Update: Southern Baptist HAVE quit the World Alliance over gays.

[Cannikin]

http://www.wate.com/Global/story.asp?S=1942657


(Indianapolis, Indiana) The Southern Baptist Convention holds its annual meeting Tuesday in Indianapolis and high on the agenda is a motion to quit the Baptist World Alliance, an umbrella of Baptist Churches around the world.

The international body, based in the US, is seen by the Southern Baptists as too soft on gays.

The BWA represents 46 million Baptists in 211 denominations, but the biggest single member church is the SBC the largest Protestant denomination in the country with 16.3 million members.

Southern Baptists have been moving slowly away from the BWA for several years but the final straw came last year when the alliance accepted as a member the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, a rival group to the SBC formed by moderates who are supportive of gays.

http://www.365gay.com/newscon04/06/061404baptists.htm

[Skidmore]

1. Doggonit! A schism....

schisms are fun. Lived through a couple myself earlier in my life. They are jarring.

[plcdude]

21. o really

to what are you referring?

[merh]

24. They apparently can't read

If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal

1 Corinthians 13

[Not Me]

2. It's official...they have left the World Alliance

See: http://www.wate.com/Global/story.asp?S=1942657

[GreenPartyVoter]

3. Good riddance

The more liberal Baptists did not need the pressure from them to be more conservative.

Would Jesus love a liberal? You bet!
http://www.geocities.com/greenpartyvoter/liberalchristians.htm

[TrogL]

4. Hooray!!! A schism

Now that they've left, maybe the mainline Baptists can get back to a centrist position (OK, not on Baptism - that's their schtick, but at least on everything else).

[calimary]

26. Divide and conquer! EXCELLENT!

It's a MOST beneficial thing to see these groups splintering up and off. MOST beneficial! Let them go and marginalize themselves. MAYBE they'll speak with a louder voice, but also a thinner one. (on edit - noticed it's 46 million overall, versus 16-and-some million Southern Knuckledraggers - still NOT the majority by ANY means.) If their general population is like your average bell curve, that means these folks are over more toward one narrow, pinched extreme end. To match their own mindsets, of course!

Also noticed, with some amusement, the larger group's initials - BWA (Baptist World Alliance). Would that be - as in - BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA ?

[bmbmd]

5. Two kinds of people in the world-

Lumpers and Splitters. These dudes are serious splitters.

[GOPFighter]

6. Hmmmm...

..and these are people who worship a 33 year old male (at death) who never married and showed no interest in the opposite sex? They better watch out who they piss off...

[DinahMoeHum]

12. . . .and whose mother was unwed and teenaged ??

:evilgrin:

[drb]

7. Reminds me of the story about the guy....

...who went to heaven and St. Peter was showing him around.

They saw all kinda beautiful mansions, with jacuzzis and skateboard ramps and fun stuff, then they came to a part that was walled off, like 50 feet high.

"What's behind the wall?" the guy asked.

"Shhhh!" said St. Peter. "That's the Baptists! They think they're the only ones here!"

[Joanne98]

8. Good riddance

Maybe now they can pull out of the UN too. Selfish bastards.

[murielm99]

9. The United Methodists are also squabbling over this issue.

They may split, too.

[GreenPartyVoter]

10. Better that then the right-wingers overrunning the liberals

[doni_georgia]

18. As a liberal United methodist, I'm hoping we do split n/t

[calimary]

27. "They may split too." GOOD! "Divide and Conquer, The Sequel."

Like this. The more of these groups that are bubbling and boiling in turmoil, and splintering off from each other, the better for the rest of us! Hopefully it'll help evoke this kind of disruption within republi-CON ranks. A house divided cannot stand. GOOD! Let's hope that's the direction they're headed. And, by the way, let's also take a good, hard, look at that, AND LEARN FROM IT. WE can splinter ourselves up at times, too, and THAT is not good. Let's let the Bad Guys struggle with this disunity and discord, instead.

[fujiyama]

11. Freakin lunatics

I have great respect for Carter and his wife...Didn't they decide to leave the church a while back over this issue?

[bobbieinok]

14. Carter left SBC in 2000 because of---

1-the right-wing political take-over of the SBC

2-the refusal of the SBC to recognize women ministers

[bobbieinok]

15. statements, comments abt Carter leaving SBC

See especially the article from the Atlanta Constitution.

....

The former president said after years of feeling "increasingly uncomfortable and somewhat excluded," he and his wife, Rosalynn, finally decided to disassociate themselves from the Southern Baptist Convention. The final straw was a denominational statement adopted in June that prohibits women from being pastors, says wives should be submissive to their husbands, and eliminates language from an earlier version that said "the criterion by which the Bible is to be interpreted is Jesus Christ."

The new statement, a revision of the Baptist Faith and Message, culminated a two-decade-long battle in the country's largest non-Catholic Christian denomination. Although Baptists say the statement is not a creed, the denomination's six seminaries and six national agencies, including the Alpharetta-based North American Mission Board, use it as a standard.

....

"In my opinion, leaders of the SBC have become increasingly demanding in the specificity of their creed," he said. "I think there ought to be the ability for Baptists who have slightly different commitments to Christianity to get along, work together and love each other. ... I have always felt and feel very deeply that the ultimate interpreter of scripture is Jesus Christ."

Carter said he believes biblical passages concerning women have been taken out of context by Southern Baptist leaders.

"I'm familiar with the verses they have quoted about wives being subjugated to their husbands," he said. "In my opinion, this is a distortion of the meaning of Scripture. ... I personally feel the Bible says all people are equal in the eyes of God. I personally feel that women should play an absolutely equal role in service of Christ in the church."

more.....

There are also a great many LTTEs about this at this site.

From one that mentions the possibility of the TX convention 'disassociating' from the SBC.

....

My father, a Baptist deacon for 30 years, called last June after the
convention to announce "I will never set foot in a Baptist church
again. They are nothing more than a glorified hate group." He was
happy to hear of the Carter's decision.

Texas Baptists are considering disassociation from the SBC because
of the New Baptist Faith and Message. I hope they will take
President Carter's wise words seriously and refuse to be regulated
in their beliefs. May God bring the power-hungry to their knees
and bless all those who seek to humbly serve humankind.



http://www.adherents.com/largecom/baptist_Carter.html

[Cannikin]

13. kick

[tom_paine]

16. Sure they have. You can't be Hitler's Handmaidens and the Bootlickers

of Tyrants while being connected to some namby-pamby Global Religious Organization that belonghs with the decadennce of the Free World, NOT Imperial Amerika.

Let them run scurrying home to their "Liberal Democracies", while we in the Empire are Zealously Overjoyed in our Bushevik Ruled "Managed Democracy".

[KittyWampus]

17. So Southern Baptists Want To Restrict God's Love

and make it conditional.

Doesn't seem Christian.

[peekaloo]

19. Ta-Ta........so they thought the BWA was "too soft on gays".....

well I have a slogan for 'em......"We Southern Baptists have a hard-on for gays!".

[JHB]

20. Well, There They Go Again....

They did the same thing in 1845, split from the American Baptist Missionary Union, over slavery.

They were the pro-slavery faction, and din't bother to renounce that until the mid-1990's (during one of the RW efforts to woo blacks).

[Cannikin]

22. kick

[Ruffhowse]

23. homophobic and intolerant=Southern Baptist "bubbas"

[Cannikin]

25. kick