Alliance Convention
Vol. IV, No. 3, April 1991
The Southern Baptist Alliance held its annual convention 14-16 March at Grace Baptist Church, Richmond. There were nine workshops: The SBA and other Baptist Bodies; The Use of Arts in Worship; Women's Inclusion in the Liturgy of God; Mission Partnerships; Theological Education – The Need for Alternatives and Plans for Action, with Special Focus on Baptist Theological Seminary at Richmond; SBA Curriculumm Project; American Baptist Curriculum; The Church and Homosexuality; War in the Persian Gulf: How Did We get There?; and Alternative Pension/Savings Programs for Ministers.
The SBA has a $299,639 budget for 1991 which includes $51,600 for "Global Ministry Projects. The latter provides $12,000 for the Baptist Joint Committee on Public Affairs, $6,000 to the Baptist Peace Fellowship of North America, $2,600 for the Baptist Theological Seminary at Richmond, and $5,000 for Southern Baptist Women in Ministry. The budget handout concludes by saying, "The challenge goal for the special offering is $60,000 to finance the sending of Alliance-sponsored missionaries overseas with the help and cooperation of American Baptist Churches, U.S.A."
A handout dated 28 February 1991 2,526 individual SBA member, and 125 churches with a total church membership of 66,827. The three states most heavily represented are North Carolina with 45 church and 551 individual memberships, Virginia with 25 church and 301 individual memberships, and Maryland with 11 churches and 102 individuals.
Interestingly, Article 2 "Purpose" of the SBA constitution was changed to eliminate "the continuance of our ministry and mission within the Southern Baptist Convention" and replace those words with "the expression of our ministry and mission through cooperative relationships with other Baptist bodies and the larger Christian Community."
In the workshop "Women in the Liturgy of God" two handouts provide a sense of the thrust. One is titled "Ways to Avoid the Generic He," one and a half pages of suggested ways not to use "he." Samples are: "write your sentence in the plural," "rewrite the sentence in the second person," and "use masculine and feminine pronouns in alternating sentences." An excerpt from the "Litany of Praise" gives the flavor: "Blessed be God our Mother. Blessed be Her name forever."
"The Church and Homosexuality" workshop was led by Mahan Siler, pastor of Pullen Memorial Church, Raleigh, and member of the steering committee of the Raleigh Religious Network for Gay and Lesbian Equality. Perhaps the nub of his position is that "one's basic sexual orientation is given, thereby discovered, not chosen." "The Bible does not say anything one way or another about long-term, committed, caring homosexual relationships." "Surely the greater Biblical mandate is to understand homosexual persons – to confront behavior when it is destructive, to feel the pain of their oppression, to confess our guilt as religious communities in our participation of their victimization, to support ways by which their gift of sexuality can be expressed in constructive, life-giving ways, and to learn and be enriched by their storied struggle for freedom and equality." It is important to note, however, that the SBA has not adopted an official position regarding homosexuality.
As to the results of the meeting, the constitutional change eliminating reference to the SBC was noted above. Ties to the American Baptist Churches in the U.S.A. (ABC) were also strengthened. SBA Executive Director Stan Hastey said he expects a married couple or two single people financially supported by the SBA to be appointed missionaries by the ABC as soon as next year. Discussions between SBA and ABC leaders concerning Sunday School curricula are continuing, and SBA representatives meet regularly with an ABC task force to monitor changes in the SBC. A recommendation from the SBA board of directors that the convocation "affirm cooperative ventures in ministry and missions" with the ABC was approved without dissent.
Relations with the Fellowship were also a matter of interest. The interim steering committee of the Fellowship recently named a committee to initiate dialogue with the SBA. SBA President Richard E. Groves of Winston-Salem reported plans to appoint a committee of Alliance members to respond. Hastey told the members that much of the action undertaken by the Fellowship "has been shaped by Alliance people assigned to the responsible workgroups of the interim steering committee. ... Our participation in the process has been vigorous," he said, noting "some two dozen" Alliance members serve on the Fellowship's 70-member steering committee.
Thomas H. Graves, president of the Baptist Theological Seminary at Richmond, told the SBA audience classes will begin this September with seven faculty members. The Alliance authorized the seminary in 1987 and remains a sponsoring body. However, it does not own or govern the school. The seminary's board of trustees is self-perpetuating.
Two motions were referred to panels for further study. One requests the SBA church-ministry relations committee to consider the feasibility of establishing an alternative to the Southern Baptist Annuity Board. The other asks the board of directors to create a task force charged with starting new churches committed to "the spirit of the SBA covenant."
Thursday evening Dr. Reginald M. McDonough, executive director of the Baptist General Association of Virginia, welcomed Alliance members to Virginia. He indicated that the SBA and Virginia Baptists have a close kinship. "We have many convictions in common," he said. "Though cooperative in nature, Virginia Baptists have been and are willing to stand alone."
The meeting closed Saturday with a communion service at Grace Baptist Church, which included liturgy, litanies, liturgical dance, and preaching by a woman.
[The above article is based on SBA convocation handouts, a Baptist Press release written by Robert Dilday, and articles by Ed Briggs in the Richmond Times-Dispatch.]