Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, June 25, 1995 TAG: 9506260075
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: CODY LOWE STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Both sides enthusiastically endorsed a resolution apologizing for their slave-holding ancestors and pledging to fight the sin of racism.
They joined in an apparently unanimous declaration of honor and love for evangelist Billy Graham.
And they consistently praised the leadership of convention President James Henry of Orlando, Fla., as firm, but fair, and more inclusive than some others of recent years.
While this year's convention lacked the rancor that has marked many others of the last two decades, there remains a significant, chronic rift in the denomination.
This year, that was epitomized by a restructuring that aims the denomination in a new direction - finalizing in many ways a change of course that was set when a new "conservative" majority took control of the presidency in 1979.
Adrian Rogers' election that year marked the beginning of an inexorable turn to the theological right. Today, conservatives control the boards of every denominational agency and seminary.
The conservative agenda could be summed up in a demand for absolute fidelity to the doctrine of the infallibility of scripture.
Denominational leaders would be chosen only from those who would declare that the Bible - at least in its now-lost original form - contains no errors of history, science or theology. Those who had doubts about whether every miracle happened as the Bible described, or who weren't convinced Adam and Eve were real people, or who had questions about the virgin birth were not appointed to denominational offices.
The contrast between the "old" and "new" convention is nowhere more evident than in Virginia. Moderates - those allowing more latitude for doubt on at least some of the fundamentals upon which conservatives insisted - remain firmly in control of state Southern Baptist offices.
At the same time, a strong conservative minority has emerged, forming its own state organization, Southern Baptist Conservatives of Virginia. The group is led, philosophically, at least, by Alexandria layman T.C. Pinckney, a retired Air Force brigadier general.
Pinckney - whose Baptist Banner newspaper has a circulation of 12,000 - has been rewarded for organizing a core of support in the most "moderate" state association by being named to the convention's powerful executive committee. And in Atlanta, Pinckney came within four votes of winning the committee's chair.
The executive committee will have the primary responsibility for implementing the reorganization plan messengers approved last week.
The number of agencies will drop from 19 to 12, eliminating such agencies as the Radio and Television Commission and Historical Commission by shifting their supervision to other agencies.
The reorganization's most controversial element, however, had nothing to do with any official Southern Baptist Convention agency. Rather, it was the perceived slight to the influential - and independent - Women's Missionary Union auxiliary.
The 107-year-old women's group has long been a primary promoter of the denomination's annual Annie Armstrong and Lottie Moon offerings, which provide the bulk of funding for home and foreign missions.
Since 1970, the convention had assigned the denomination's missions education function to the women's organization, even though it has its own board of directors who are not appointed by the convention. The reorganization plan delegates that education role to the newly named North American Mission Board, formerly called the Home Mission Board, and the Sunday School Board.
Following an uproar in the WMU, a footnote to the reorganization document was amended to "recognize and affirm" the organization's historical involvement in missions and to welcome the women's continued involvement.
The amendment "did not give us the assignment I think we are due," said Alma Hunt, "but it did remove the awful feeling that existed from feeling ignored." Not to have been recognized at all "had to have been considered a slap," she said. "I think the amendment eased the pain of that."
Hunt, a Roanoke native and member of First Baptist Church on Third Street, was executive director of the WMU for a quarter century before her retirement in 1974. She later worked for the Foreign Mission Board before returning to Roanoke in 1985.
Hunt, 85, has scrupulously avoided entanglement in the denominational controversy in recent years, preferring to focus her time and talents to the women's organization that has "given direction to my life."
In an address to the Atlanta convention, Hunt's affirmation of the local church as well as home and foreign missionary work drew the audience to its feet in applause.
Hunt said she left the convention with a good feeling and the conviction that it was "the best conference since 1979."
The Rev. Richard Elmore, pastor of Cave Spring Baptist Church, likewise was "real pleased with the spirit of the convention."
Elmore was elected to one of the two Virginia seats on the convention's committee on nominations. That body will make nominations at next year's convention in New Orleans for vacancies on the executive committee, as well as for trustees of every other board, agency and institution of the convention.
It was largely through such appointments that conservatives were able to dominate the convention's power structure.
Elmore, however, says he has "never been involved in any political maneuvering in the denomination in my 25 years of ministry."
This is Elmore's first denominational office. He said he believes he was nominated because of a genuine attempt to "enlarge the tent and include people who have remained loyal to the convention but have not been included before."
The Rev. Bill Slater, pastor of Marion Baptist Church, is pretty sure the tent will never be large enough under the current leadership to include him.
"I've told my congregation that neither I nor they will get named to any committees or any position of leadership" in the Southern Baptist Convention "because we've been labeled" as moderates.
The Marion church sends 60 percent of its "cooperative missions gifts" to the Southern Baptist Convention. The rest goes to the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, on whose national coordinating council Slater sits.
The fellowship was formed by moderates who felt excluded from leadership and power in the Southern Baptist Convention. Though nearly all its members also remain affiliated with the convention, the fellowship does fund some missionaries of its own and formerly funneled money from its member churches to specific Southern Baptist agencies.
Messengers to last year's convention, however, voted to prohibit Southern Baptist institutions from taking money from the fellowship because of its perceived rival status.
In fact, the refusal of the Women's Missionary Union to say it would not dissociate itself from the work of the fellowship is widely assumed to be a key factor in the snub of the women's group in the convention's reorganization.
Slater's church gets around the conflict between the Fellowship and the convention by donating separately to both.
He and many other Virginia Southern Baptists continue to be concerned about the future relationship of their churches to the national denomination.
This year's reorganization plan, for instance, was presented with "no opportunity to study it, go home and talk about it in their churches, then come back to another convention to vote the conscience of the church," said the Rev. Wayne Harrison, pastor of Belmont Baptist Church.
"Essentially, the local congregation was cut out of the whole process."
The process "needed some consideration further than a simple business meeting where we spent 10 minutes discussing what will affect us into the next century."
Just what the future will be like is still to be determined, but Slater probably reflected the mood of many Virginia Baptists when he said "it was important to celebrate, as we did," the first 150 years of the Southern Baptist Convention at the Atlanta meeting.
"Yet, at that very same meeting, they said they want to abandon that heritage completely, to choose a new course.
"It was like going back to a family reunion, only I didn't recognize anybody."
by CNB