October 6, 1999
Integrity committee reports on 'slander'
___By Marv Knox
___Editor
___Distribution of slander about the Baptist General Convention of Texas and its leaders is "comparable to spreading graffiti, writing on restroom walls or malicious gossip," insisted the chairman of a committee charged with researching and responding to such rumors.
___John Wilkerson, chairman of the BGCT Committee on Baptist Integrity, presented a 10-page report of findings to the convention's Executive Board last week in Dallas.
___The 13-member committee was created by the Executive Board last winter and authorized to refute "misleading and slanderous attacks" on the BGCT and its leaders, said Wilkerson, a lay member of First Baptist Church in Lubbock.
___The committee's initial report, distributed to Executive Board members and available to Texas Baptists statewide, details responses to 11 charges against the BGCT. Those charges primarily have been circulated in a document prepared by a fundamentalist group inMissouri and distributed in Texas in the wake of the formation of Southern Baptists of Texas, a convention that split from the BGCT.
Read the
entire integrity committee report here.
___"Many charges have been made in pastors' columns in newsletters, in public meetings and in mailings sent to pastors in Texas," Wilkerson said. He labeled the claims "attempts at guilt by association and innuendoes."
___"There is no confusion among people of good will about where the Baptist General Convention of Texas stands on various issues," he said. "Positions of the BGCT are set forth in public meetings, usually resulting from committee processes that encourage participation from a broad cross-section of Texas Baptists. ... Convention action is a matter of public record."
___Many of the accusations against the BGCT are based on out-of-context innuendoes about other organizations to which some Texas Baptist leaders have related, Wilkerson explained.
___"The BGCT is not responsible for actions of other Baptist groups, and the actions of other Baptist groups have no bearing on positions taken by the BGCT or vice versa," he stressed. "To suggest that the BGCT stance on a given issue is related to the action of another Baptist body because a person in a BGCT leadership role might be involved in both groups is fallacious."
___The committee's research details responses to 11 charges against the BGCT:
___The BGCT's relationship to the Southern Baptist Convention and the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship.
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___"The Committee on Baptist Integrity has examined the various charges and has found that the Baptist General Convention of Texas adheres to traditional Baptist beliefs and positions," Wilkerson said.
___"It does not serve the cause of Christ for its critics to make unfounded charges about the convention to further their own causes or ambitions," he added.
___Valid criticism is helpful to any organization, including the BGCT, Wilkerson acknowledged. However, "BGCT leaders and the convention itself have been unjustly maligned."
___"The committee ... urges that this criticism cease and encourages all responsible Texas Baptists to reject it and to call these critics to task for it," he noted.
___"The Bible is plain about what is to be done when someone has a problem with a Christian brother," he added. "He is to confront the brother with the problem, not publish statewide mailings."
___A printed copy of the report is available from the Office of Cooperative Program Services, Baptist General Convention of Texas, 333 N. Washington, Dallas 75246-1798 .
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