THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, November 17, 1995 TAG: 9511170233
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B3 EDITION: NORTH CAROLINA
SOURCE: BY GARY D. ROBERTSON, ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: RALEIGH LENGTH: Medium: 57 lines
The patriarch of North Carolina's conservative Southern Baptists said Thursday he had little to do with the election of a like-minded convention president for the first time in two decades.
Stunned moderates on the floor of the Baptist State Convention claimed Paige Patterson quietly brought scores of seminary students to the meeting to squeeze out a 96-vote victory for Hendersonville minister Gregory Mathis.
Patterson helped orchestrate the 1979 takeover of the Southern Baptist Convention by conservatives, and has revived struggling Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary since becoming its president in 1992.
Patterson said he has always urged students to attend the annual meeting of the state convention, held this week in Winston-Salem. He said the conservative victory only reflects changing times among the 1.2 million Tar Heel Baptists.
``It's a new day for us in North Carolina,'' Patterson said from his seminary office in Wake Forest.
``We always encourage professors to allow students an excused absence to go the convention as an educational experience. They are going to one day be involved in managing the life of the denomination.''
Patterson, who did not attend the convention meetings because of a speaking engagement in Florida, said all he did was ``pray and stood back and watched.''
All Southern Baptists in North Carolina can attend the annual meeting. But to vote, they must be part of their local church's official delegation. A specified number of delegates is allocated to each congregation.
Some seminary students attend the meeting as voting delegates representing their home churches.
The election of Mathis, a preacher at Mud Creek Baptist Church, is the first presidential victory for conservatives at the state level since the 1979 conservative takeover of the national convention.
Mathis defeated the Rev. Dewey Hobbs by a vote of 2,488-2,392.
Conservatives - also known as fundamentalists - believe in a literal interpretation of the Bible. Moderates think scripture is subject to interpretation.
The chasm has led to a sharp rift and differing opinions over evangelism, missions and Sunday school literature programs within the state's largest denomination. Moderates - who have claimed intolerance by conservatives - have started sending offerings that used to go to the national denomination to a breakaway group instead. ILLUSTRATION: ASSOCIATED PRESS photo
Paige Patterson has revived struggling Southeastern Baptist
Theological Seminary since becoming its president in 1992.
by CNB