Texas Liberals Tip Their Hand

by T. C. Pinckney                                                                                      Vol. X, No. 8, Sep/Oct 1997

Texas may go the way of Virginia and have two state conventions. Interested? Read on.

In 1995 the Baptist General Association of Texas (BGCT) created a study commission to consider the “best ways to assure the maximum efficiency and effectiveness” of the state convention’s “cooperative efforts in missions, evangelism, education ethics, and human services.” The study committee’s report recommends that Texas Baptists, at their annual meeting in November approve sending “lay envoy” missionaries throughout the world, publish their own Sunday School and church literature, and create a “Texas Baptist Theological College.”

BGCT president Charles Wade said, “There’s no question Texas Baptists have seen what has happened in the SBC and said this won’t happen in Texas. We’re going to protect Texas from a control mentality. ... This document says we are not in opposition to the SBC. We want the SBC to do what it does as well as it can. We’re not in opposition to the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship. We’re willing to help them where we can.”

Morris H. Chapman, president and chief executive officer of the SBC Executive Committee, responded saying, “This report seems to signal a substantial departure from cooperative relationships of long duration. The report, if approved and implemented, has the potential to significantly impair those relationships, specifically in reference to home and foreign missions, literature production, and theological education.

“If this causes Southern Baptist churches in Texas to have to decide whether they are principally Baptist General Convention of Texas Baptists or Southern Baptists, it would be extremely unfortunate. Should that climate prevail, it would mean that more direct relationships would have to be forged between Southern Baptist Convention entities and the Southern Baptist churches of Texas.”

One recommendation suggests that the state’s officers “explore the possibility of the BGCT becoming a member organization of the Baptist World Alliance. The inference is that the BGCT would become a separate denomination.

[Editorial Comment: If Texas Baptists approve these recommendations in November, every Southern Baptist church in Texas will be forced to decide between the BGCT and the SBC. The impact of such a vote in Texas would be very similar to how the November 1994 amendment to the BGAV constitution in November 1994 (which made only donations to the BGAV budget count toward authorizing messengers to the state convention) forced conservatives to form our own state convention. TCP]