February 9, 2000
Graham to nominate Merritt
___By Bob Allen
___Associated Baptist Press
___JACKSONVILLE, Fla. (ABP)--Suburban Atlanta pastor James Merritt likely will be nominated as president of the Southern Baptist Convention when it meets June 13-14 in Orlando, Fla.
___Merritt's nomination was mentioned Jan. 31 at a Florida conference that has in the past served as a launching pad for successful presidential campaigns.
___Plano pastor Jack Graham said he was sorry that weather-related travel problems prevented Merritt from attending the annual pastors' conference at First Baptist Church in Jacksonville.
___"I was looking forward to him being here and hearing him preach and to asking him for the privilege of nominating him as president of the Southern Baptist Convention when we meet next. I hope he'll allow me to do that, but I'll have to ask him another time, I guess," said Graham, pastor of Prestonwood Baptist Church.
___Merritt said he "hasn't spoken directly" with anyone, but he "would be honored" if he were nominated. Graham could not be reached for comment.
___If elected, Merritt, pastor of the 11,000-member First Baptist Church of Snellville, Ga., would succeed Paige Patterson as the highest-elected official in the nation's largest Protestant denomination.
___Patterson, president of Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in Wake Forest, N.C., completes a two-year term and is ineligible for re-election.
___Merritt is the immediate-past chairman of the SBC Executive Committee, an 81-member elected body that conducts business for the denomination between conventions, and a former president of the SBC Pastors' Conference. He preached the convention's keynote sermon in 1998.
___His church, located in a suburb east of Atlanta, reportedly has grown from 2,000 members to nearly 11,000 since he came as pastor in 1985. Merritt's "Touching Lives" television broadcasts are seen in Atlanta on the local Fox affiliate and nationwide on TBN and FamilyNet.
___If elected, he would become the seventh Georgian to serve as SBC president. The last was Charles Stanley, pastor of First Baptist Church of Atlanta, who presided in 1985-86.
___Merritt became a Christian at 9 and was called to preach at 21. He has an undergraduate degree from Stetson University in Deland, Fla., and a master of divinity and doctor of philosophy from Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky.
___As a leader of the so-called "conservative resurgence" within the SBC, Merritt has frequently spoken in speeches about professors at Baptist colleges and seminaries whom he says ridiculed him and other conservatives for their beliefs. He has been an outspoken supporter of Al Mohler's presidency at Southern Seminary, affirming the nearly wholesale departure of faculty and redirection of the SBC's mother seminary.
___The Jacksonville Bible conference, in its 14th year, drew an audience of more than 6,300 people from about 38 states. It has launched successful nominations of past conservative presidential nominees, with one notable exception.
___In 1994, Graham broke protocol by nominating Florida pastor Jim Henry without the endorsement of past SBC presidents. Henry's subsequent election over fellow conservative Fred Wolfe of Alabama was widely viewed as representing a rift in the SBC's leadership.
___Merritt, however, has been identified strongly with the old guard. He nominated Patterson as president in 1998 and also nominated the SBC's current second vice president, fellow Georgian Frank Cox, at last year's convention in Atlanta.
Send this story to a friend
Contents/ Masthead / Why We're Here / Links / Archive / E-mail us/ SUBSCRIBE!