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Tuesday, October 31, 2000

Baptists withhold funding
SBC seminaries lose $4.3 million
By Stephanie L. Jordan
Caller-Times

George Gongora/Caller-Times

Members of the Baptist General Convention of Texas participate in voting by holding colored cards. More than 7,000 members from more than 5,700 churches attended the meeting at the Bayfront Plaza Convention Center.

In a controversial split with the Southern Baptist Convention, Texas Baptists voted overwhelmingly Monday to deny $4.3 million in funding for Southern Baptist seminaries.
   The widely anticipated vote came during the first day of the Baptist General Convention of Texas' annual conference in Corpus Christi.
   Baptists at the conference said the vote sends the message that they don't believe in the creeds that Southern Baptist seminary students are now required to sign.
   "Baptists have never had a creed," said Anson Nash, associate pastor of Padre Island Baptist Church. "Now they have it at the (Southern Baptist) seminaries that if you don't sign the creed, you don't teach. Baptists believe in the responsibility to God and not the church."
   The 15.8 million-member Southern Baptist Convention is made up of autonomous state conventions, with the 2.7 million-member Baptist General Convention of Texas being the largest.
   More than 7,000 members from more than 5,700 Texas churches elected to vote, gathered at the Bayfront Plaza Convention Center and Selena Auditorium to listen to debates about the move.
   Also, the Texans virtually cut off support for the denomination's headquarters in Nashville, Tenn., and its social-issues agency - a cut amounting to $1 million. The Texans will still send some $19 million to the denomination, mostly for missionary work in the United States and abroad.
   One man suggested that Texas Baptists decrease the funding over a three-year period. But that proposal was voted down.
   Another man tearfully pleaded with members not to take the vote at all, fearing it would divide Baptists as a whole.
   But when the vote to withhold the funding to six SBC seminaries, only one of which is in Texas, came up, a sea of neon orange voting cards appeared.
   Funding for Texas schools
   "Texas is the only state preparing Hispanics (for the ministry)," said Jorge Alvarez, a 29-year-old San Diego resident. "I think this sends a message that Texas has priorities and one of them is that Texas schools should be more well-funded since there is a great increase in Hispanics."
   Last year the state convention budgeted $5.3 million for six seminaries operated by the Southern Baptist Convention, compared with about $800,000 for three schools of theology in Texas that are operated by the state convention. Schools of theology differ from seminaries only in location; seminaries traditionally have their own facilities rather than being located within university campuses.
   The $4.3 million will now be funneled toward three schools of theology run by the Texas organization. They include Logsdon School of Theology at Hardin-Simmons University, George W. Truett Theological Seminary at Baylor University in Waco, and the Southwest Baptist Theological Seminary in San Antonio.

   Problems since 1979
   The only SBC-run seminary in Texas is Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth.
   Texas Baptists have been at odds with the Southern Baptist Convention since 1979 when a conservative faction took control.
   Texas Baptists aren't the only ones unhappy with the direction of the SBC. Recently, former President Jimmy Carter publicly defected from the Southern Baptist Convention, citing disagreements with its increasingly conservative doctrine. Tapes bearing his voice and letters with his signature were mailed out to conventioneers, some said.
   David Currie, executive director of Texas Baptist Committed, likened the Baptist General Convention's vote to the dismissal of notorious Indiana University basketball Coach Bobby Knight.

   'The SBC has done this'
   "It's like they said 'We didn't fire him, he fired himself,' " Currie said. "We're not saying we're abandoning the SBC. The SBC has done this to themselves."
   It's disappointing to some, including Bob Campbell, the chairman of the Seminary Study Committee, which conducted a report presented to the Texas group.
   "Our committee did not intend to send a message," Campbell said. "This is not a message directed at (the SBC). You can never predict (what) Baptists are going to do, especially Texas Baptists, who have always been so independent. But the report we did is a sad report. There's been so many changes and they're not good ones."
   Even with the $4.3 million loss, Texas, which has 17 percent of the SBC's membership, will still be a major contributor to the SBC, said Russell Dilday, former president of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, in Fort Worth.

   'Time to move on'
   "This is not a separation of the two," Dilday, who retired last week as a Baylor University professor, said. "It's just that this was a time to not look back, it was time to move on forward."
   The Texas Baptists will decide later this week whether to allow full participation for Baptists from outside Texas. Observers say that opens the way for the Texas convention to become a regional body that could rival the national denomination.
   The Rev. Bill Merrell, the spokesman at Southern Baptist headquarters who observed the vote, said the vote "signals the beginning of the endgame anti-Southern Baptists have longed for, planned for and worked for."
   "This thrusts upon Southern Baptist lay people and pastors the necessity of deciding whether they will follow those who would lead them to weaken their involvement with the greatest missionary enterprise of our time," Merrell aid.


Staff writer Stephanie L. Jordan can be reached at 886-3724 or by e-mail at jordans@caller.com

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