A Tie that No Longer Binds
 by Robert K. Fowler, 
attorney with Brown, Fowler & Alsup in Houston

As my church, South Main in Houston, prepared for what would be an overwhelming vote in January to end officially its almost one-hundred-year relationship with the SBC, I had the opportunity to reflect on my own family's long involvement as Southern Baptists. 

I thought of my great-aunt Berta, who for many years, had led Oklahoma's WMU. Her sister, "Cricket," not only was married to a longtime Southwestern Seminary professor, but was also a churchwoman of some distinction. My mother's older sister, "Jack," attended Southern Seminary and was, for a time, Dean of Women at Oklahoma Baptist University.  In turn, their sister, Marjorie, spent her professional life as business secretary of the Oklahoma WMU. Their sister, Mary, was a Baylor trustee. 

Finally, I recalled that their mother, my grandmother, had been named Oklahoma Mother of the Year in the 1950s. She passed up the opportunity to represent her state for the national recognition because the dates conflicted with her attending that year's Southern Baptist Convention in Houston. 

Like Timothy, I had come from a family of Loises and Eunices, who, with husbands, fathers and brothers, had been faithful servants of their Savior, in every case as a part of the Southern Baptist tradition. And so, I was disturbed by what Southern Baptists had said about women. However, there were larger issues to consider.   

Brad Creed, the former dean of Truett Seminary and last fall's scholar-in-residence at the Baptist Joint Committee, wrote an essay on religious freedom. For me, it was extraordinarily enlightening. It helped me to form an intellectual and philosophical basis for why I, as a member of South Main's denominational relations task force, ultimately joined in the recommendation that we leave the SBC.

The Baptist distinctive of religious liberty evolved from our understanding, as believers, of God's nature. We, as Baptist Christians, historically have believed that God has given man total and absolute free will to accept or to reject him.  This is a logical outgrowth of our understanding that we are, in fact, created in the image of God, who is the ultimate Being of free choice.  

As God does not coerce, so we believe that we must not coerce others. We have responded affirmatively to God's invitation. As recipients of God's grace we are responsible and obligated to share that invitation with others. 

As a youth in Oklahoma City I heard Dr. Herschel Hobbs, lately maligned as a "dupe" in leading the writing of the 1963 Baptist Faith and Message, say in a sermon something that has stayed with me all these years: "The true Baptist should be willing to give his very life for the right of another person to reject the call of the Gospel!"  

That may be the ultimate expression of the historical belief of Baptists in religious liberty.  We grant that right of rejection to all people. We may pray the Holy Spirit would move them to accept Christ's call but as God will not force their personal decisions, so neither may we.  

If, then, they freely accept Christ, our next obligation is to grant to each the absolute right to reach his own understanding of what his on-going relationship with Christ will be. Each believer is empowered to navigate that process through prayer and through open and honest study of Scripture under the leadership of the Holy Spirit.  We, as fellow believers, may suggest guidance from our own experience and study, but we still must never coerce anyone.  For even in the many ways we believe we might help other disciples to grow and remain strong in faith, we must remain true to God's nature.  

In considering the motion to disaffiliate, then, I concluded that as a traditional Baptist congregation South Main had an obligation to reflect clearly our belief in these principles of religious liberty, primarily as a matter of conscience, but also because our failure to do so could ultimately affect the effectiveness of our corporate witness.  

Of course, as Baptist believers, we still would continue to have an obligation to support the rights of Southern Baptists to view and interpret scripture as they please whether by inspiration or by fiat. We must allow them to permit diversity in their own denomination or to require conformity, and to love their fellow Baptist or to disdain him. Yet, we had perhaps an even higher obligation, again as Baptists, to proclaim to our own community that we were no longer them and they were no longer us.

Baptists of all persuasions, as all persons, would still be welcome to fellowship with us at South Main and even to join us. Likewise, as members of our local congregation, they would be empowered to seek under our polity to change our common positions on these matters. Nevertheless, as our church is constituted now, I concluded that we would be dishonest in those matters of belief we do share to consent by our inaction to being identified with the SBC and with its ever-evolving new distinctives.

We made only one amendment to the simple motion to disaffiliate at South Main's business meeting. It passed without opposition.  It might not surprise you that it was my mother's only surviving sister, Roberta, who offered the amendment to add to the motion to leave the SBC the words: "with regret."

And we do.

May 2001