Atlanta Baptist Association affirms homosexual-friendly congregations

                                                                                                                                              Vol. XIV, No. 3, March 2001

[The Atlanta Baptist Association at a 30 January called meeting voted overwhelmingly to defeat a motion to dismiss two homosexual-friendly churches from membership and fellowship in the association. The following article condenses several Baptist Press releases dealing with the decision and various reactions to it. Bold print has been added for emphasis. TCP]

Oakhurst and Virginia-Highland Baptist Churches first drew national attention to their support of homosexuality during the Nov. 16, 1999, Georgia Baptist Convention when messengers voted overwhelmingly to "withdraw fellowship" from the congregations for "affirming and approving and endorsing homosexual behavior." It marked the first time the GBC had dismissed a church in its 177-year history. In 1992, the SBC had changed its constitution to prohibit membership by churches that "affirm, approve, or endorse homosexual behavior." In recent years the state convention in Texas has cut ties with one member congregation and, earlier, the North Carolina convention cut ties with two congregations over the issue.

Both churches deny homosexuality is a sin, allow practicing homosexuals to hold positions of church leadership, and affirm same-sex blessings.

A motion was made at the 20 March 2000, annual meeting of the association to remove Oakhurst and Virginia-Highland from the 153-congregation association of Southern Baptist churches. The Atlanta association's 253-164 secret-ballot vote to maintain affiliation with the two churches was the result of a nearly year-long dialogue between the congregations and the association's membership team.

The membership team decided that "as an association of churches we do not support or condone homosexual activity, but neither can we support the motion to dismiss two churches with a great history of Christian ministry. Our recommendation is that, while we do not support or condone homosexual activity, we do not affirm the motion to dismiss the churches, and that we pray for the reconciliation of thought and practice in the churches, which will strengthen the bond among us."

A news release issued by the association called the vote a "defining moment for the Atlanta Baptist Association." "In affirming their continued membership in the association, the association does not condone or support homosexuality. It affirms the longstanding Baptist polity of local church autonomy," the news release stated.

James Merritt, president of the Southern Baptist Convention and pastor of the Atlanta-area First Baptist Church, Snellville, said he was shocked to hear about the association's action. "It is a sad commentary on the Atlanta Baptist Association," Merritt told Baptist Press. "They have failed to do their spiritual and moral duty."

Merritt said churches within the association may have "to take a strong look to see if they want to be a part of that kind of association." He was also critical of the association's use of church autonomy. "If this [homosexuality] doesn't disqualify you from membership in the association, what would?" he asked. "Can a church practice open adultery, polygamy, desecration of the Lord's Supper and be a part of the Atlanta Baptist Association? If you tell your members that you can be anything and do anything and hide behind the smokescreen of local autonomy, then you've just emptied your association of all meaning," Merritt said.

Timothy Shirley, senior pastor of Virginia-Highland Baptist Church, told Baptist Press the vote by the association was an affirmation of their ministry. "I believe the decision was certainly an affirmation of what we are trying to do here," Shirley said. Shirley said the inner-city church is affiliated with the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship and the Alliance of Baptists, two breakaway groups from the SBC and its conservative biblical direction. He said the church ended its active affiliation with the SBC in 1992.

The church openly accepts homosexuals as deacons and Sunday school teachers; performs same-sex unions; and recognizes the orientation of homosexuals rather than the lifestyle of homosexuals. "It is our belief at this church that homosexuality is a not lifestyle or behavior," he said. "That indicates someone who can choose what they are. We view it as who you are born as. It is an orientation." [A rationalization to excuse all sin. TCP]

Shirley said the vote to retain fellowship is the first step in outright support of homosexuality within Atlanta's Southern Baptist churches. "We are a long way from being there, but we consider this to be a journey," Shirley said. "I think that when more discoveries are made, the church as a whole will be much more accepting of homosexuals."

Joel Harrison, executive director of the Atlanta Baptist Association, told Baptist Press he doesn't expect its stance on homosexuality to change and called any statements by Shirley premature. Harrison was quick to point out that the vote was not held out of political motivations. "We are not against the Southern Baptist Convention, nor are we against the Georgia Baptist Convention," Harrison told Baptist Press. "The votes, motions and responses dealt strictly with the Atlanta Baptist Association context in which we are located. It was not a vote to say to any other group, `We'll show you.'"

Robert White, executive director of the GBC, said he was saddened by the decision. "The issue that concerns me is that it sends a signal not only to Atlanta and Georgia, but to the nation, that a group of Baptist churches in Atlanta has moved to affirm homosexuality," White said. "This sends a terrible signal." White said the homosexual agenda is seeking victory wherever it can be found and "they got it at the Atlanta Baptist Association meeting."

White, however, pointed out that local church autonomy isn't the issue at all. "... if you take the position of local church autonomy as more important than dealing with the problem of sin, then it creates a very dangerous situation for the church," White said. "Then you have churches that will make their own decisions about whether or not something is a sin."

Reactions:

The Georgia Baptist Convention and the North American Mission Board have announced plans to withdraw funding from the Atlanta Baptist Association. In separate but similar statements, Robert White, executive director of the Georgia convention, and Robert E. Reccord, president of NAMB, expressed comparable reactions to the association action, along with parallel commitments to not remain in partnership with an entity that affirms homosexual behavior.

White announced that the Georgia convention's administration committee voted Feb. 6 "with deep conviction and a profound sense of sorrow to cut off all special request, Bold Mission Thrust, and similar funds to the Atlanta Baptist Association." Also, according to White, the administration committee will recommend to the GBC executive committee in March that the state convention continue its funding of joint missionary personnel through Dec. 31, 2001, but following that date the GBC would fund no work through the Atlanta Baptist Association.

Reccord pledged that NAMB would "stand side by side and shoulder to shoulder with Dr. White and the Georgia Baptist Convention." "We do not believe the church can condone ongoing behaviors that the Scripture clearly labels as sin," Reccord said. "One role of the church in today's society is to serve as a conscience for the community even when it is uncomfortable and unpopular to do so. Some claim that even Christ forgave the woman caught in adultery, but they conveniently forget that he also charged her to 'go and sin no more,'" Reccord said.

NAMB provides approximately $62,000 through the Georgia convention for six career missionaries in the Atlanta association, three of whom serve in inner-city ministry centers, two as associational staff, and one as a church planter. Another six church planters, some of whom are bivocational, receive a financial supplement which totals about $15,000.

Asked if those affected staff would be offered missionary positions elsewhere if necessary, Reccord explained that NAMB's actions have nothing to do with the missionary personnel. "We've taken no action against and cast no aspersions on any of the missionary staff. But one of our mission partners, the Atlanta Baptist Association, has taken an untenable position that will not allow us to continue to fund their work," he said. "Although these missionaries are technically employees of either the state convention or the association, if they request other assignments, we would certainly want to try to help them."

White and the GBC administration committee called on the association to reconsider its action. "It is our prayer," White said, "that the association will recognize the clear statements of the Bible regarding homosexuality as sin and vote to withdraw fellowship" from the two churches, Oakhurst Baptist and Virginia-Highland Baptist.

**************Joel Harrison, executive director of the association, told Baptist Press Feb. 7, "I'm not bitter over this, but I do want to say again that the association does not affirm homosexuality." He said, "I'm working to try to see how we can come to a Christian resolution." The previous week he said the association's administration committee would be meeting in mid-February to begin the process of studying the issue of autonomy. "Our study will answer the question of how far is too far and what is out of bounds for churches that affiliate with the association," Harrison said.

White said the association's invoking local church autonomy as a primary reason for retaining the offending churches was unacceptable. Reccord said "while local church autonomy is a cherished Baptist distinctive, there is a Baptist distinctive that supersedes it: the authority of Scripture and our accountability to it."

By a unanimous standing vote Feb. 7, trustees of the North American Mission Board affirmed agency President Robert E. Reccord's decision to join the Georgia Baptist Convention in withdrawing funding from the Atlanta Baptist Association.

Some of Atlanta's largest Southern Baptist congregations are making a last-ditch effort to have two homosexual-affirming churches dismissed from the Atlanta Baptist Association. Sam Boyd, senior pastor of Mount Vernon Baptist Church, sent a letter to the association's executive director, Joel Harrison, urging his leadership in overturning the Jan. 30 decision by messengers that failed to dismiss Oakhurst and Virginia-Highland Baptist churches for "affirming and approving and endorsing homosexual behavior."

Homosexual activists across the nation heralded the Atlanta Baptist Association's decision as an affirmation of the homosexual agenda.

Boyd told Baptist Press that Bible-believing Christians have one final attempt to dismiss the two congregations and that will happen at the association's March 12 meeting at First Baptist Church, Hapeville, GA. "I plan on proposing that the association adopt the bylaw change originally adopted by the Georgia Baptist Convention in their 1998 amendment on membership," Boyd said.

The amendment states, "This body shall be composed of messengers from cooperating Baptist churches. A cooperating church is one that is in harmony and cooperation with the work and purpose of the convention. A cooperating church does not include a church which knowingly takes, or has taken, any action to affirm, approve, or endorse homosexual behavior."

Boyd, in his letter to Harrison, wrote, "... if our present bylaws do not prohibit churches like Oakhurst and Virginia-Highlands from membership in the Atlanta Association, your committee should have presented By-laws changes that would call for their dismissal. Neither 'Autonomy' nor 'Priesthood of Believers' should be used as a 'smokescreen' to give any individual, church, or larger body the freedom to practice or condone sin as defined by Scripture."

Boyd also wrote that he will ask the association to "put forward the adoption of the June 14, 2000 Baptist Faith and Message as adopted by both the Southern Baptist Convention and the GBC." "In doing so, there is a prohibition of homosexuality, among other behaviors, in Section XV, The Christian and the Social Order, which would give proper grounds as an association for the dismissal of churches such as Oakhurst and Virginia Highland," he wrote.

Boyd said the vote would require a two-thirds majority. "I think this last vote caught us off-guard," Boyd told Baptist Press. "I've got to believe there are enough conservatives in the association to pass this. If we don't pass it, our church will withdraw from the association."

"Joel, should you not seek to lead our association in adopting these changes, you are failing to fulfill the leadership responsibilities expected of and entrusted to you by churches like Mount Vernon Baptist Church," Boyd wrote. "Should you propose these changes and the majority opinion fails to adopt them, you have done the best you can do. At that point, Mount Vernon will have no other choice than to withdraw our membership from the Atlanta Baptist Association and, more than likely, form a new association of like-minded churches."

The 16,500-member First Baptist Church of Atlanta also could pull out of the association. "Ultimately, if the association doesn't reverse it's decision on those churches, we won't have any other choice but to back out," a spokesperson for senior pastor Charles Stanley said.

White predicted that in coming days additional churches will join the exodus. "In Georgia, our constitution says it takes 15 churches to form an association," White said. "I think they very well may have that many. Some churches are considering affiliating with other associations." One thing is certain, White said, the Atlanta Baptist Association will lose churches.

Bobby Atkins, pastor of the 5,000-member Rehoboth Baptist Church, told Baptist Press, "If this is the direction the Atlanta Baptist Association wants to go in, they have the autonomous right to do so, but each church will decide if they want to participate." The 7,000-member Rehoboth Baptist Church, voted Feb. 14 to sever ties with the association.

One small step for homosexual-affirming churches and one giant leap for homosexual activists. The Atlanta Baptist Association has, perhaps unwittingly, played into the hands of homosexual activists whose goal is to have society embrace homosexuality as normal, natural and healthy. Shirley understands this goal. In response to the vote to retain fellowship, he said it is the first step toward outright support of homosexuality within Atlanta's Southern Baptist churches. What the naive do not understand is that homosexual activists do not desire to live and let live. They will not rest easy until every aspect of society bows in submission and validates their lifestyle.

The members of the association, who voted in sympathy with the homosexual-endorsing congregations, need only to consider God's created order to see the error they have committed. To put it bluntly, homosexual behavior is anatomically deviant. What the homosexual does with the body, the body is not designed to do. It defies the design of creation. To further understand their folly, the association also should examine the fruit of the homosexual lifestyle. If they did, they would find disease and death. AIDS is the most publicized health problem of the gay community, but it is only the tip of the iceberg.

Other maladies that plague the gay community are colonitis, Kobner's phenomenon, and a group of rare diseases known as "Gay Bowel Syndrome" (propriety and space will not permit the description of these illnesses, but suffice to say they are disgusting). These and other health problems result in the median age of death of homosexual men being 42, almost half that of heterosexuals.

Homosexual activists are rejoicing over the leap of acceptance they gained in this journey, courtesy of the Atlanta Baptist Association. [BP]