Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, February 22, 1992 TAG: 9202220359
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: E-3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: CODY LOWE
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
BAPTISTS GRAPPLE WITH HOMOSEXUALITY
Surviving the "Battle over the Bible" may have been a lark compared to what the Southern Baptist Convention seems to be facing today.The denomination has held together through more than a decade of often bitter infighting over interpretation of the Bible and control of national agencies and institutions.
What the membership had avoided was the one issue - homosexuality - that has divided almost every other major Christian denomination in the United States.
Now, that once untouchable issue threatens - albeit in an oblique way - the mighty missions structure that is the Southern Baptist Convention.
The most serious threat is not from the inevitable confrontations over what the Scriptures say or don't say about homosexuality. After all, this is one denomination in which there truly would be near-unanimity of belief on the sinfulness of homosexual activity.
The danger to the denomination lies instead in the response of the national convention leadership to individual churches' debates and decisions on homosexuality.
The issue came to a head last Tuesday when the Executive Committee of the convention decided it needed to respond to the actions - or more appropriately, the deliberations - of two churches in North Carolina.
A Raleigh church is struggling with a request from a member to be joined in a public ceremony of homosexual union; a Chapel Hill congregation is considering licensing a gay man to preach.
For their audacity, one member of the Executive Committee offered a motion that would have said that from now on, congregations that want to affiliate with the Southern Baptist Convention have to act on their beliefs in ways prescribed by the national body.
Currently, the requirements for membership in the convention are summed up in the bylaws as churches "in friendly cooperation with this Convention and sympathetic with its purposes and work" and that have been "bona fide contributor[s] to the Convention's work."
The motion would have amended those bylaws to allow the convention to refuse to seat messengers from the North Carolina congregations for their "unscriptural moral behavior" and "aberration."
Though the Executive Committee didn't act on the bylaws motion other than to refer it to a subcommittee for study, the suggestion reflects the worst nightmares of the minority moderate faction - that fundamentalist control would mean the imposition of doctrinal tests for inclusion.
Concluding that the churches are "unfriendly" or "unsympathetic" based on their positions on sexuality seems to be stetching the point, especially if they continue voluntarily to give to the missions programs of the convention.
The committee did approve at its Tuesday meeting - with only one dissenting vote - a second motion condemning homosexuality.
The Executive Committee is a 71-member body elected to do the work of the denomination between national conventions. Its powers are limited, but its influence is substantial.
So, even though the proposed bylaws change would require approval from two consecutive annual meetings of the convention and may not seem likely, its very proposal strikes at the heart of Southern Baptist polity.
The monolithic structure of the 15 million-member denomination has always been delicately balanced.
The reason for banding together in 1845 was to pool resources of money and people to spread the Gospel of Jesus Christ to those who had not had a chance to hear it.
But, individual congregations were accountable to no other group on matters of belief or polity.
As one Roanoke Valley pastor put it, the committee seems to have "picked the right issue" for an attack on that principle.
A vast majority of fundamentalist and moderate churches would assent in any condemnation of homosexual practice.
And by setting a precedent for one issue, the fundamentalist majority would "open up a door" for setting further doctrinal exclusions.
Who is to say, the pastor asked, whether next time the committee would consider a suggestion to bar the ordination of divorcees, for instance?
In recent months, some of the convention's most cherished institutions have suffered the tarnish of family battles.
The moderate Southern Baptist Fellowship, for instance, is reporting that missionaries are responding by the scores to an offer to switch their allegiance from the convention's Foreign Mission Board to the Fellowship.
As the battles continue, one has to wonder whether or not further assaults on the historic bedrock of the denomination can be withstood.
Its constitution proclaims in Article IV, "the Convention does not claim and will never attempt to exercise any authority over any other Baptist body, whether church, auxiliary organizations, associations, or convention."
Fundamentalist and moderate Southern Baptists have every reason to worry about whether that principle will be upheld.