The New Baptist and Baptist Ecumenism in North America
By Richard V. Pierard, Prof. of History Emeritus Hendersonville, NC
Although the majority of the world’s Baptists reside in the United States, it is a frightfully divided community. Although considerable progress had been made in the twentieth century to bring Baptists into a closer relationship, many chose to remain apart from the larger community. These were essentially conservative groups, distinguished by a strong commitment either to “landmark” principles or some form of separatist fundamentalism, and while others were geographically isolated or committed to historical beliefs and practices that put them outside the “mainstream.” This growing sense of unity, however, was dealt a severe blow when the nation’s largest Baptist body, the Southern Baptist Convention(SBC), decided in 2004 to withdraw from the Baptist World Alliance (BWA), the principal agency that fostered Baptist cooperation and closer ties and a body that it played a crucial role in forming a century earlier. The reasons for this action are extremely controversial and the subject of intense polemics, and another essay would be required just to address the matter. The intent of this paper is to examine a new effort to try to bring Baptists back together, that arose in the years after the schism and in which the BWA’s North American affiliate played a significant role. This is essentially an exercise in Zeitgeschichte and a study very much in progress.
Background of the New Baptist Covenant
The precise origins of the movement are shrouded in obscurity. Bruce Prescott, executive director of Oklahoma Mainstream Baptists, whose organization was in on the founding, claims that the initiative came from Mercer University, which had recently severed ties with the Georgia state convention because it had come under conservative control and wanted to expand its mission in the world. Former president Jimmy Carter was asked for help, and he agreed on the condition that Mercer’s incoming new president, William D. (Bill) Underwood, would take the lead in organizing a meeting for this purpose. 1 Accordingly, Underwood and the former president brought 18 Baptist leaders to The Carter Center in Atlanta, Georgia on April 10, 2006. The group represented more than 20 million Baptists across North America. Among the dignitaries present were the general secretary of the American Churches USA, the presidents or executive secretaries of four African American Baptist bodies in the country—National Baptist Convention, USA, Inc. , National Baptist Convention of America, Progressive National Baptist Convention, and the Lott Carey Baptist Foreign Mission (a fifth, the National Missionary Baptist Convention of America, joined the group later in the year)—the coordinator of the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, the general secretary of Canadian Baptist Ministries, and the executive directors of the Baptist General Association of Virginia and Baptist General Convention of Texas, both major SBC state conventions.2 Missing from the list was a representative of the SBC itself. Why that is so is unclear, but the SBC has consistently maintained they were not invited.
At the meeting they agreed to a document called “A North American Baptist Covenant,” later renamed “A New Baptist Covenant.” The text reads as follows:
We Baptists of North America covenant together to: Create an authentic and prophetic Baptist voice for these complex times; Emphasize traditional Baptist values, including sharing the gospel of Jesus Christ and its implications for public and private morality; and Promote peace with justice, feed the hungry, clothe the naked, shelter the homeless, care for the sick and marginalized, welcome the strangers among us, and promote religious liberty and respect for religious diversity.3
The attendees agreed they should work together toward the common purposes of joining races, cultures, geographies, and “convention affiliations” as a living testament of harmony in action. They also determined that they would try to bring together thousands of Baptists who would embrace the potential of unity around these principles. This was the first time that the New Baptist Covenant concept came to public notice.
During the next year a flurry of activity occurred. The organizers worked to build a broad coalition, recruiting Baptist public and religious figures associated with both political parties who shared these convictions. Former Democratic president Bill Clinton and vice-president Al Gore came on board as did the Republican governor of Arkansas Mike Huckabee and senators from Iowa and South Carolina, Charles Grassley and Lindsey Graham. Two prominent blacks, David Satcher, former surgeon general of the United States, and Marian Wright Edelman, founder of the Children’s Defense Fund, and the best-selling novelist, John Grisham, agreed to be involved in the enterprise and speak at its conclave.
The Rev. Dr. Jimmy R. Allen, a member of the founding group, was named coordinator for the New Baptist Covenant. A distinguished SBC pastor and leader, he had served as president of the Texas Baptist Convention (1972- 73), president of the SBC (1978-79), pastor of the First Baptist Church of San Antonio (1968-1980), president of the Radio and Television Commission of the SBC (1980-90), and the first moderator of the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship (CBF). 4 Since the initiators were essentially an ad hoc group, they needed to establish a continuing organization, or better yet, find some group that could carry out the functions they envisioned. They found a readymade structure in the North American Baptist Fellowship, one of the six regional fellowships of the Baptist World Alliance. However, it was essentially moribund and had achieved little in the years since its founding in 1966, other than hold occasional fellowship meetings. Alan Stanford, a former BWA office staff person and currently pastor of a church, was called back into service to take charge of a renewed NABF to which was given the task of coordinating the next round of activity.
Various Baptist agencies that had links to the NABF were recruited for the NBC endeavor, and 80 representatives from 30 denominations and other bodies (now labeled “partner organizations”) as well as some Baptist media bodies assembled at The Carter Center on January 9, 2007 for a second meeting. At the conclusion the announcement was made that a national convocation would take place in Atlanta on January 30-February 1, 2008. The theme of the gathering was to be “Unity in Christ,” and its biblical basis would be Luke 4:18-19, Jesus’ statement in his first sermon in the Nazareth synagogue: The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.
This call to pursue both evangelism and ministry to the needy was to be the biblical foundation of the Covenant.5
Hopes for Unity Dealt a Mortal Blow
The hope for achieving unity was dealt a crushing blow by the SBC leadership. On the following day Baptist Press (the official voice of the SBC) issued a release condemning the New Baptist Covenant. It declared that leaders from the SBC were “not invited to attend” the meeting at The Carter Center. It further charged that Mercer University President Bill Underwood said in the concluding press conference that the 2008 gathering was meant to draw attention away from “the Baptists who have the microphone,” that is, those who voice conservative views in the media, and that “North America desperately needs a true Baptist witness.”
Frank Page, pastor of FBC, Taylors, South Carolina, and the current president of the SBC, condemned these remarks. He told Baptist Press: “Instead of engaging in a war of words, let’s have a reality check. Word games are fine, but reality says Southern Baptists are presenting a positive life changing message, impacting our culture with our ministries and sharing the Good News of Jesus Christ.”
Morris H. Chapman, president of the SBC Executive Committee, maintained that Jimmy Carter’s contention at the press conference that Baptists have been negative and exclusionary rang hollow. “He has been one of the most vocal critics of Southern Baptists, using ‘fundamentalist’ as a pejorative and drawing a caustic comparison between Ayatollah Khomeini’s rise to power in Iran and the resurgence of conservative leadership being elected in the SBC.” Chapman insisted that surveys show that people view Southern Baptists favorably and that the denomination gives millions of dollars annually to help the poor through various initiatives. “The great difference in our approach from liberals is that in ministering to the body, we do not neglect the needs of the soul, and [last year] the Gospel was shared with over 500,000 people with over 32,000 professions of faith resulting.”6
In a statement on May 26, 2007 Page declared unequivocally, “I will not be a part of any smokescreen leftwing liberal agenda that seeks to deny the greatest need in our world, that being that the lost be shown the way to eternal life through Jesus Christ, our Lord.” He also repeated the claim that “Southern Baptists were not invited to be part of the initial meetings of this group.”7
Various other Southern Baptists hurled the charge that the NBC was a political stunt aimed solely at boosting support among Baptists for the Democratic Party and its policies. Since the SBC leadership had been in bed with the Republican Party for so long that they had developed bed sores, this was not hard to understand. For example, Dr. Richard Land, president of the SBC’s political lobby, the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, said to Washington Post reporter Jacqueline Salmon shortly before the “celebration” in Atlanta opened: “This is a meeting that is being called by two former Democratic presidents—one of whom has a wife who is a major candidate for the Democratic nomination for president. Coincidence? I think not.”8
The rising tide of Southern Baptist criticism made Mike Huckabee, now an active candidate for the GOP nomination, increasingly uneasy about the event, and he seized on a negative comment by Jimmy Carter as a pretext for disengaging himself from the NBC. In an interview with an Arkansas newspaper on May 11, 2007 the former president responded to a question asking him to compare George W. Bush’s foreign policy with that of Richard Nixon: “I think as far as the adverse impact on the nation around the world, this administration has been the worst in history.” Huckabee announced in an interview with a Southern Baptist newspaper, the Florida Baptist Witness, that he had only “tentatively” agreed to participate in the NBC gathering. But in light of the “very harsh comments toward our president” and the roster of speakers—including the “very, very liberal” Marian Wright Edelman—he felt it would be best if he withdrew. He did not want to “appear to be giving approval to what could be a political, rather than spiritual agenda.”9 On the eve of the convocation Republican Senator Lindsey Graham dropped out as well, offering the lame excuse that he needed to be working in John McCain’s presidential campaign. Carter repeatedly affirmed that this was not a political gathering, but as far as Southern Baptists were concerned, his words fell on deaf ears. The New Baptist Covenant’s effort to establish bipartisan credentials had been stymied.
Behind this lay the reality that Carter had tried repeatedly in the 1990s to bring about reconciliation between the SBC moderates and conservatives, but after failing in this he aligned himself with the breakaway Cooperative Baptist Fellowship. That gained for him the undying enmity of the SBC leadership, and the hatred was so deep that Baptist Press would not even acknowledge that he, one of their own, had been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Another problem was the role of the NABF, an entity of the Baptist World Alliance. The SBC had dropped out of the BWA in 2004 because of its allegedly “liberal” tendencies, and to cooperate with the BWA now would be an admission that the leaders had been mistaken. For this action they have remained stubbornly unrepentant. Another threat came from the left—in the form of gay activism. Two gay friendly organizations, the Association of Welcoming and Affirming Baptists (AWAB) and the Baptist Peace Fellowship, had applied to become affiliates of the NABF. That would have qualified them to be among the 30+ official participating organizations. (The rationalization of non-NABF/BWA affiliation was in fact being used to help explain to an incredulous public why the SBC was not participating in the NBC convocation.) The NABF did not grant the desired membership. In an email to the two groups NABF secretary Alan Stanford explained: “This is not a rejection of either organization nor the people [in them]. It is a recognition that we cannot hold together the large coalition of Baptists needed to create a new Baptist voice in North America and address the issue of sexual orientation at the same time. We ask for your forbearance and understanding.” He went on to say that the Atlanta event was designed to unite an ideologically diverse array of Baptists around the common causes of promoting evangelism, fighting poverty, and supporting religious freedom.
The executive director of AWAB, Ken Pennings, retorted that the organizers were ignoring one of the biggest social justice issues by avoiding the controversial topic of sexuality and the church. Stanford explained in an interview that including groups that explicitly upheld gay rights as a justice issue would imply changing the terms of the meeting and could cause an already fragile coalition to unravel. “We agreed that we would focus on those things that there was broad agreement about, and there is not broad agreement on this subject.”
As one might expect, the response did not satisfy representatives of the two groups, but they decided to attend as individuals and try to bring up gay issues. 10 They were not allocated a booth in the exhibition hall at the NBC celebration, but a sympathetic body, the Alliance of Baptists, allowed them to display materials and talk with passers-by at its booth.
The New Baptist Covenant Celebration Somewhere between 10,000 and 15,000 people, depending on whose figures one accepts (Baptist Press claimed only 9,000 at the most, and 8,000 in the last session), streamed into the cavernous Georgia World Congress Center in downtown Atlanta for the three-day conclave. It had been timed to coincide with the Joint Midwinter board meetings of the four black Baptist conventions in Atlanta, and that guaranteed a large turnout of African Americans for the sessions. It received extensive coverage on national television and newspapers. There were five plenary sessions that ran two and one-half hours each, and all speakers and musical performances were held to a tight schedule.
One could speak “as the Lord led” so long as it was within a very fixed time period. Each session centered around the topic of “Baptist Unity In…” with reference to the theme Scripture verse: In Seeking Peace with Justice, In Bringing Good News to the Poor, In Respecting Diversity, In Welcoming the Stranger, and In Setting the Captive Free. Each session was chaired and a formal prayer offered by a chief executive of a participating body. A seminary student was selected to do the Scripture reading. There were congregational songs at the beginning and end. Three or four individual musicians or musical groups performed in each session, and the music styles were quite diverse (and multicultural) in character. There was a sermon by a gifted preacher—two blacks, two white men, and a white woman—and a “testimony” by a variety of noted people. Finally there was the “message” by the featured celebrity—Jimmy Carter, Marian Wright Edelman, John Grisham, Sen. Charles Grassley, and Bill Clinton. As an attendee I was struck by the number of African Americans, ethnic minorities, and women that were on the program as well as in the audience. It was the most diverse Baptist gathering I had ever experienced.
On Thursday and Friday afternoons there were special interest breakout sessions (two each day) that involved a wide range of Baptist social activists, academics, missionaries, public officials, pastors, medical personnel, lawyers, and others. Some 75 individuals led or presented at the workshops, which were grouped into sixteen themes. They were: prophetic preaching, engaging the criminal justice system, breaking cycles of poverty, finding common ground with other faiths, youth at a crossroad, evangelism—proclaiming God’s Good News, reaching out to the sick, peacemaking, welcoming a stranger, faith and public policy, the Spirit of the Lord upon me, sexual exploitation, race as a continuing challenge, the HIV/AIDS pandemic, religious liberty and separation of church and state, and responding to natural disasters.
A highlight was a luncheon presentation by former vice president Al Gore on the second day of the convention. Some 2,500 people attended the sold-out luncheon (Baptist Press snidely pointed out its cost of $35) where the Nobel laureate explained his passion for environmental stewardship was influenced by his Baptist faith. In a gripping audio-visual presentation (which I witnessed) he discussed the research behind his award-winning film on the climate change crisis, An Inconvenient Truth, and retooled its message to incorporate Scripture texts and descriptions of how his religious beliefs shaped his message. He made a strong appeal for believers to protect the world from global warming. “There is a distinct possibility that one of the messages coming out of this gathering and this new covenant is creation care—that we who are Baptists of like mind and attempting in our lives to glorify God, are not going to countenance the continued heaping of contempt on God’s creation.11 With conservatives in America solidly aligned against combating what they feel is a myth of global warning, this was a frontal challenge to the prevailing ideology of the Republican Party.
The organizers struggled as hard as they could to keep the gathering nonpolitical and focused on matters of meeting human needs. In his opening address Jimmy Carter affirmed that unity was the distinctive element of the gathering and pledged: “There will be no criticism of others—let me say again—no criticism of others or exclusion of any Christians who would seek to join this cause.” At a press conference near the end, he told reporters the convocation lived up to his nonpolitical billing. “We have deliberately avoided any identification by politics. It’s been a wonderful mixture of cohesive, different groups. All of us, so far as I know, have been completely unified.”
Bill Clinton sounded like a preacher as he extended an olive branch to the SBC. He suggested that the differences within the Southern Baptist community were due to competing interpretations of the Epistle of James: “that people would know our faith by our works.” Conservatives and progressives defined good works in different ways, but “we all believe we are doing what we can.” The groups just “read the obligations of Scripture in a different way.” Calling for humility and respect, Clinton maintained that “we should not let our response to the people who disagree with us be dictated by what they say about us or even how they treat people we care for. If there is any chance that this covenant can become an embracing one, that there can be a whole community, then there has to be a chance that we can find love.” 12 I listened carefully to the plenaries and was surprised at how the speakers tried to keep their presentations nonpolitical, even though politics are central to so many issues today.
Of course, few of the plenary speakers were people who would have been welcome at the annual SBC meeting. The frontal challenge to global warming and some of the other social issues dealt with would not have set well with SBC conservatives, especially Richard Land’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission. The unspoken agenda of the NBC was, as Tony Campolo (a plenary speaker) put it in a post-conference assessment, “to provide a Baptist alternative to the politics and practices of the SBC.” Those who attended represented denominations with a combined membership of more than 20 million other Baptists, and the leaders of the SBC could see their presence “as a kind of ‘in your face’ demonstration that they were tired of being painted by the general public with the same broad brush that has wrongly allied them with many positions taken by the SBC.”13 A Baptist Press reporter claimed that plenary speakers frequently criticized the SBC’s conservative leadership but the only specific he gave was novelist John Grisham’s observation that some Christians read the Bible with narrow literalness and that those Baptists who believe Scripture limits some roles in the church to men are intolerant.14
Space does not allow further discussion of the content of the various presentations, but some commentators observed that the convention tested the limits of “big tent” diversity. How far are Baptists prepared to go to confront the divisive issues of race, theology, and ideology and how much healing can be achieved. Some felt the numbers of African Americans in the audience was too limited. Others wanted to move more quickly to achieve equality of women in ministry. Still others regarded the issue of abortion as paramount. And the whole question of homosexual rights was simply swept under the carpet. Quo Vadis—New Baptist Covenant Where would the NBC enterprise go from here? To promote conciliation with the SBC, Carter declared he was in contact with President Frank Page and had promised him a full report on the conclave and its possible outcomes. Program chair Jimmy Allen believed the practical applications of the unity/service theme advanced in the special interest sessions would provide the backbone of structure for fleshing out what the convocation means and how participants will continue what had begun in Atlanta. In fact, seminary students who attended the celebration and received course credit for this were assigned to take notes in the sessions regarding proposals for cooperation in ministry and to collect the email addresses of participants who wanted to continue collaboration on specific policy issues.15
Those at the celebration had been invited to provide feedback, and at a follow-up meeting of more than 70 participants at The Carter Center on March 12, the many suggestions were organized into broad categories for consideration by individuals, churches, and groups involved in the project. The published list ran to three pages and included items under the headings of evangelism, criminal justice, poverty, other faiths, youth, peacemaking, discrimination, faith and public policy, religious liberty/church and state, environment and global warming, and specific suggestions for enhancing the effective of the New Baptist Covenant.16
More concretely, it was announced that a second NBC gathering would take place in 2011, and plans were laid for regional gatherings around the country. In 2009 such meetings took place in Birmingham, Alabama; suburban Kansas City, Missouri); WinstonSalem, North Carolina; and Norman, Oklahoma. Others are forthcoming. Each meeting was organized by a local committee and the financing was obtained locally as well. Jimmy Carter spoke at each meeting along with other reputable national and local figures, and workshops were held that addressed issues raised at the Atlanta celebration.
Thus, a reasonably firm foundation has been laid for continuing Baptist ecumenism. Its future success depends on how well the NBC coalition can hold together and how much actual social change is achieved. Whether the SBC can be enlisted in the enterprise is up in the air. There is increasing interest in social issues among younger Southern Baptists, and two reputable figures from the denomination were slated to speak at the Oklahoma regional. As President Clinton said in his speech about working with critics of the NBC, “We have to find things we can do together, and we have to treat them with respect and honor. We must approach those who disagree with outstretched hands, not a clenched fist.” In other words, all things are possible through Christ, even Baptist reconciliation and unity. Let us hope and pray that this may come about.
1 Bruce Prescott, “Painting Elephants,” Religion Dispatches, February 6, 2008, www.religiondispatches.org.
2 Text of the press release in possession of the author.
3 Published in the press release; also printed in the official conference booklet, Unity in Christ: Celebration of a New Baptist Covenant, Atlanta, Georgia, January 30-February 1, 2008, p. 4.
4 Biographical sketch in www.Day1.org.
5 www.newbaptistcovenant.org.
6 www.bpnews.net.
7 The Christian Post, May 31, 2007, www.christianpost.com/article/20070531.,
8 Washington Post, January 26, 2008.
9 The Christian Post, May 22, 2007; Right Wing Watch, May 22, 2007, www//rightwingwatch.org.
10 Associated Baptist Press.
11 Hendersonville Times-News, February 2, 2008; Baptist Press, February 4, 2008; Associated Baptist Press, February 4, 2008.
12 Associated Baptist Press, February 4, 2008
13 Sojourners, February 4, 2008.
14 Baptist Press, February 4, 2008.. 15 newpabtistcelebration.org.
16 Ibid.
