CBF TO APPROVE FINDING FOR PRO-HOMOSEXUAL GROUPS; GAY CHURCH LITERATURE FEATURED IN CBF EXHIBIT By Russell D. Moore
ORLANDO, Fla. (BP)--The Cooperative Baptist Fellowship will continue funding a pro-homosexual organization whose booth was prominently featured at the CBF's General Assembly and another group whose immediate past president suggested that homosexuals can be called to the pastorate, according to action taken during the June 30 - July 1 meeting in Orlando, Fla.
Becca Gurney, board member and immediate past president of Baptist Women in Ministry, said that just as the SBC has no right to suggest that God does not call women to the pastorate, she has no right to suggest that God does not call gays and lesbians to the pastorate.
"Who am I to say who God can call and gift for ministry?" she said. "In terms of God calling gays and lesbians, when we start limiting God's call we're in dangerous territory."
Gurney's group will receive $30,000 in funding as a CBF partner ministry.
The Baptist Peace Fellowship of North America, defunded by the CBF Coordinating Council in 1995 for its pro-gay policies and then subsequently refunded, will receive $5,500 from CBF.
Messengers to the General Assembly will vote to approve funding on July 1.
The curriculum, produced and distributed by the Baptist Peace Fellowship and the Alliance of Baptists is entitled "Rightly Dividing the Word of Truth: A Resource for Congregations in Dialogue on Sexual Orientation." The resource affirms same-sex partnerships, denies that the Bible condemns homosexual behavior, and affirms homosexuality as an unchangeable sexual orientation.
The curriculum was endorsed by former CBF moderator Carolyn Weatherford Crumpler, Tim Clifton, president of the Central Baptist Theological Seminary and Kyle Childress, pastor of Austin Heights Baptist Church in Texas.
The resource features articles by gay rights advocates such as Peggy Campolo and Mahan Siler, and includes a testimony by Jeff Cornett, a homosexual member of Oakhurst Baptist Church in Decatur, Ga., a congregation recently disfellowshipped by the Georgia Baptist Convention for its pro-gay stance. It also features examples of congregations who are "welcoming and affirming" to gays and lesbians. These include Binkley Memorial Baptist Church in Wake Forest and Pullen Memorial Baptist Church in Raleigh, both disfellowshipped by the SBC in the 1990s for their pro-gay church policies.
Ken Sehested, executive director of the Baptist Peace Fellowship, said that the advocacy of gay marriage and ordination is "a parallel to the civil rights movement" and can no longer be ignored by Baptists.
Sehested said that the Bible nowhere condemns homosexuality as a sin. The biblical passages SBC conservatives point to speak of "power relationships with minors," he said, not consensual adult gay sex. Even if the Bible does prohibit homosexuality in some places, he argued, "in the end it becomes a discussion of the larger text of Scripture." Pointing to the recent divorce of former SBC president Charles Stanley, Sehested said that conservatives "ignore with impunity" some of the implications of their own "literalist reading" of the Bible.
"The church has always wrestled with some parts of Scripture over other parts," he said. "If we're all honest, we all pick and choose what fits our experience."
Referring to the 1995 SBC resolution expressing regret for the sin of slavery, Sehested said, "150 years from now, the SBC will have a statement of confession over homophobia."
Sehested said that gay marriages or same-sex covenant unions would reduce the reputation the homosexual community has for transient relationships with multiple partners.
"The reason gays are promiscuous is because it is underground and taboo," he explained. "When these covenants are honored, you will see no more promiscuity than in the heterosexual community, although we will always have hormones that go awry among our church members."
Sehested said that he believes his organization's advocacy for gay ordination and same-sex unions is "out on a ledge, but it is a ledge we've gotten to because of the Holy Spirit."
He said that he received great support from CBF members who were outraged in 1995 by the Coordinating Council's brief defunding of the Peace Fellowship in the heat of controversy over homosexuality. Sehested called "good news" the fact that CBF Baptists seem increasingly open to discussing issues of "justice" for gays and lesbians.
Stan Hastey, CBF member and director of the Alliance of Baptists, said that he believes the question of gay rights is one that must be faced by Baptist progressives.
"I cannot say that God does not call gay people to ministry," Hastey said. "The Baptist tradition is to call out the called."
Contrary to the SBC's new Baptist Faith and Message article which calls homosexuality a sin, Hastey said "homosexuality is not necessarily sinful."
"I believe in the overwhelming number of cases it is a matter of sexual orientation," Hastey said. "Only part of that number is promiscuous and therefore, just like promiscuous heterosexuals, guilty of sexual sin."
Some CBF leaders, however, are not so willing to speak on the question of gay ordination and same-sex marriage.
"I don't think I'm going to answer that," said CBF leader Carolyn Weatherford Crumpler when asked about these issues. "I'm not gay and I'm not lesbian."
Crumpler refused to say whether she personally considers homosexual behavior a sin.
"I just don't have an answer to that," she said.
In a session on the new Baptist Faith and Message, Annette Hill Briggs, pastor of University Baptist Church in Bloomington, Indiana, told seminar participants that the question of women in the pastorate is only "the very top of the mountain" before "we have to talk about other things that other churches are talking about."
When asked by Baptist Press, Briggs affirmed that she was speaking of gay and lesbian issues in which Baptists are "a few steps behind other denominations."
When asked by Baptist Press to elaborate on her views of homosexuality, Briggs refused.
"I don't want to talk to the press about that," she said. "There is no good thing that could come out of that."
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CBF SPEAKERS DEMAND 'DIVORCE' FROM SBC, LEADERS SUGGEST CHURCHES WATCH BGCTBy Russell D. Moore
ORLANDO, Fla. (BP)--Leaders within the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship denounced the Southern Baptist Convention's newly revised Baptist Faith and Message and several demanded the CBF sever its relationship, during a heated meeting at the shadow denomination's general assembly in Orlando, June 30.
A breakout session on the new Baptist Faith and Message was filled to capacity as participants denounced "that other Baptist body" for a statement they charged with "seeking to recast the image of who Baptists are."
The session was led by CBF Baptist Principles Coordinator Gary Parker who roamed the audience with a microphone soliciting comments and questions from audience members, many of whom called for the CBF to officially break with the SBC.
"This resembles a divorce that is never going to be closed until one side decides to walk away without getting everything he wants," said panel member Annette Hill Briggs, pastor of University Baptist Church in Bloomington, Indiana. "Those churches that still look and feel Southern Baptist are in a quandary," she suggested.
Briggs said that the SBC's theological conservatism is nothing new, but that the Convention is simply "keeping up with Indiana," a state convention whose "history is so sordid." She said that when she became a BSU director in Indiana she "had to sign a statement that you believed in the virgin birth and that women shouldn't be pastors."
Panel member David Hughes, pastor of First Baptist Church, Winston-Salem, N.C., agreed with Briggs' divorce analogy, comparing the SBC and the CBF to "two people living under the same roof who are not speaking to each other."
"It may be time to formalize what is already informally happening," Hughes suggested. "I don't know what my church is going to do and I don't know what the CBF is going to do, but I am no longer a Southern Baptist.
Referring to the question of the CBF's ambiguous denominational status, one session participant suggested that the CBF leadership "has avoided this question for ten years."
"Isn't it time to admit that we're not who they are anymore?" he asked.
Another audience member asked Parker about rumors that the Baptist General Convention of Texas is considering severing ties with the SBC. "Shouldn't we consider hooking up with them?" she asked.
"We in the CBF will be watching to see what Texas does," Parker said. "Anything that breaks off from the rigid fundamentalist control of Baptist life in America is a good thing."
Parker handed out copies of a document entitled "What's All the Fuss About?: An Analysis of the New 'Baptist Faith and Message' Statement and What It Could Mean for You and Your Church." The pamphlet, written by Parker, charged the BF&M with being "more authority, less freedom; more book, less Jesus; more male, less female."
The pamphlet states that since the Bible "displays an internal tension over the issue of women in ministry," Baptists "should take care when we try to use it to prove our particular case." It counsels CBF members to "ask yourself if you and/or your church want to continue to participate in and fund a denomination that discourages, distorts or even seeks to deny the doctrine of soul competency or priesthood of the believer even as it elevates the authority of the pastor."
The information suggested that churches form "denominational relations committees" and to "examine your budget to see how much money you send" to the Cooperative Program since "when you fund the SBC through the Cooperative Program, you're helping to pay for the theology of the new Baptist Faith and Message to be spread."
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MOHLER IS RIGHT, SCF MEMBERS SAY ON QUESTION OF BIBLICAL AUTHORITY
By Russell D. Moore
ORLANDO, Fla. (BP)--Even in their outrage over the 2000 Baptist Faith and Message statement, many Cooperative Baptist Fellowship members at the group's General Assembly could find one area of agreement with SBC conservatives.
The question of biblical authority is "what it all comes down to" in the debate over the new confessional statement.
Stan Hastey, CBF member and head of the Alliance of Baptists, also agreed with conservatives who maintain that the BF&M discussion demonstrates that the inerrancy controversy was theological and not just political.
"Al Mohler is right," Hastey said. "It has been a battle for the Bible and is about the inspiration and authority of the Bible."
Calling the Bible "everything it claims to be, but nothing more," Hastey suggested that Baptist adherence to the Reformation principle of Scripture alone as final authority has proven not to provide "an adequate basis of authority for Baptists." The inerrantists in the SBC, he said, "cannot abide the discomfort of the discrepancies in Scripture."
Hastey said that differences with conservatives go beyond the question of biblical inerrancy. When asked whether those who do not come to faith in Christ will go to hell, Hastey replied, "I don't know." He said he believes that Jesus is the fullest revelation of God, but, unlike the SBC leadership, he does not believe this means "we ought to be aggressive in evangelizing those in world religions."
Longtime CBF leader Carolyn Weatherford Crumpler said she agrees that the differences between the SBC and the CBF over the new Baptist Faith and Message represent a fundamental difference between the two groups' views of authority.
"We see our authority in Christ," Crumpler said. "Southern Baptists see their authority in the Bible."
"I know Jesus personally," Crumpler maintained, when asked what she knows of Jesus apart from Scripture.
Gary Parker, CBF Baptist Principles Coordinator, said that CBF Baptists and SBC Baptists have "two different visions of Jesus." The new Baptist Faith and Message is "a denigration of Jesus," he said.
"There is a place to call this heresy," Parker said of the BF&M's assertion that the Bible is itself God's revelation and not merely a record of God's revelation.
"I may become a Christian and never see a Bible," Parker asserted. "Peter at Pentecost preached out of his own experience with Christ."
Rev. Kristina Yeatts, associate pastor of First Baptist Church, Clayton, N. C., agreed with the messenger to this June's SBC meeting who asserted that the Bible is inspired and points to Christ, but is nonetheless "just a book."
"They [SBC conservatives] says it is God's word, fully inspired, everything it says we should do," she said. "But it is a book with the biases and traditions of biblical days."
"It is a book to guide us, but it's just a book," she said.
Like Hastey, Yeatts said her disagreement with SBC conservatives extends to questions of evangelism and the exclusivity of Christ as well.
"I believe you need to have a personal relationship with Christ, but I would never say someone couldn't be led to him in other ways," she said. "Jews and Buddhists are missing out because they are not Christians, but I wouldn't say they are not going to heaven. I know if I was in the same situation I would take great offense if someone told me that."
Karen Massey, professor at Mercer University's McAfee School of Theology and board member of Baptist Women in Ministry, agreed that the controversy is about the Bible.
"God's Spirit blows where it will," she said. "If we're all honest, we all pick and choose what fits our experience" from different passages of Scripture.
"Unfortunately, Baptists have seen God defined just by Scripture," she said. "God is bigger than the Bible."
Amy Joyner, a Wake Forest Divinity School student from Sanford, N.C. agrees that her view of the Bible is quite different from that of the Southern Baptist leadership.
"They act like you can't be a Christian and believe in evolution, for instance," she said. "The Bible is not a science book. It is a book of faith."
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CBF AFFILIATED GROUPURGES WOMEN TO LEAVE THE SBC By Russell D. Moore
ORLANDO, Fla. (BP)--Frustration with the newly revised Baptist Faith and Message characterized the annual meeting of Baptist Women in Ministry, an organization of female ministers that advocates the ordination of women to the pastorate.
In an issue of the organization's Folio magazine distributed to participants at the worship service held at College Park Baptist Church in Orlando, Fla., Rev. Raye Nell Dyer, president of BWIM, took issue with the SBC's assertion that God calls to the pastorate only men as qualified by Scripture.
"This kind of exclusion is why many of us are no longer Southern Baptist," the statement read.
An accompanying article by Linda McKinnish Bridges, professor of New Testament at Baptist Theological Seminary, was even more direct. She urged women in the SBC to leave the denomination and "travel on, sister."
"Now, my dear sister, please know that you can leave the family farm," Bridges contends. "Leave home. You will be fine. There are other places waiting for your leadership."
Held in conjunction with the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship General Assembly, the worship service represented irritation with their Southern Baptist heritage and, at times, with the apostle Paul.
The worship service featured a sermon by Carolyn Gordon, Director of Ministries for Higher Education for the DC Baptist Convention, on the sufficiency of God's grace. Gordon encouraged the women to "soar" in keeping with God's promises, remembering that "Her grace" is enough for them. The crowd roared when Gordon joked about her choice of a Pauline epistle as her text for the morning.
"I'm reluctant to use Paul," she said. "He has not been our friend lately."
One BWIM member told Baptist Press that the service was especially important as Cooperative Baptist women seek to respond to the SBC's new confessional statement.
"We are taking Jesus' view of women over Paul's," said Rev. Kristina Yeatts, associate pastor of First Baptist Church, Clayton, N.C. "Adrian Rogers and Al Mohler are focusing way too much on the apostle Paul's letter rather than Jesus ... . We're talking about the Son of God vs. a biblical writer."
Yeatts said that conservative appeals to biblical texts which restrict the pastorate to men fail to take into account the fact that the Bible contains the cultural biases of its context and human authorship.
"Biblical scholars wrote the Bible and anytime there is a human involved there are going to be some biases," she said. "The Bible is God's holy word, but we should interpret in light of tradition and the particular circumstances going on. We should never put the Bible on a pedestal."
Yeatts also expressed disappointment with the Baptist Faith and Message's condemnation of legalized abortion.
"Abortion is a tough subject, but women should have the right to choose," she said. "We should be careful when we take the life of a child, but the decision is the woman's."
BWIM board members told Baptist Press that the SBC's new confessional statement "has nothing to do with us."
"We charge ahead with preaching and the sacraments," said Karen Massey, BWIM board member and professor at Mercer University's McAfee School of Theology. "What is sad for me is the generation coming after us."
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