A MATTER OF PERSPECTIVE
A New Baptist Covenant
By David R. Currie Executive Director

On Tuesday, January 9, 2007, I was honored to join other Baptist leaders in meeting with former United States Presidents Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton in a meeting at the Carter Center in Atlanta, where it was announced that we would hold a “Celebration of a New Baptist Covenant” meeting, also in Atlanta, from January 30 through February 1, 2008.

What an exciting idea for Baptists of various conventions to gather together to celebrate, dream of, and plan what we can do together as Baptists!

I have been honored to be a part of the prior meetings planning this announcement, held at the Carter Center during 2006. I look forward to working toward a strong Texas Baptist presence at this meeting, as well as working to encourage Mainstream Baptists from across our great nation to attend.

Let me mention some things that this historic meeting is about:

Unity in Diversity
It will be the first time in years—over 100 years—that Baptists from many Baptist conventions gather together to celebrate their shared faith in Jesus Christ. Attendees at the January 9 meeting included representatives from the following Baptist groups, among others:

• Association of Brazilian Baptist Churches in North America
• Baptist Convention of Ontario and Quebec
• Baptist General Association of Missouri
• Baptist General Association of Virginia
• Baptist General Convention of Texas
• Baptist Union of Western Canada
• Baptist World Alliance
• Canadian Baptist Ministries
• Canadian Conference of Southern Baptist Churches
• Cooperative Baptist Fellowship
• Japanese Southern Baptist Churches of America
• Laotian National Baptist Fellowship
• Lott Carey Baptist Foreign Mission Society
• Mainstream Baptist Network
• National Baptist Convention of America, Inc.
• National Baptist Convention USA, Inc.
• National Missionary Baptist Convention of America
• North American Baptist Fellowship
• Progressive Baptist National Convention
• Russian-Ukranian Baptist Union
• Seventh Day Baptist Conference
• Texas Baptists Committed

My friends, this a history-making meeting. These conventions and organizations have never met together before to celebrate their faith and commitment to historic Baptist principles and practices. I applaud President Carter and Mercer University President Bill Underwood for visioning this historic meeting.

Cooperation
This meeting is about what we can do together, not what we can disagree about. After years of division in Baptist life, this is a meeting intended to celebrate cooperation and diversity. How wonderfully refreshing!

Biblical Values and Faith
This will be a meeting focused on Biblical values and faith. The theme is Unity in Christ. The plenary sessions will focus on Biblical themes: Unity in Bringing Good News to the Poor; Unity in Respecting Diversity; Unity in Seeking Peace and Justice; and Unity in Welcoming the Stranger and Healing the Brokenhearted.

Breakout sessions will focus on preaching; being good stewards of the earth; fighting sexploitation, racism, poverty, and AIDS; finding common ground; exercising faith in the area of public policy; guiding our youth at the crossroads; sharing God’s good news through evangelism; being good financial stewards; and developing and exercising personal spiritual discipline.

Now let me mention some things that this meeting is not about:

Partisan Politics
Yes, two former Democratic Presidents of the United States were at the press conference and are advancing this idea. This is positive and helpful, because their presence at this meeting will attract the attention of the national press. After the recent death of the wonderful Christian Gerald Ford (I appreciated greatly his work with The Interfaith Alliance, on whose board I proudly serve), there are now only four living presidents-two of whom happen to be Baptist, and traditional Baptists at that. I am pleased that they are willing to support this effort.

But this meeting is in no way a Democratic Baptist meeting. I know that President Carter and President Clinton do not want a partisan political meeting. They want prominent Baptist Republicans to join in this effort, too. To be honest, I know that there are many prominent Baptist Republicans who are traditional Baptists at heart BUT have been reluctant to show their “true colors,” so to speak, because of the influence of the Religious Right in the Republican Party.

I know who my TBC members are. They are primarily traditional Texas Baptists who also happen to be Republicans (this is Texas, after all). They stand firmly for religious liberty and the separation of church and state. They hold fast to historic Baptist principles and, while they do not agree politically with many things that Presidents Carter and Clinton did while president, TBC members are bigger than partisan politics. They will celebrate this meeting. They are proud to “show their colors” as traditional Baptists.

I have strongly expressed my feelings that this meeting must not, in any way, be—or even appear to be—about partisan politics, and all of those meeting with me have strongly agreed with me on that point.

Bashing the Southern Baptist Convention
This meeting is not, in any way, about bashing the SBC. Yes, it is about presenting a voice that is different than that of the SBC— a voice of inclusiveness, and cooperation. The SBC is not about those things. It has chosen, in fact, to no longer participate as a member of the Baptist World Alliance or the North American Baptist Fellowship.

In the December 2006 edition, the wonderful publication, Baptists Today, (www.baptiststoday.org) reported a story of an association in Alabama kicking out a local Baptist church because it had ordained a woman and called her as Associate Pastor. On the next page was a story about the Missouri Baptist Convention kicking out 19 churches because they were dually-aligned with the SBC and CBF. This is the modern SBC and those who affiliate with them—persons interested in defining those with whom they will not cooperate, and refusing to cooperate with as many as possible.

We don’t do that in Texas, and we never will.

Also, before you say that this is an anti-SBC meeting, please re-read the list of conventions listed here that are participating in this “New Covenant” meeting. Ninety percent of those conventions were not involved in the SBC battle that you and I know so well. As we say in West Texas, “they didn’t have a dog in that fight.” They could care less about debating or discussing the SBC.

Most of all, this is a meeting about Jesus, and I hope that you will make a commitment now to be a part of it next year, and to be a part of a new covenant in Baptist life for years to come.

Editor’s Note: A RANCHER’S RUMBLINGS can be found online at txbc.org. Posted each Tuesday, the column contains the most current of David’s thoughts, opinions, and messages to members.

February 2007