HOW UNBAPTIST CAN SOME BAPTISTS BE?
By David R. Currie
Executive Director

Two Baptist state conventions are considering moving away from Baptist principles in dramatic fashions.

In Missouri, the president of the state convention has ordered messenger registration cards for the upcoming state convention not be sent to six churches that have dropped affiliation with the Southern Baptist Convention.

The Louisiana Baptist Convention will consider changing its constitution to define a “cooperating” church as one that supports both the state and Southern Baptist Convention through the Cooperative Program unified budget.

Both these actions violate everything it has ever meant to be Baptist.

The principle of local church autonomy means a local church will make the decision about whom it will partner with. A church may join a local association, but not a state convention if it chooses. A church may support a state convention but not a national convention.

Certainly a state convention has the right to set its own requirements for affiliation, but it is not Baptist to make support of one entity a requirement to affiliate with another mission entity. You can do it, but you cannot call it Baptist.

The BGCT could, if it wanted, pass a motion that for any church to send messengers to the annual meeting, that church must give Howard Payne University (my alma mater) $1,000 per annum from their church budget. The BGCT could do it, but it would not be Baptist. The BGCT has no right to tell a local church to support a specific Texas Baptist university or any other Baptist entity. Yet this is exactly what is happening in Missouri and may happen in Louisiana.

It is time for Baptists to stand up and demand that Baptist entities honor Baptist principles or Baptist freedom will cease to exist.

October 2002