Southern Baptist Convention Loses Texas Support

October 31, 2000

Source: The Washington Post

On October 31, 2000, The Washington Post reported that "Texas Baptists dealt a serious blow to the Southern Baptist Convention yesterday, voting to cut off $ 5 million in funds to protest a recent fundamentalist shift in the nation's largest Protestant denomination. Leaders of the Baptist General Convention of Texas, by far the largest of the denomination's state groups, and officials of the Southern Baptist Convention both saw the vote as a moment of truth, a warning that dissatisfaction with the national leadership's attempts to consolidate power could become serious enough to someday split the denomination. 'This is meant to indicate our grave concern over the continuing move of Southern Baptist leaders toward a more fundamentalist position,' said the Rev. Charles Wade, executive director of the Baptist General Convention of Texas. He called some of the leadership's recent decisions 'almost blasphemous.' Southern Baptist leaders who had traveled to the annual state convention in Corpus Christi to lobby Texas leaders were shaken by yesterday's vote. 'It's a very sad day for the Southern Baptists and for the spirit of cooperation,' the Rev. Bill Merrell, spokesman for the Southern Baptist Convention, said after the vote. 'Many see this as the beginning of the endgame in which a new national convention will be formed.'

"The vote follows the defection of hundreds of churches across the country after the central leadership's June vote to ban female pastors and its declaration two years earlier that wives should 'submit graciously' to their husbands. Earlier this month, former president Jimmy Carter mailed a letter to 75,000 Baptists saying he 'can no longer be associated' with the Southern Baptist Convention because the denomination's leadership has become 'increasingly rigid,' imposing a doctrine that 'violates the basic tenets of my Christian faith.'"