think many Texas Baptist churches will continue to support the Southern 
Baptist seminaries," said Ken Hemphill, president of Southwestern Baptist 
Theological Seminary in Fort Worth. But Hemphill's predecessor Russell Dilday, 
fired by newly-elected conservative trustees in 1994, suggested Hemphill's answer 
demonstrates "monstrous naivete"--or willful distortion of the facts. "The thing 
that was overlooked were the changes (in SBC seminaries) that have taken place 
over the last 20 years--tectonic changes," Dilday said. "Their faculties are 
different. Their trustees are different. Texas Baptists didn't come to this out 
of a vacuum."

      "This is a vote for the people, a vote from the churches," Dilday said. "We 
can pull away from the quagmire. It's a time of excitement."

     "The deeper issue here is not financial; it is theological," countered R. 
Albert Mohler Jr., president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, in 
Kentucky. "And our convictions are not for sale." 

     During the annual session, BGCT executive director Charles Wade criticized 
SBC leaders for creating a "non-Baptist confession of faith" in the revised 
version of the Baptist Faith & Message adopted by the SBC in June. "Never before 
have we called a confession of faith an instrument of doctrinal accountability. 
Accountable to whom? Some religious authority? Some ecclesiastical committee?"

      He also criticized the SBC's removal from the Baptist Faith & Message of a 
sentence that declared: "The criterion by which the Bible is to be interpreted is 
Jesus Christ."

      "I am sure they did not intend to nudge the Bible into a place of idolatry, 
but that is exactly the effect of deleting that sentence," Wade said.

Diverted to Texas projects

     The $4.3 million diverted from the SBC seminaries will be given to three 
Texas Baptist schools--Truett Seminary at Baylor University in Waco, Logdson 
School of Theology at Hardin-Simmons University in Abilene and Hispanic Baptist 
Theological School in San Antonio. The $736,291 diverted from the SBC Executive 
Committee will go to Texas-based projects such as Hispanic ministry and human 
welfare programs, and the $364,582 diverted from the ERLC will go to the Texas 
Christian Life Commission. More than $12 million will still go to the SBC 
International Mission Board and more than $5.5 million to the SBC North American 
Mission Board next year.

--The Rev. Jan Nunley is deputy director of the Episcopal Church's Office of News 
and Information. Information in this news brief was compiled from stories written 
by Mark Wingfield, Marv Knox, and Scott Collins of the Baptist Standard.