'We're not ecumenists,' SBC says
in breaking off Catholic dialogues
___By Mark Wingfield
___Managing Editor
___Apparently bowing to pressure from a small group of Southern Baptists who stridently oppose ecumenical dialogue, the Southern Baptist Convention has announced it will end dialogue with the Roman Catholic Church.
___The ongoing dialogue between Baptist and Catholic theologians has not been aimed toward changing the theology of either group but toward gaining mutual understanding.
___The latest round of formal talks has been ongoing since 1994. Other dialogues, both formal and informal, have been held over the last 30 years.
___"We're not ecumenists. We're evangelicals committed to sharing the gospel," Phil Roberts, president of Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Kansas City, Mo., told the Associated Press. Roberts previously directed interfaith witness efforts with the SBC's North American Mission Board.
___Although the SBC as recently as 1994 endorsed talks with the Catholic Church, "many Southern Baptists became suspicious of these discussions," Roberts said.
___Another Baptist participant in the talks, Timothy George, told AP a small faction of Baptists had "a strong and somewhat strident reaction against this."
___George, dean of Beeson Divinity School in Birmingham, Ala., told AP, "Ecumenism is not a high priority for most Southern Baptists."
___Rudy Gonzalez, current director of NAMB's interfaith evangelism team, said that while the talks have been beneficial for both groups, the meetings do not facilitate the pursuit of NAMB's goals and priorities.
___"The Roman Catholic-Southern Baptist conversations have given us an opportunity to come to a very clear understanding that there are some marked and clear theological differences between us," Gonzales said.
___"We're focused on our mission first and foremost. Any future conversations that might develop will have to fit within the parameters of what the North American Mission Board has been charged to do, which is to assist Southern Baptist Churches to evangelize North America."
___For several years, a small band of highly vocal Southern Baptist conservatives have doggedly sought to end any relationship between the SBC and certain other faith groups, especially Roman Catholics.
___Jerry Moser, pastor of Bayou DuLarge Baptist Church in Theriot, La., first criticized Southern Baptist leaders several years ago for signing on to an "Evangelical and Catholics Together" document that, among other things, defined Christians as either those who are born again or receive grace through sacraments.
___Pressure from him and others forced some SBC leaders to back away from supporting the document, which was intended to highlight agreement on moral and social concerns such as abortion.
___Bill Streich of Wichita Falls and Roger Moran of Missouri also have been leading critics of anything appearing ecumenical.
___More recently, Moser has questioned SBC involvement with umbrella evangelistic groups like Mission America and AD2000 that he says include organizations with radically different views than Southern Baptists. Cooperating with those groups, he said, raises questions about what Southern Baptists believe.
___A motion Moser made at last summer's SBC annual meeting resulted in all SBC agencies and institutions certifying that they are "maintaining the historic position of Southern Baptists as they cooperate with various other groups in appropriate evangelistic enterprises or moral-advocacy initiatives."
___That was not enough, however. Moser told Associated Baptist Press in a subsequent interview that the self-study conducted by SBC agencies did not achieve all he intended. He said in September he intended to keep pressing the issue.
___"I am going to continue to appeal to the convention on this issue of ecumenism," he vowed.
___One Texas Baptist who participated in the dialogues for 20 years expressed dismay but not surprise at the abrupt end to the conversation.
___This is "another knee-jerk reaction to minority protests," said Bill Hendricks, professor of Baptist studies at Texas Christian University's Brite Divinity School and former theology professor at SBC seminaries.
___Hendricks, who lives in Fort Worth, described the dialogues as a "fertile interchange of theological ideas and scholarly concerns and ways in which our mutual communities could agree on social ministries and theological affirmations."
___The purpose, he said, was "to learn more about them and help them learn more about us."
___The irony, he said, is that in the years since the Baptist-Catholic dialogue began, "the Catholic community has become more ecumenical and certain segments of the Baptist community have become more closed to interfaith dialogue."
___The last formal conversation between Southern Baptists and Catholics is slated for September at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary.
___Frank Ruff, the Catholic bishops' liaison with the SBC, expressed sadness at the news.
___"I'm confident that this whole movement toward Christian reconciliation is not something we dreamed up," he said. "It's something the Holy Spirit is breathing in the churches. It's an activity of God that is bigger than all of us. One decision of one group to stop dialogue is not going to be the end of the work of the Spirit."
___After the 1994 resolution, Ruff said, "there was a great deal of hope and enthusiasm. We had outlined a long-term plan for dialogue, starting with Scripture. We thought it would happen, we thought we could work through these topics quicker than we have."
___Planned topics for future discussion, he noted, included such things as missions and religious liberty. "We thought those were significant issues."
___Ruff said he understands that NAMB's mission is focused on evangelism rather than ecumenism. However, "the unity Jesus prayed for at the Last Supper certainly connected unity and evangelism."
___He takes consolation, he said, in private support from individual Southern Baptists and SBC churches.
___"The call to unity is felt by lots of believers, and lots of them are Southern Baptists," Ruff concluded. The decision to break off talks "is the policy of NAMB, but I don't see this as the position of all SBC churches. That tempers the disappointment."
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