Carter, Clinton Build Coalition To Attract Moderate Baptists
By ALAN COOPERMAN
The Washington Post
Published: Jan 22, 2007
WASHINGTON - Former Presidents Carter and Clinton are leading an effort to forge dozens of small and medium-size, black and white Baptist organizations into a robust coalition that would serve as a counterweight to the conservative Southern Baptist Convention.
The giant SBC, with more than 16 million members, has long dominated the political, theological and social landscape among Baptists, often spawning resentment among smaller Baptist groups. It also has been closely aligned with the Republican Party.
The new coalition, which is Carter's brainchild, would give moderate Baptists a stronger collective voice and could provide Democrats greater entree into the Baptist community. But Carter and other organizers are trying to walk a fine line, insisting that the alliance is not directly political while touting its potential to recast the role of religion in the public square.
"We hope ... to emphasize the common commitments that bind us together rather than to concentrate on the divisive issues that separate us," Carter said. "There's too much of an image in the Baptist world, and among non-Christians, that the main, permeating characteristic of Christian groups is animosity toward one another and an absence of ability to cooperate in a spirit of brotherhood and sisterhood."
The Rev. Richard Land, head of the SBC's Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, said the smaller Baptist groups are in "a search for significance and relevance." He also scoffed at the idea that the new coalition would be nonpartisan.
"I'm not going to question their motives. I just know that if I were them, I would be concerned about how it might appear to many people, the timing," Land said. "Purportedly they're going to hold a convention of several thousand people in Atlanta in early 2008, hosted by two former Democratic presidents, one of whom has a wife seeking the Democratic presidential nomination. Some would see that as an overtly political activity."
Carter and Clinton were raised as Southern Baptists but have expressed dismay over the SBC's increasingly conservative bent since traditionalists defeated modernists in a struggle for control of the denomination in the 1970s and '80s.
The leadership battle, which raged over issues such as biblical inerrancy, temperance, homosexuality, abortion and women's role in the church, culminated in 2000 with revisions to the "Baptist Faith and Message" that barred women from serving as pastors and called for wives to "submit graciously" to the leadership of their husbands.
Carter stopped calling himself a Southern Baptist that year. Clinton attended a Methodist church during his years in the White House.
On Jan. 9 at the Carter Center in Atlanta, the two ex-presidents brought together the heads of 40 Baptist denominations and organizations to launch a yearlong organizing effort that they hope will climax with the celebration of a "New Baptist Covenant" in early 2008. Clinton described himself as just a "cheerleader" for the effort and declined to be interviewed.
One of the main organizers, William Underwood, president of Mercer University in Atlanta, said the covenant's members will spend the coming months identifying joint projects to undertake in international aid, domestic poverty relief and missionary work.
"We're not against any other group of people of faith," he said. |
