Defying the SBC

Christian Century, Nov 15, 2000

THE SLOGAN "Don't mess with Texas" could be echoed by a whole bunch of Southern Baptists in Texas whose state organization, largest in the Southern Baptist Convention, has lopped off more than $5 million from next year's contributions to the SBC.

The act of defiance was perhaps the most dramatic by a moderate group against a Southern Baptist leadership moving firmly to the right on religious and social stances. The question of whether it foreshadowed a new denomination drew differing opinions.

Meeting in Corpus Christi, the Texas Southern Baptists voted 4,194 to 1,446 to cap their giving to the six SBC seminaries at $1 million, which means a sudden drop of $4.3 million. The voting on October 30 also limited the SBC executive committee in Nashville, Tennessee, to $10,000 (down from $700,000 this year) and alloted no money for the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission (due $350,000 this year).

"We're trying to say to them we don't support what you're doing," said Clyde Glazener, reelected president of the Baptist General Convention of Texas (BGCT). "We no longer want to be embroiled with those who want to teach rigid creedalism," said Bob Crawford, who chaired a committee whose report recommended the funding cuts.

Many Texas Southern Baptists, as well as former President Jimmy Carter, who dissociated himself from the denomination only ten days earlier, said wording changes by the SBC in the Baptist Faith and Message last June transformed that statement of faith into a creed. Charles Wade, executive director of the state convention, charged that it would be used as an "instrument of doctrinal accountability" at seminaries.

Calling the attacks "unwarranted and misleading," SBC executive committee president Morris Chapman said in a statement that the BCGT's "real agenda is to create a theologically moderate denomination." Chapman urged "Bible-believing Southern Baptists in Texas" to give to the denomination directly or through a new alternate group of conservative-led Southern Baptists in the state.

The $4.3 million that would have been spread among six SBC seminaries will now go to three relatively new seminaries affiliated with the BGCT, new Latino congregations, adoption programs and evangelistic efforts. "We've got to train ministers and lay leaders to help us start churches and staff church congregations," Wade said.

The largest seminary in the U.S. has long been the SBC's Southwestern Baptist Seminary in Fort Worth. In the latest figures released by the Association of Theological Schools, the campus reported a full-time enrollment of 2,106 students, topping the interdenominational Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, California, which had 1,882. But after years of political turmoil between conservatives and moderates over whether SBC seminaries would tolerate liberal teaching, Southwestern President Russell Dilday was fired in 1994 by a board whose makeup turned increasingly conservative. The recent BGCT committee report said that Dilday's firing six years ago had created a "chasm" between the seminary and the BGCT.

A few years later, Baylor University distanced itself from SBC national leadership, and its board decided to start a seminary of its own, the George W. Truett Theological Seminary in Waco. A school of theology opened in 1996 at Hardin-Simmons University in Abilene. Those two schools, plus the Hispanic Baptist Theological School in San Antonio, will receive a big increase in contributions next year from the BGCT.

Ken Hemphill, president of Southwestern, said he thinks Texas Baptist churches will continue to support SBC seminaries. Hemphill's prediction demonstrated "monstrous naivete," commented Dilday, according to the Baptist Standard newspaper. "The thing that was overlooked were the changes [in SBC seminaries] that have taken place over the last 20 years--tectonic changes," Dilday said. "Their faculties are different. Their trustees are different. Texas Baptists didn't come to this out of a vacuum." Dilday said the decisions in Corpus Christi mean that "we can pull away from the quagmire; it's a time of excitement."

The closest thing to an alternate denomination for disaffected Southern Baptists is the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, based in Atlanta, which has about 1,600 aligned churches. But that organization so far has voted not to declare itself a convention or denomination.

Meanwhile, SBC seminaries are facing budget cuts and possible layoffs, said Al Mohler, president of the SBC's Council of Seminary Presidents. But Mohler said he was confident that in the end "we'll come out even stronger."

Texas Baptists left funding levels intact for SBC foreign and domestic missions. Yet Mac Brunson, senior pastor of Dallas First Baptist Church, who said he was "brokenhearted" over the huge cuts in seminary contributions, predicted to Baptist Press that the split will widen. "You mark my words, the North American Mission Board and the International Mission Board are the next ones to be defunded," Brunson said.