''Mud Slinging'' Continues between BWA and SBC
Six months after the separation between the BWA and SBC finalized, the event is still making headlines as moderate and conservative leaders battle over lucrative funds from individual Southern Baptist churches.
The split between the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) and the Baptist World Alliance (BWA) topped religion and Christianity charts as one of the most historic events in 2004. Now, six months after the separation finalized, the event is still making headlines as moderate and conservative leaders battle over lucrative funds from individual Southern Baptist churches.
In a letter dated Dec. 21, Duke McCall, a former president of the BWA and avid supporter of the alliance within the SBC, said conservative leaders “opened the door” for solicitations within SBC churches for funding the BWA.
"You should have told the SBC Executive Committee that severing connections with the BWA would leave us free to ask Southern Baptist churches and individuals to replace the funds withheld," McCall wrote in an open letter to Morris Chapman, a conservative SBC leader who criticized McCall for soliciting funds for the BWA earlier in the month.
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Chapman, president of the SBC Executive Committee, said to the Baptist Press on Dec. 13 that the efforts by McCall and other retired SBC leaders to raise leaders for the BWA from SBC churches are “astounding and regrettable.” The pro-BWA leaders met in Atlanta on Dec. 4 and launched an effort to raise support for the BWA from SBC churches, despite the SBC’s summer decision to break all ties with the BWA.
The SBC’s decision to break its 99-year relationship with the BWA, an international fellowship of Baptist churches the SBC helped create in 1905, was an event that was long in the making. Talks to split began two years ago, following the BWA’s consideration of the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship (CBF) as a member church. The CBF, a theologically moderate denomination that branched off from the SBC in the early 1990s, has been at odds with the larger denomination since it came into existence. The BWA pointed to this fact as the reason for the split; the SBC, meanwhile, said the division was a result of the liberalization of the BWA’s theologies.
Whatever the reason for the split, the separation between the two massive Baptist bodies heightened tensions between the moderate and conservative factions within the SBC. McCall, one of the “who’s who” of moderate Southern Baptists, had rallied support for the BWA (as well as the CBF) for years before the break. Conservative leaders such as Chapman championed the efforts to pass the resolution to cease fellowship and funding to the BWA.
During the Dec. 4 meeting of more moderate Southern Baptists, McCall reminded individual churches that they are free to support the BWA, even if the denomination as a whole cut relations with the international body.
In response, Chapman charged the BWA leadership of being “moderate leaning” and “opposed to the best interests of Southern Baptists.”
"When you connect the dots, it is clear that the BWA leadership will remain moderate-leaning in its relationships and theology and opposed to the best interests of Southern Baptists," Chapman wrote.
"Now former leaders of the Southern Baptist Convention have come out of retirement to ask churches to give to the BWA, a request they never would have made when they were SBC leaders, leading organizations that were dependent largely upon Cooperative Program gifts," Chapman said in his statement. "That they would be willing to call for anything that has the potential to decrease Cooperative Program giving in favor of support to an organization outside the convention is astounding and regrettable."
"BWA officials were never told they could not solicit funds from local churches and individuals," Chapman added. "They were told, however, if they did solicit funds, they could not expect to continue an ongoing exchange of good will and fellowship with the Southern Baptist Convention, a desire they had expressed in the process of the convention's withdrawal."
Chapman also accused the BWA general secretary Denton Lotz personally for organizing the Dec. 4 meeting.
“If there were any doubts in the minds of Southern Baptists about the moderate theological perspective embraced by BWA staff leadership, the latest action of the BWA general secretary is enough to dispel those doubts," Chapman said.
"It seems that at every turn, Denton Lotz is working to undermine the missions, ministries and theology of Southern Baptists," Chapman added.
However, McCall defended Lotz, reminding Chapman that Lotz was an observer – not the convener – of the event. McCall also accused Chapman of “inventing charges” of liberalism against the BWA and Lotz, in order to pass the resolution earlier in the year. SBC leaders misinterpreted the views of Lotz and of the BWA, he said.
Chapman “attacks Dr. Denton Lotz, the general secretary of the Baptist World Alliance, with innuendoes and untruths. Lotz is a biblical fundamentalist, as am I, who believes the Bible should be read under the guidance of the Holy Spirit. The Bible is not an ammunition dump of verses and phrases to defend one's turf or attack opponents."
"Remember, 'mud slung is ground lost,'" McCall added. "The SBC is a great body of Christians who ought to make decisions on the basis of truth."
McCall pressed that the real reason for the break was the BWA’s acceptance of the CBF.
"The truth is that Chapman and his colleagues were members of the BWA General Council," McCall wrote. "But they could not run the BWA as they do the SBC."
McCall added that he worked “with or against” almost “every Southern Baptist leader in the 20th century,” including ultra-fundamentalists.
"I have never questioned the integrity of any of them…," he wrote, but he added that “this new gang plays rough and twists the truth into lies."
Meanwhile, in the latest exchange of words, Chapman wrote that McCall is “parroting what he has been told by BWA officials.”
"I regret that McCall chose to speak against the decision of the committee and the convention and in support of the BWA, but I honor his right to do so. At the same time, his personal attack upon the integrity of the committee members and the process is unwarranted. McCall is speaking from a vacuum. He has not been an active participant in the BWA in recent years. He is parroting what he has been told by BWA officials. In contrast, most of the study committee members have been active participants in the BWA and have had close interaction with those from whom McCall is getting his information,” Chapman wrote in his Dec. 29 statement.
"Contrary to McCall's accusations, members of the study committee had no reason to "invent charges" and "twist the truth into lies," said Chapman. "His charge that the committee recommended withdrawal because its members could not run the BWA has no basis in fact."
