Saturday, March 7, 1998

The politics aside, it's theology that divides Southern Baptists

By Jeffrey Weiss / The Dallas Morning News

Here's how deep the splits have grown within the Southern Baptist Convention:

Leaders of conservative and moderate Texas factions recently met for nine hours and found no way to bridge the gaps. Leaders of the fledgling, conservative Southern Baptists of Texas say 100 churches have agreed to affiliate with them, with an additional 200 expressing interest.

And the president of the moderate Baptist General Convention of Texas now acknowledges that the state group has positioned itself to become a "full-service" convention. The BGCT might one day offer a way for Texas churches to satisfy their needs without having to affiliate with the more conservative national convention, said Russell Dilday, but there are no plans to do so.

The Baptists' disputes often borrow the rhetoric of politics Ñ who will win control? who has the votes? But if the two sides are in accord about little else, they agree that the core of the dispute is theology.

Beyond that, though, leaders on both sides disagree about the definition of their disagreement.

"Most of the moderates will probably deny that there is a theological difference," said Paige Patterson, former president of Criswell College in Dallas, current president of the Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in Wake Forest, N.C., and a prime candidate to be the next president of the national Southern Baptist Convention.

But at least some moderates focus on core beliefs to explain the divisions.

"There is a huge difference in the way we interpret the nature of God," said David Currie, coordinator for the moderate Texas Baptists Committed.

Moderate leaders such as Currie and Dilday tick off what they consider the central Christian doctrines on which they say both sides agree. Those include: the historical reality and deity of Christ, the reality of miracles, the authority of Scripture, the necessity of Jesus' sacrifice on the cross and the need to believe in him for salvation.

Some conservative leaders, such as Kenneth Hemphill, president of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, will grant accord on many of these issues.

"On many of these essentials, we do agree," he said.

So what's the fuss about? Conservatives and moderates concur that the major conflict is over how the authority of Scripture must be defined.

That was the issue over which conservative leaders started their battle for leadership of the Southern Baptist Convention two decades ago, Patterson said.

"We staged it on that front because we knew it was the issue that Maw and Paw Baptist would understand," he said.

But what exactly should they understand?

"The root of the thing from our perspective is our approach to the word of God," said Miles Seaborn, president of the Southern Baptists of Texas. "We would find it totally authoritative. They (moderates) say the Scripture is authoritative only in matters of salvation."

That's right, Currie said. God intended the Bible to be a tool for salvation, not a text for biology or physics, he said.

"While folks like me see the Bible very much as the word of God, we don't try to make it a science book or a geography book. It's a theology book. It's about salvation. We believe it's totally trustworthy for that."

Dilday offered a slightly different interpretation:

"In actual fact, I don't think there's any difference with the people I deal with and the fundamentalists over the nature of Scripture. I think we look at it in different ways as to how it's to be used," he said. "It isn't a weapon to be used to beat other people over the head and force them into a position."

The Bible, Dilday said, was written by people in the context of their times who were led by the Spirit of God.

"The Bible is perfect in the sense of what God wants it to be. The Bible does not mislead us. It does not misguide us," he said. "It is a divine, human book, and both those elements are there."

The two sides disagree also on what bearing the Bible has on various issues of contemporary church life.

Consider the ordination of women.

Conservatives look to portions of Genesis and passages in the New Testament that they say clearly describe the role of women.

"For us, that's a doctrinal issue," Seaborn said.

Moderates say the Bible is equally clear in its passages about, for instance, accepting slavery. The appropriate role of women, moderates say, is partly linked to the culture of the day.

"We don't think the Bible has a clear word on that," Dilday said.

The two sides divide on how they say the other side construes the pastor's role.

Moderates say the conservative reading of the Bible sets the pastor up to rule the church rather than act as a "servant leader."

"The traditional Baptist way is for the congregation to be the authority," Dilday said.

Conservatives say their interpretation of the Bible gives their pastors a power and responsibility to lead.

"The preachers that serve in churches that are not moderate churches preach with an authority that moderate preachers don't preach with," Patterson said.

Moderates say they are applying the true word of God to the conditions of the time Ñ without compromising the essentials of the faith.

Conservatives say that they are holding fast against a loss of doctrinal accuracy that would only get worse over time.

"One-degree drift projected over a long enough period of time is a serious drift," Hemphill said.

The moderates say conservatives draw their theology too narrowly, excluding those with whom they have what the moderates see as relatively unimportant disagreements. But the moderates draw their lines, too. One of them was clearly identified Tuesday in Dallas, when the leadership of the state convention voted to censure an Austin chruch that has ordained a gay deacon.

"They moved outside of the parameters of what most Baptists believe the Bible teaches," Dilday said.

But the Austin church had its supporters at the meeting who disagree passionately with Dilday's interpretation of the Bible. Even as Dilday has disagreed with conservative leaders who say the moderates have moved beyond traditional Baptist parameters.

Decades ago, even deep chasms of disagreement like these were not enough to fracture state and national conventions, said Bill Leonard, a Baptist, historian and the dean of the Wake Forest University Divinity School in North Carolina.

"The union of Southern Baptists and Southern culture was the glue that held all that together," he said. "As the culture became more diverse, the differences in the convention became more difficult to sustain."

The theological division is leading to the disintegration of the Southern Baptist Convention, said Leonard, a graduate of Southwestern Seminary.

"What we've lost is the system that allowed us to talk about theology without splitting," he said. "Frankly, it's amazing it lasted so long."

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(c) 1998, The Dallas Morning News.

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