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Impressions from the Baptist World Alliance
By David Sapp
Pastor, Second-Ponce de Leon Baptist Church, Atlanta

For 95 years the Baptist World Alliance has provided a sense of community for the Baptists of the world. Every summer the General Council of the Baptist World Alliance meets to conduct business.

This year’s session was held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and the headline grabber from the meeting was the Council’s vote in favor of admitting the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship (CBF) to membership. CBF first sought membership three years ago, but was told that it could only be admitted if it established itself clearly as an entity separate from the Southern Baptist Convention. By this summer, that had been done.

Leaders of the Southern Baptist Convention have strongly opposed this action. In fact, at the June meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention, they succeeded in convincing the messengers to slash one fourth of their allocation to BWA. This cut amounted to $125,000, a miniscule portion of the SBC budget, but a huge portion of the BWA budget.

SBC leaders have said that the reason for the cut was they desire to move in a new direction, away from what some of them have actually dared to call the liberal drift of BWA. Many observers, however, believe that their real motivation was to fire a warning shot across the bow of the BWA, making clear that the SBC would eliminate all of its funding to BWA if the CBF vote in Rio did not please them.

The accuracy of this perception was confirmed in Rio. I was present for the meeting. The Membership Committee presented its recommendation that CBF be accepted, and immediately SBC representatives began a parliamentary maneuver aimed at preventing a direct vote on the issue. The other Baptists in the room would have none of it. They overruled the chair by a strong vote, and refused to entertain an SBC-backed substitute motion. Then they promptly voted (75 to 28) to accept CBF’s application for full membership.

All of this leads me to several conclusions:

1) Nearly all of the non-Southern Baptists present favored admitting CBF. In fact, the Baptists from the rest of the world stood in virtual solidarity against Southern Baptist Convention leaders on this issue. I asked several of them for their reasons. These were the reasons they gave me:

  • All Baptists have a moral obligation to work together as brothers and sisters in Christ.
  • Baptists from outside the United States should not be forced to choose sides in our dispute.
  • The radical change of direction of the SBC in the last twenty-five years has in some cases harmed their ministries. Complaints ranged from recent missionary firings to the lack of willingness to share decision- making on joint enterprises.

2) It was obvious in Rio that the Southern Baptist Convention will withdraw from nearly a century of involvement in the Baptist World Alliance. Southern Baptist Convention representatives were vocal in the talk at the end of the meeting. One was reported to say he would not be back, nor would the others. Another said that the BWA had now sealed its doom since it would not be able to continue to exist without Southern Baptist money.

The real reason for this withdrawal, of course, is not any “liberal drift” in the Baptist World Alliance. No such drift exists. The real reason is the BWA has admitted CBF.

This is deeply troubling. Southern Baptist leaders appear to be ready to walk away from a nearly century-old tradition of Baptist cooperation precisely because they did not get their way. Renowned Baptist theologian E.Y. Mullins is quoted in the current issue of CHRISTIAN ETHICS TODAY as saying, “ I have no right to refuse to call a fellow Baptist my brother merely because he does not happen to be my twin brother.” He makes perfect sense to me.

Call me naïve, but is it not important that Baptists have some place where they can sit down together? Is it not important that Baptists develop mutual understanding and respect? Is it not important that Baptists show the world that we are Christians by our love? What possible risk could be involved since BWA has no power over its member bodies? The only thing at stake is Christian fellowship, Christian witness, and Christian grace.

3) The Baptist World Alliance will survive. It will survive because it should survive. It will survive because we need it to survive. We need the spiritual power it gives as it links us to a movement of God that is larger than our own provincial group. We need the richness it gives by exposing us to the Baptist witness in other cultures. We need the impetus it provides for world evangelism. We need the reminder implicit in a world organization that we Baptists are more than the religious expression of Southern culture, and we are more than any political party, at prayer. SBC leaders say they intend to replace the BWA with a new organization of their own making, an organization which they will control. It will be an organization made up, not of their theological relatives, but of their political relatives. In a world groping for the light, this is simply not good enough.

I come home from Rio with a new resolve: The worldwide Baptist cause to which my Baptist forebears committed themselves must not be abandoned. If Cooperative Program money is withheld from the BWA, then the churches must make it up. If the Southern Baptist Convention is misled into opting out of BWA, then the rest of the world’s Baptists must pick up the load. We must tell the world that we are a part of the people of God. We must tell the world that we are a fellowship of Christian love. We must tell the world that we will never allow our fellowship, our partnership in mission, our spirit of true Christian unity to be destroyed. Never.

November 2003