ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, February 23, 1997 TAG: 9702210028
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: BLACKSBURG
SOURCE: CODY LOWE STAFF WRITER
With more than 40,000 affiliated congregations and nearly 16 million members, the conservative Southern Baptist Convention may not miss the 30 to 45 folks who regularly attend Sunday services at Glade Baptist Church here.
But Glade's recent decision to formally dissolve a quarter-century association with the national convention was an important symbolic step for the congregation, its leaders say.
It also demonstrated that the ramifications of almost two decades of Southern Baptist denominational conflict continue to be felt in individual congregations, even though the power struggle appears to be settled at the national level.
The break "really has been coming for several years," said Edward Sewell, the church trustee who proposed the resolution ending the relationship.
Sewell headed a committee that studied the issue for several months before the congregation voted on the separation at a business meeting Jan. 22.
The split was rooted in a long-standing "discomfort with SBC stands against traditional Baptists' most basic beliefs," Sewell said.
The vote to separate was "a matter of conscience," said the Rev. Kelly Sisson, the church's pastor since August 1993. It was intended to make clear that the congregation does not condone the conservative positions or actions of the national denomination.
"There is nothing more liberating than historic Baptist principles," Sisson said, but in its resolution dissolving the relationship, the church said the national denomination "has consistently moved away from [those principles] ... including religious liberty, the priesthood of every believer, and the autonomy of the local church."
"It became a problem to say, `I'm a Baptist,' because of the public's perception" of the Southern Baptist Convention, said Dale Jenkins, a Glade deacon who also heads the Christian-education program at Bluefield College.
Instances of what church members considered offensive statements and actions by convention leaders go back three decades, said Sisson, who was a member of the church while she was a student at Virginia Tech in the early 1980s.
Glade's departure, however, is more directly the result of a shift in denominational leadership that dates back 18 years.
At that time, a group of theologically conservative activists in the denomination declared their intention of attempting to assume its leadership, which they believed had become too liberal.
Their strategy was to win the denomination's presidency and use that office to appoint like-minded theological conservatives to head the denomination's boards, agencies and seminaries.
They won their first presidential election in 1979, and haven't lost one since. Those presidents in turn expected their appointees to affirm and promote a set of theological fundamentals.
Those included the belief that the Bible is "inerrant and infallible" - meaning that it contains no errors of fact, history, science or theology, and will not lead a believer to error; that all the miracles in the Bible occurred as described; that the authors traditionally ascribed to the books of the Bible did, in fact, write them; and that Adam and Eve were real people and not mythological representations of the first humans.
In the years following the conservatives' assumption of control, they led the denomination to take some positions that more moderate or liberal Southern Baptists - including those at Glade Church - found disturbing.
Those included what Sewell described as "stupid statements" by the denomination's presidents over the years, such as the contention that "God doesn't hear the prayers of Jews," which was later retracted.
A few years ago, the national denomination altered its bylaws to allow it to exclude from membership any churches that ordained homosexuals or were perceived as promoting homosexuality. At least two churches - one in North Carolina and one in California - promptly were booted out of the denomination on those grounds.
Prior to that, membership was based on a presumption of "cooperation" by any congregation that made financial contributions to the denomination's Cooperative Program of missions support.
The addition of a doctrinal requirement for membership in the SBC was troubling to the Blacksburg congregation not only in regard to its position toward gays and lesbians - who are welcomed at Glade - but also for fear that it might signal an inclination to impose other restrictions, such as a prohibition on ordaining women to the ministry.
Current national leaders in the denomination, particularly the new president of its largest seminary, have been outspoken in their opposition to ordaining women, based on their belief that the Bible teaches against it.
Sisson, a 1985 graduate of the Southern Baptist seminary at New Orleans, was the first woman to preach in its chapel, she said. A speaker at the seminary later said that constituted a "demonic" defilement of the chapel.
"We didn't want to become victims" of a denomination that might decide to exclude Glade because its pastor is a woman or because it welcomes gays, Sisson said. "We wanted to decide our own destiny."
For the members of Glade, the denomination's doctrinal requirement about homosexuality also amounted to an affront to one of the most sacred principles of Baptist life - the autonomy of the local church.
Baptist congregations ordain, hire and fire their own pastors; set their own membership requirements; send as much or as little financial support to whatever groups they wish; and may join in voluntary association with any groups they desire.
At the same time, all of those larger Baptist associations - including the Southern Baptist Convention - are free to set their own ground rules for membership.
In its statement of dissolution of the Southern Baptist relationship, Glade members reaffirmed their commitment to a number of other associations.
The church is affiliated with the Highlands Baptist Association, a regional group in the New River Valley; the Baptist General Association of Virginia, the largest association of Southern Baptists in the state; and the Alliance of Baptists, a loose national confederation of congregations estranged from the Southern Baptist Convention.
The church also has links to the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, another organization of disgruntled Southern Baptists. But it feels its strongest affiliation is with the Alliance - generally considered more liberal than the Fellowship.
The Baptist General Association is considered the most strongly "moderate" Southern Baptist state convention in the country, but its executive director, Reginald McDonough, said he expects the majority of its members - unlike Glade - to continue their affiliation with the SBC.
The state group includes some churches, notably a few black congregations, that are not Southern Baptist.
Although a handful of other Southern Baptist churches in the state have left the SBC or set up a dual alignment with another denomination, McDonough said that continues to be rare.
"We have always felt that was a decision the local congregation has to make," McDonough said, and does not affect a church's affiliation with the state body.
"We're here to serve the churches," McDonough said.
While the Baptist General Association continues to represent most Southern Baptist congregations in the state, a rival association - Southern Baptist Conservatives of Virginia - was formed last year by churches that characterize the older state group as too liberal theologically.
William Merrell, vice president of convention relations for the SBC since January 1996, said last week he had not seen Glade's letter of separation. In any case, he said, a letter was not necessary to initiate a divorce from the denomination.
"It's quite possible to say they are not going to be Southern Baptist any more just by stopping support" of the denomination financially, Merrell said.
He said he didn't know of any other congregation sending such a letter, and that he believes "that's quite rare."
At Glade Baptist, reaching the point of official disunion - though it received unanimous support - nonetheless was accompanied by "mixed emotions," Sisson said.
The church includes a number of lifelong Southern Baptists - including Sisson - many of whom "felt some sadness, some sense of loss" in the separation, but who also "mostly felt `thank goodness we did that,''' Sewell said.
In leaving the SBC, the church considered a formal affiliation with an established national denomination, such as the American Baptist Churches or the United Churches of Christ. In the end, they decided not to do that.
"We simply wanted to affirm who we are at Glade," Sisson said. "To join another entity would imply, however subtly, that we are becoming something." For its homebound members, in particular, "we didn't want them to feel that we were becoming something they didn't know."
"We even considered taking `Baptist' out of the church name," Jenkins said. "That might have been attractive to some, but there is so much good about being a Baptist that we decided not to change the name."
The church describes itself as "an open and caring faith community in the free-church tradition where worship is central and diversity is celebrated."
It is typically Baptist in many ways, such as being governed by votes of the congregation and ending Sunday morning worship with an invitation to membership either by a profession of faith and baptism or transfer of a letter of membership from another church.
It is atypical of Baptists in other ways. It does not require baptism by immersion or that the congregation vote to accept new members. Nonmembers - "friends" - are welcome to speak up in all church meetings, though they may not vote. The church portrays itself as "a church to the marginalized" - including homosexuals, all ethnic groups, divorced people, single people and others who may have felt alienated from the church.
"The idea is that the church is about community, not about who to exclude," Jenkins said.
LENGTH: Long : 176 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: GENE DALTON/Staff. 1. Glade Baptist sees itself as "aby CNBchurch to the marginalized" - including homosexuals, all ethnic
groups, divorced people, single people and others who may have felt
alienated from the church. 2. ``We wanted to decide our own
destiny,'' says the Rev. Kelly Sisson, who has been pastor of Glade
Baptist since August 1993. color. 3. Pastor Kelly Sisson chats with
church members after a recent Sunday service.