Bob Reccord says dispute with D.C. Baptists unique

by ABP staff                                                                                                                         Vol. XV, No. 3, March 2002

The president of the North American Mission Board says a polity dispute with the District of Columbia Baptist Convention is an isolated incident but didn't rule out future discussions over areas of disagreement between the Southern Baptist Convention agency and other state bodies. "This is a unique situation," NAMB President Robert Reccord said of the board's relationship with the D.C. convention in an interview with the North Carolina newspaper Biblical Recorder.

NAMB leaders in Alpharetta, GA, wrote a letter in October citing concerns over the D.C. convention's triple alignment with the SBC, American Baptist Churches in the U.S.A., and Progressive National Baptist Convention. The SBC, which provides a majority of outside funding for the D.C. convention, is conservative, while the other two national groups are considered more to the left of Baptist life.

Reccord said he knows of no similar theological concerns with other state conventions.

While the DCBC is the only Southern Baptist affiliate with more than one denominational identity, at least three state conventions allow churches to designate funds for the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, a breakaway group formed by SBC moderates who disagree with the denomination's leaders.

Reccord said NAMB is in "open communication" with the D.C. convention over concerns outlined in a letter dated 24 Oct. NAMB annually provides DCBC with $475,000, about a third of DCBC's budget and twice the amount that Washington churches give to the SBC yearly through the Cooperative Program unified budget.

Among concerns cited in the letter were differences between the SBC and American Baptists in stated positions on abortion, homosexuality and the ordination of women. Specifically, NAMB said it wants direct supervision of D.C. employees funded wholly or partially by Southern Baptists. The proposal also said the DCBC should not promote cultural festivals that include non-Christian religious groups, should not print articles in its newspaper that "denigrate the SBC and its leadership nor any of its agencies," should have speakers at its meetings that "reflect the theological tenets of the SBC," and should follow the biblical pattern of Matthew 18 when criticizing the SBC.

D.C. Baptist leaders reacted strongly to the proposal. Executive Director Jeffrey Haggray, an African-American from a PNBC background, called it an ultimatum that "offends fundamental principles of Baptist polity" and would turn the DCBC into "the only NAMB-run state convention in the nation."

In his interview with the Biblical Recorder, Reccord responded to those comments. He denied the letter was an ultimatum. "In fact, we started out the proposal saying we are seeking to find a win-win method of strengthening the partnership," he said. "It's kind of hard to get to an ultimatum from that kind of wording."

He also said the proposal doesn't threaten the DCBC's autonomy. "The [DCBC] has the full autonomy to decide what they will do, how they will do it, and when they are going to do it," he said. "That's totally in their autonomy." Reccord called the respective autonomy of state and national conventions "a real key part of Southern Baptist life." "In the same way we wouldn't want anybody infringing on the North American Mission Board's autonomy," he said.

Reccord declined to say, however, what might happen should the D.C. convention refuse the NAMB proposal. "We'll just have to walk through the process and see where each step takes us," he said. [ABP]