Virginia Votes to Disfranchise Conservatives

by A. C. Smith                                                                                        Vol. VII, No. 10, December 1994

Messengers to the Baptist General Convention meeting in Salem 15-16 November continued their defiant march away from the conservative direction of the Southern Baptist Convention. Formerly, messenger representation in Virginia had been just like representation at the national SBC, with messengers based upon giving to any Southern Baptist cause, state or national. In Salem by a vote of almost 73% messengers changed that historic policy. Under the new amendment to the state constitution, in the future messengers to the annual state convention will be authorized to churches based only upon the dollars a church donates to the state portion of the budget. Dollars flowing through Richmond to Nashville for the SBC budget will not count toward messengers to the state convention.

Three years ago a vote by the messengers decreased by about 50 percent the amount of funding going to the national Southern Baptist Convention Cooperative Program budget, which supports the Foreign Mission Board, the Home Mission Board, and the denomination's six seminaries along with a number of smaller entities such as the Christian Life Commission and the Brotherhood Commission. Many conservative churches in the state responded by increasing the percentage of money they sent to the national level to help offset the loss from the more liberal state convention. Furthermore, many conservatives in Virginia find many of the state convention's programs to be too liberal to support in good conscience.

The immediate impact of the amendment is that those conservative Southern Baptist churches in the state of Virginia which have designed their own giving plans donating less than 60% to Virginia will be allowed fewer messengers at future state convention meetings. The long term result is that conservative Southern Baptists will have little or no prospect of effecting change in the Baptist General Association of Virginia by voting.

The messengers also elected moderates to office by a wide margin. Margaret Wayland of Danville was elected president of the state convention with 71.5 percent of the vote. She defeated John Simms, a retired attorney who is a member of First Baptist Roanoke. While Simms was the conservative candidate, he is a respected Virginia Baptist who had the support of his pastor, Charles Fuller. The other conservative candidates went down to defeat as well.

At one point in the meeting Fuller questioned whether ministerial students from his church could receive scholarships from Virginia Baptists through the scholarship fund listed in the "World Missions 2" giving track. The response from the podium was "no," since First Baptist Roanoke was not in the more liberal "World Mission 2" giving plan, which greatly decreases the amount of money given to the national Cooperative Program. Fuller is widely viewed as a denominational statesman, and he has tended to not publicly identify with either side in the denominational controversy. Furthermore, according to data in the state Baptist annual his church is the biggest giver in total dollars to the Virginia state convention. It seemed a slap in the face to tell him that his church's ministerial students could not receive scholarship money that students from other churches could receive, even though their congregations would give a lot less in actual dollars than First, Roanoke.

No resolutions were offered from the floor, and the resolutions committee offered only the usual courtesy resolutions.

Some observers, both liberal and conservative, believed this convention's actions may force conservatives to leave the Baptist General Association of Virginia, reported the Richmond Times Dispatch.