ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, November 17, 1996 TAG: 9611160015
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
COLUMN: The Back Pew
SOURCE: CODY LOWE
Baptists are often maligned, frequently misunderstood, always interesting.
This year's annual meeting of the Baptist General Association of Virginia, held last week in Richmond, was no exception to the latter of those descriptions.
Journalists who cover the denomination in Virginia have some tough times ahead, though. Now that there are two such competing groups in the state.
In addition to the General Association, now there is an organization called Southern Baptist Conservatives of Virginia. It's going to be hard to sort out sometimes.
For years, staunchly independent Southern Baptists have associated with each other at various levels.
All start with the local congregation.
For Baptists of every stripe, the local church answers to no one but God. Well, occasionally, the largest contributor or the family with the longest history will try to make everybody else answer to them, but that rarely works.
But for a couple of centuries now, those independent, autonomous congregations have figured that, for some purposes there is strength in numbers. So, they formed voluntary associations with other like-minded congregations to support missionaries, start new churches and organize colleges and hospitals.
Those were largely local groups, in one city or county. They then joined with others to form state groups - often called conventions. Later there was a national group, which split just before the Civil War to give us the Southern Baptist Convention.
At the time, outnumbered by many other denominations, nobody would have guessed that one day it would lay claim to the title "largest Protestant denomination in the United States."
Today, churches that "cooperate" with the Southern Baptist Convention have almost 16 million members. And that includes more than 1,500 congregations in Virginia.
Up until this year, the denomination was divided into a series of relatively tidy compartments. Each state - or small group of states - had its own convention.
This year, Virginia broke that mold. Some congregations that were unhappy with the existing state convention - the Baptist General Association - discovered that there was nothing stopping them from starting a second state convention right here. Thus, the Southern Baptist Conservatives of Virginia.
Some of the state's Southern Baptists - in each group - predicted that the two conventions would create one more cause for trouble. But, at this early stage of the game, that doesn't appear to be the case.
When the Southern Baptist Conservatives held their session in which they voted for independence, they conducted a harmonious meeting, free from the occasional rancor toward the "liberal" Baptist General Association heard previously.
Last week's meeting of the General Association, likewise, was almost without reference to the "fundamentalists" who had left to form their own convention.
Perhaps this new-found freedom will be the ticket to prosperity for both groups. More than one speaker at the General Association meeting last week acknowledged - out loud and in public - that some, actually many, of their churches are not healthy.
Some estimate that 70 percent to 80 percent of them are either not growing, or actually declining in membership.
In presenting a plan to reorganize the state association's professional staff and program, one speaker acknowledged something that the now-separate conservatives have been saying for years.
"We're losing Virginia. Will this plan work? I don't know. But what we've been doing has not been working very well." It was the kind of comment that wouldn't have been easy to make - for fear of too hearty an "Amen" - when the most adamantly conservative churches were still attending the General Association meetings.
But now - inside a family that seems predominantly in agreement - it can be.
Another sign of the times was the General Association's decision to nd a nearly half-century association with Americans United for Separation of Church and State.
It is easy to imagine that, in years past, the "moderate" majority in the association would have resisted any effort to do that, labeling it as just another "fundamentalist" effort to oppose the long-cherished Baptist doctrine of separation of church and state. This year, the divorce was overwhelmingly approved.
One tradition - a cherished and valuable tradition - that these Baptists weren't going to give up, though, is open debate.
They give more than lip service to the doctrine of the priesthood of the believer - that each Christian, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, may discern the will of God in his or her life. They may disagree about the authenticity of that guidance, but they talk - and they listen - to each other.
It's a delightful, comforting, inspiring thing to watch.
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