ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, November 3, 1996 TAG: 9611010094
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
COLUMN: The Back Pew
SOURCE: CODY LOWE
The world didn't stop spinning last week, but some Baptists may have expected that to happen after word spread that the Rev. Jerry Falwell's Thomas Road Baptist in Lynchburg has become a financial contributor to - and thereby effectively a member of - the Southern Baptist Convention.
By midweek, Falwell was denying that he is, or had ever intended to become, a Southern Baptist by donating money to the new Southern Baptist Conservatives of Virginia.
Spokesman Mark DeMoss said later that there are not plans for denominational involvment by the church, which will "certainly not" send messengers to state or national Southern Baptist meetings "any time soon."
In an earlier press release, Falwell said, "We fully intend to take our permanent stand with the national and Virginia Bible-believing conservatives who have rescued the Southern Baptist Convention from theological liberalism."
It was language that led Southern Baptist leaders at the state and national level to conclude that Falwell understood his church's new relationship with the denomination and welcomed his participation.
What Falwell apparently was concerned about was the impression that he and his congregation were giving up some measure of the independence they have so closely guarded for the last 40 years.
The congregation does belong to the Baptist Bible Fellowship - a Missouri-based association of independent Baptist churches that support about 800 missionaries. But that association of about 4,000 churches - many of which label themselves fundamentalist - is not nearly so extensive or closely connected as the 15-million member Southern Baptist Convention with almost 40,000 churches.
Now Thomas Road - and Falwell - tentatively are affiliated with both, as least as far as the Southern Baptist Convention is concerned.
While Falwell was publicly uncomfortable with the new association, it really doesn't change anything in terms of the "independence" of Thomas Road Baptist.
As this newspaper reported Wednesday, Falwell specifically pointed out in his press release that the church "will continue to be what Southern Baptist churches have always been, independent and autonomous."
Many non-Southern Baptists have a hard time understanding the denominational relationship between individual congregations and the national body.
All Baptists - including Southern Baptists - have a long tradition of complete autonomy. That is, there is no ecclesiastical authority - superintendent or bishop or convention - higher than the congregation itself.
Each congregation ordains whomever it chooses, hires and supports its own minister, sets its own standards for membership, decides how to spend every penny of the offerings its members contribute, defines and enforces Christian doctrine.
Though the churches engage in "voluntary cooperation" at the local, state and national levels with other Southern Baptist churches, none of those bodies has any authority over the local congregation.
Thus, when the Southern Baptist Convention voted in New Orleans last summer to urge a boycott of Walt Disney Co. products if that company doesn't mend its ways, the resolution was not binding on any state or local association, or any individual congregation or church member.
The associations - local, state and national - also may set their own standards for membership. For years, the only qualification for being "in friendly cooperation" with the national convention was to be "in sympathy with its purposes and work" - defined by making a financial contribution to denominational agencies.
In recent years, the national Southern Baptist Convention and some regional groups have qualified those requirements with a single doctrinal requirement allowing them to exclude churches that ordain homosexuals.
Falwell's contribution to the Southern Baptist Convention may never have been possible before, as one Roanoke Valley minister pointed out to me last week. Falwell never would have been comfortable affiliated with the Baptist General Association of Virginia, which until this year was the only state association of Southern Baptists.
The Virginia General Association has been a stronghold of "moderates" among Southern Baptists who lost control of the national convention years ago. When a second state association was formed to suit the policies and doctrines of the state's more conservative Southern Baptist congregations, it was a natural for Falwell.
And that is exactly how he has come to be associated with the Southern Baptist Convention. By making what are being described as "modest" monthly financial contributions to the Southern Baptist Conservatives of Virginia - apparently $1,000 to begin with, Falwell and Thomas Road Church became Southern Baptist by default since the state group sends half of all undesignated contributions it receives directly to the national denomination.
Though it is too early to tell how Thomas Road's membership - said to be as high as 22,000 - will affect Southern Baptist, it could become a force in the denomination if it so chooses. And its support of Southern Baptist causes - especially should it countine - may encourage some other independents to take a new look at affiliation with the nation's largest non-Catholic denomination.
While religious positions and passions likely will inform many voters' decisions this week, only one item on the ballot in Virginia relates directly to religious congregations.
A proposed state constitutional amendment would allow the legislature to pass a law permitting churches and other religious institutions to incorporate if they choose.
Every other state - with the exception of West Virginia - already allows churches that option.
Supporters - which include many of the state's religious denominations and their leadership - contend the provision would allow churches a benefit from which they are now excluded. Among other things, incorporation would allow the legal recognition of the "church" as a distinct legal entity, apart from its board of trustees.
That could provide a degree of protection for the trustees in case of a lawsuit.
Opponents contend incorporation would amount to an unnecessary intrusion into a church's business, outweighing any potential legal benefit.
The question of the provision's passage may be less a matter of whether or not people approve of it, and more a matter of whether they understand it.
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