Uncooperative Baptists
By John D. Pierce
Executive Editor, Baptists Today

When the Southern Baptist Convention formally decides to withdraw from membership in the Baptist World Alliance (and be assured they will) only the most naïve or uninformed will be surprised.

The reason is simple. Participating with other Baptists of the world in the cause of Christ requires cooperation, not control. It is the latter that has increasingly marked Southern Baptist leadership in recent years.

While sad, the respected organization that “unites Baptists worldwide, leads in world evangelism, responds to people in need and defends human rights” should get ready to lose the largest and wealthiest of its 206 member bodies. The SBC is gathering its marbles and will soon head deeper into isolation.

SBC executive Morris Chapman more than hinted at the move in a statement released by Baptist Press following the BWA General Council meeting this summer in Spain.

“I have personally worked diligently, along with other SBC leaders, for 12 years to establish a strong tie with the BWA and to communicate to world Baptist leaders that Southern Baptists wanted to walk beside them in efforts to reach the world for Christ,” said Chapman. “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 and other SBC leaders are agitated that the BWA membership committee is moving toward recommending the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship for membership in 2003.

By any reasonable standard, CBF qualifies to be a member body. The 11-year-old organization sends out missionaries, provides benefits to ministers, resources churches and already designates funds for BWA. The Fellowship has no formal identity with the SBC or any other denominational structure.

Chapman claimed the membership committee ignored its bylaws that state: “Each member body shall have an identity of its own and shall not exist as an integral part of some other union or convention.”

Does he really believe that Baptists who have found refuge and acceptance in the CBF home might return to the SBC house for more insults and abuse?

In fact, it is the exclusion of fellow Baptist Christians by the new SBC that led to the formation of CBF more than a decade ago. And now that same attitude is exactly why SBC leaders are pulling away from participation in BWA.

One denominational executive privately admitted to me that many current SBC leaders possess an “irrational hatred” of CBF. It is not enough to exclude those with whom they disagree; they also must discredit and malign them. Such is the punitive nature and time-tested reality of fundamentalism, regardless of the name you put in front of it.

For many years BWA has done an amazing job of bringing Baptists together despite the hurdles of language, culture, politics and theological diversity. Ironically, the major fallout they are now facing is the simple result of its biggest U.S. Baptist body’s refusal to relate in any way to another.

Chapman said he expects the SBC Executive Committee to monitor the situation and that he is “puzzled and concerned as to the future relationship of Southern Baptists to the Baptist World Alliance.”

There is abundant evidence over the past two decades, however, that SBC leaders will have nothing to do with anything or anyone—no matter how valuable they are to kingdom causes—if such partnerships require cooperation over control.

So I too am concerned, but I am not puzzled.

This editorial appeared in the Sept. 2002 edition of Baptists Today and is reprinted with permission. Baptists Today is an autonomous, national monthly news journal based in Macon, Ga. Subscriptions are available by calling 1- 877-752-5658.

October 2002