c. 2006 Religion News Service

(UNDATED) With years of moderate-conservative fights behind them, Southern Baptists will meet in Greensboro, N.C., prepared for possible debate on issues of division within their solidly conservative ranks.

The annual meeting June 13-14, unlike many in the recent past, has a contested race for president. Arkansas megachurch pastor Ronnie Floyd announced his plans to run for the position last month, as did South Carolina pastor Frank Page.

Fueled by the recent introduction of blogs into Baptist dialogue, some Baptists are questioning whether the denomination has narrowed too far with new policies on overseas missionaries and a rescinded attempt to remove a mission board trustee who criticized those rules.

Supporters and critics alike acknowledge that the convention will occur during a time of disputes within the nation’s largest Protestant denomination.

“While the sounds of battle have quieted in our convention, we are struggling to find how to operate in times of peace,” wrote Anthony L. Jordan, executive director-treasurer of the Baptist General Convention of Oklahoma in a May column in The Baptist Messenger, the state Baptist newspaper.

Robert Parham, executive director of the Baptist Center for Ethics, said the denomination’s conservative leaders no longer have a “common enemy” in moderate Baptists.

“Fundamentalists historically have intense battles within their own fortress once they have jettisoned moderates, and this is a continuation of that historical pattern,” he said.

Floyd, of Springdale, Ark., has received endorsements from three of the denomination’s six seminary presidents, which prompted a blog from the president of the SBC Executive Committee that questioned whether it is appropriate for such leaders to weigh in on elections.

Bloggers and news commentaries in Baptist circles have noted that Floyd’s church does not commit as much to the Cooperative Program, the centralized budgeting plan of the denomination, as Page’s church in Taylors, S.C.

The Rev. Bill Leonard, dean of the Wake Forest University Divinity School, said the Cooperative Program has become one of the many “splinter issues” the Southern Baptists are facing.

“It’s not `This guy has a bad theology,”’ said Leonard, who is based in Winston-Salem, N.C. “It’s `His theology is with us but his money isn’t.”’

Much of the discussion has been driven by blogs that have been particularly active since the denomination’s International Mission Board attempted to remove a trustee who questioned some of the board’s new policies as an overemphasis on “nonessential doctrines.”

That trustee, Oklahoma pastor Wade Burleson, has announced on his blog that he plans to submit a motion during the annual meeting calling for an investigation of recent actions by the board.

Southern Baptists also could continue their debate over how they should relate to public schools.

Proposed resolutions on that topic have not succeeded in recent years, though a 2005 statement on schools included a reference to “negative influences” in the culture, including gay activism in the nation’s schools. This year, some of the same key supporters of further distance from public schools have proposed a resolution that encourages Southern Baptist agencies to “assist churches in the development of exit strategies from the government schools.”

A countering pastoral letter, developed by Parham’s organization and signed by more than 200 mostly Southern Baptist leaders urged “a halt to the demonization of public schools.”

Even as they find numerous points of difference, Baptists continue to give some attention at their annual meeting to evangelism and missions. In honor of the most well-known Southern Baptist evangelist, officials will unveil a larger-than-life bronze statue of Billy Graham.

And between the votes and debates, ministers will baptize new converts to highlight outgoing President Bobby Welch’s goal of 1 million baptisms.

Though some doubt the campaign will be numerically successful, Kenyn Cureton, a spokesman for the SBC Executive Committee, hopes that emphasis and certain speeches during the meeting will refocus Baptists on what unites rather than divides them.

“When we begin navel-gazing, we start looking inside and we start picking at one another over marginal issues,” he said. “That is not productive. … “What (Southern Baptists are) going to hear is an appeal not to let the distractions sidetrack us. Let’s stay on mission.”

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