Theological conflict in America's largest Protestant group nears climax

NEW YORK - Is America's largest Protestant denomination unraveling?

Two decades after strict biblical conservatives began winning control of the Southern Baptist Convention and four months after they reworked the doctrinal platform, it's beginning to look that way.

One congregation after another has voted to halt financial support or leave the Southern Baptists altogether. Last week, former President Jimmy Carter renounced membership in his lifelong denomination due to its ''increasingly rigid'' theology.

At heart, this uncivil war is theological. Denominational leaders say the Bible is ''inerrant,'' perfect in historical detail as well as spiritual teaching, and insist that those who work at Southern Baptist institutions uphold this. Their ''moderate'' opponents say Baptists do not believe in imposed creeds, and there should be more leeway in biblical interpretation. Subsidiary disputes involve abortion, homosexuality, politics, women and much else.

The climax could occur Monday if there's a declaration of semi-independence from the Baptist General Convention of Texas, which accounts for 13 percent of denominational funding and 17 percent of the Southern Baptists' membership of 15.9 million.

Proposals to the meeting in Corpus Christi would undermine the 75-year-old ''Cooperative Program'' that funds the denomination, slashing support to Southern Baptist Convention seminaries next year by $4 million, and to headquarters agencies in Nashville, Tenn., by $1 million. Money would flow instead to favored schools and causes within Texas.

That would virtually de-fund five of the six SBC seminaries. The sixth is the largest in the world, Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, which faces an $800,000 hit even though its students include 1,368 Texans.

Another measure at Corpus Christi could threaten the denomination in a different way.

It would open the Baptist General Convention of Texas to full participation by Baptists in other states. Proponent David Currie of Texas Baptists Committed says that would merely provide ''safe haven'' for unhappy congregations. But others think the Texas convention might eventually become a multi-state denomination, rivaling the Southern Baptists.

Campaigning is intense. On a new headquarters Web page, the top executive in Nashville, the Rev. Morris Chapman, says the Texans' complaints are false and misleading. ''When someone is drilling holes in the boat the crew must both bail water and try to repair the damage,'' he adds.

Currie's organization, which has worked for years to uncouple Texas from the Southern Baptist Convention, has helped plant similar groups of self-identified ''mainstream'' or ''moderate'' Baptists in 13 other states.

Four Texas activists have incorporated a Baptist Convention of the Americas on paper, in case a new denomination is needed.

One of the four, retired Sysco Corp. chairman John F. Baugh of Houston, says that might not happen, but ''something will be formed. We cannot in good conscience participate in activities of the fundamentalist faction in control of the SBC.''

Within Texas there are already two statewide conventions, the one meeting in Corpus Christi and the competing Southern Baptists of Texas Convention, which has enlisted 419 congregations since 1998. That group supports the national denomination and its commitment to Bible inerrancy. Virginia also has two competing conventions.

Meanwhile, the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, an Atlanta-based group of 1,800 congregations both inside and outside the Southern Baptist Convention, provides parallels to many SBC programs - foreign missions, church-planting, publishing, pensions - and there are hints it, too, might evolve into a denomination. Carter identifies with the fellowship.

When Southern Baptist leaders rewrote the denomination's doctrinal statement, ''Baptist Faith and Message,'' this year, Carter found it unacceptable, he told The Associated Press.

Especially troubling, he says, was the deletion of this sentence: ''The criterion by which the Bible is to be interpreted is Jesus Christ.''

That, Carter says, ''removed the written premise we had always accepted, that Scripture is interpreted by the words and action of Jesus Christ. Which means in effect the Scriptures are interpreted by pastors or officials who lead the Southern Baptist Convention. This is contrary to my basic beliefs.''

In a letter mailed to 75,000 Baptists by Currie's Texas group, Carter said that besides freedom of biblical interpretation the conservatives threaten separation of church and state, priesthood of lay believers, religious press freedom and women's equality. (The revised faith statement disallows women pastors, and a 1998 amendment says wives should submit to the ''servant leadership'' of husbands.)

Texans are quite conservative in theology and few of their congregations would ordain women, says Marv Knox, editor of the Baptist Standard, the Baptist General Convention of Texas weekly. But the platform's new stand against women pastors violates the autonomy of local congregations. Texans, he says, are ''not prone to have folks from other places telling us how to conduct our affairs.''

Southern Baptist officials project calm amid the restlessness in their ranks. They point out that while some congregations are leaving, 41,000 remain and the denomination planted 1,701 new ones last year.

''I don't fear a split. I don't even fear a splinter,'' says the Rev. James G. Merritt, convention president and a pastor in Snellville, Ga.

The mighty empire boasts other impressive numbers. Though membership is a bit below the 1997 record, total receipts including those of local congregations reached $7.8 billion last year.

The SBC operates America's biggest home and foreign mission boards, dispatching 9,800 workers and 28,000 temporary volunteers. Its seminaries train 13,500 students.

True enough, and Southern Baptist leaders indeed reflect majority belief on the Bible, acknowledges the Rev. Bill Leonard, a sharp critic of the conservatives. Leonard is dean of Wake Forest University's new divinity school in North Carolina, part of an archipelago of 11 campuses for those who find Southern Baptist Convention seminaries too restrictive.

Nonetheless, Leonard says, ''The whole system is coming apart.''

He sees the Baptists as balkanized and thinks they are reverting to the network of regional groupings and specialized ministries that existed before the more centralized denomination was established in 1845.

''Texas is the jewel in the crown,'' Leonard says. ''We don't know what the SBC will look like when Texans have cleared out in large numbers.''

Naturally, the president of loyalist Southwestern seminary sees things differently. The Rev. Kenneth Hemphill says ''the whole conservative reformation'' across the SBC establishes ''the authority and accuracy of the Word of God,'' a belief that unites Baptists across the world.

''The Southern Baptist Convention,'' he says, '' has never been at the level of strength it is right now.''

---

On the Net:

Southern Baptist Convention: http://www.sbc.net; http://www.baptist2baptist.net

Baptist General Convention of Texas: http://www.bgct.org

---

EDITOR'S NOTE - Amy Green of the AP's Nashville bureau contributed to this report.