Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, September 25, 1993 TAG: 9309250012
SECTION: RELIGION PAGE: A7 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: CODY LOWE STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Isam E. Ballenger - former pastor, missionary, administrator and now seminary professor - says the denomination is "still powerfully strong."
Ballenger was in Roanoke earlier this week as the guest speaker for the annual Harry Y. Gamble Life Renewal Series at Roanoke's Calvary Baptist Church.
He is now professor of Christian mission and world religions at Baptist Theological Seminary in Richmond.
The seminary was started by Southern Baptist "moderates" as an alternative to the denominationally controlled seminaries, now overseen by the dominant "conservative" faction.
In an interview earlier this week, Ballenger said that even Southern Baptists who weary of the doctrinal fighting are hesitant to leave a denomination they've been loyal to for decades.
Alternatives, such as the moderate Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, "have some support, but it's not massive."
"What I fear," Ballenger said, "is that people will acquiesce - will continue to be a program-driven people" rather than focusing on what he sees as the call of the gospel to participate in ministry themselves.
By donating to the home and foreign mission programs, Southern Baptists have participated vicariously in spreading the Gospel, often without feeling an obligation to get personally involved.
For years, he said, Southern Baptists would send money and missionaries "to Africa when they would not accept blacks in our own churches."
Ballenger - who served as a missionary in Africa and Europe before becoming a vice president of the Foreign Mission Board - said he hopes Southern Baptists are moving toward "more emphasis on local missions."
For all Southern Baptists - all Christians, for that matter - "the center is in Jesus."
The example of Christ is someone "who is not a bigot . . . extremely accepting of people, very attached to the poor.
"What he was is what the church ought to be."
Ballenger said "part of the tragedy" in the Southern Baptist war "is that we've divided our house over things that are not as important as the things that should concern us."
Ballenger said students at the Richmond seminary are training for "creative ministries" that include bi-vocational ministries - in which the minister holds a second secular job to earn a living - and social-work ministries.
"We need to be meeting people where they are with the needs that they have."
That means including elements of newer theological trends, such as liberation and feminist theology.
Those are trends that tend to draw the ire of conservatives who reject the new views of Scripture and revisionist perspectives on the teachings of Christ.
The real problem with fundamentalism, Ballenger believes, is its insistence on "making Western culture the church."
"The church has to be the church. The nation is not the church. Society is not the church.
"America is not a Christian nation,' Ballenger said. It is a pluralist society that includes people of almost every religious faith who should be free to exercise their faith.
"Children should not have to feel discriminated against because they are not Christians," Ballenger said.
"I hope to see more impact of the church on society," Ballenger said. That must come not through intimidation or coercion by the majority "but because the church is an attractive group of people" whose example changes the rest of the world.
by CNB