December 15, 1999

Patterson predicts SBC will split
___RALEIGH, N.C. (RNS)--Southern Baptist Convention President Paige Patterson has predicted that some kind of division is in the offing for the nation's largest Protestant denomination, but he expects less than one-tenth of SBC churches actually will depart.
___"Inevitably, there will come a divide in what is today known as the Southern Baptist Convention," Patterson predicted in an article he wrote for the millennial issue of the

PATTERSON

Biblical Recorder, the news journal of the Baptist State Convention of North Carolina. "No one knows exactly what form that will take."
___Patterson said a possible result could be an entity comprised of churches affiliated with the moderate Cooperative Baptist Fellowship or "churches desiring greater allowance for diversity in doctrinal and ethical matters and reacting in part out of disenchantment with certain conservative leadership."
___Despite his declaration that a division is "inevitable," Patterson's estimate of the size of a split is wide-ranging.
___"That breaking away of churches will take between 600, at the least, and 3,500, at the most, of the denomination's 40,000 churches," he predicted. "Several new entities and relationships will evolve as a result of this action."
___His article, titled "The SBC on the Brink of the New Millennium," was submitted after the newspaper requested that he and others forecast the denomination's future for its Jan. 1 issue.
___In an interview also published in the newspaper, Patterson expanded on his comments. He said the 3,500 figure would be likely only if the Baptist General Convention of Texas--the largest state convention in the SBC--leads churches out of the denomination.
___The BGCT, which currently counts about 7,000 churches and missions among its membership, has grown increasingly estranged from the SBC as Patterson and other conservatives have led the national convention further to the right.
___A division within the SBC might be for the best, Patterson said, given the continuing friction between moderate Baptists and the denomination's conservative leadership.
___"We're much farther apart theologically than some people imagine," said Patterson, one of the architects of the SBC's conservative movement. "Why sit around and cripple what everybody's doing?"
___He added that he could not predict when the division might happen.
___"I don't have a clue," Patterson said. "I have to believe we're probably on a three- to five-year play-out, but I don't know."

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