Author: Gustav Niebuhr
Publication: The New York Times
Date: June 30, 2001
Former President Jimmy Carter, who
last year broke with his denomination, the Southern Baptist Convention,
over its increasingly conservative direction, has been host to two meetings
of leaders of moderate Baptist groups to seek "common ground" among them,
such as sending out missionaries, he said in an interview tonight.
Mr. Carter, who came here today
to speak to the annual gathering of one of the groups involved, the Cooperative
Baptist Fellowship, said the meetings had taken place at the Carter Center.
He described the question before the groups as, "How can the moderate Baptists
find common ground, form partnerships and carry out the will of God, in
an exciting and unpredictable and spiritually gratifying way?"
Mr. Carter suggested that a loosely
allied force might arise among moderate Baptist groups that have distanced
themselves from the Southern Baptist Convention, which has shifted to theological
right in the last two decades.
The fellowship, which began a decade
ago, now has 1,800 congregations, some of which remain affiliated with
the much larger convention. Mr. Carter said others involved in the discussions
included leaders of the Baptist General Convention of Texas, which cut
some of its financial ties to the Southern Baptist Convention last October.
But Mr. Carter repeatedly said that
the discussions were not intended to produce a new denomination or an organization
that would compete with the Southern Baptist Convention. Instead, he said,
moderates should recognize that the struggle with conservatives for control
of that denomination was over. "And what we need to explore, in my opinion,
is, Where do we go from here?" he said.
He said a common effort among moderate
Baptists could cooperate with other groups, including African- American
and European Baptists, and even, he said, the Southern Baptist Convention.
In the interview, with four reporters
at the Georgia World Congress Center, where the fellowship has been meeting,
Mr. Carter said the groups had no plans to merge.
Mr. Carter wrote a widely circulated
letter last October in which he said he could "no longer be associated"
with the 16 million-member convention, the nation's largest Protestant
denomination. His decision followed the convention's revision of its basic
statement of faith. Among the changes was a provision stating that women
should not be allowed to serve as church pastors.
Efforts to reach the Southern Baptist
executive committee in Nashville tonight were not successful.
Earlier today, the fellowship held
its first interfaith dialogue, with Rabbi Michael S. Miller, executive
vice president of the Jewish Community Relations Council of New York. The
topic, how Christians and Jews can "create community through dialogue and
cooperation," struck a highly different note from a controversial resolution
the Southern Baptist Convention adopted five years ago that called for
evangelizing Jews.
R. Alan Culpepper, dean of the McAfee
School of Theology at Mercer University in Atlanta, said he hoped the discussion
would be "the beginning of a new era in Baptist- Jewish relations."
Rabbi Miller, whose council represents
more than 60 Jewish organizations, said many Jews had associated Baptists
with "conversion campaigns." In a brief speech, he called on Baptists to
respect the integrity of Judaism as a faith.
Rabbi Miller's group has been critical
of some Southern Baptist leaders for working with Messianic Jewish groups,
which say Jews can remain Jewish and accept Jesus as the Messiah. The council
has said the groups use deceptive tactics to evangelize Jews, an accusation
Southern Baptist leaders have strongly denied.
The audience of more than 200 people
greeted Rabbi Miller's remarks warmly, applauding him and the others who
spoke.
