June 25, 2001

Cooperative Baptist Fellowship
upholds policy against homosexuality
___By Mark Wingfield
___Managing Editor
___ATLANTA--Despite two attempts to repeal it, the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship will retain its policy statement against homosexuality.
___ Debate over this issue was the only unscheduled item of business during the CBF's general assembly in Atlanta June 28-30.
___The policy, adopted last year by the CBF Coordinating Council, states that CBF "does not allow for the expenditure of funds for organizations or causes that condone, advocate or affirm homosexual practice." It also declares that CBF will not allow "the purposeful hiring of a staff person or the sending of a missionary who is a practicing homosexual."
___The Coordinating Council made the public statement to counter years of accusations from leaders of the Southern Baptist Convention that CBF was either too soft on the gay issue or was openly advocating acceptance of homosexuality.
___The matter came to a head after last year's general assembly, when the SBC's public relations unit, Baptist Press, reported that an exhibitor at the general assembly resource fair had distributed pro-gay literature.
___David Currie, executive director of Texas Baptists Committed and a member of the CBF Coordinating Council, reminded the crowd of that fact during debate.
___"We're pushed to a place, and while you want to discuss it, churches want to know--yes or no," he said. "To table this is to put it in the press for another year. It's our churches that want to know."
___Opponents of the policy statement have criticized it for three reasons. A small segment of the CBF constituency--mainly from East Coast churches also affiliated with the liberal Alliance of Baptists--does not want to make any statement opposing homosexuality. Another segment has opposed the issue based not on an opinion about homosexuality but because of the process used to adopt the statement. Yet a third segment believes CBF should not make public statements on any single issue.
___The latter sentiment was expressed twice during the general assembly by Nick Foster of Montevallo, Ala., who noted CBF has not adopted a value statement on any other single issue besides homosexuality.
___ He cited a list of other sins mentioned in the Bible, such as adultery, lying and backbiting. "I'm waiting for the day I hear a statement on gluttony from Baptists," he quipped.
___At the same time, others saw the statement as a necessary distraction that would only be made more troublesome by protracted debate.
___ Former CBF global missions leader Keith Parks took the microphone to plead with the body not to become "fixated on one issue" and thereby make missions a secondary concern.
___The debate over homosexuality "is not a big enough issue in the scheme of the kingdom of God" to replace missions as the primary issue of concern for CBF, Parks said.
___The first attempt to get the policy statement rescinded was made in the CBF Coordinating Council meeting June 27, one day before the organization's 10th anniversary general assembly opened. The motion to rescind was brought by Dixie Petrey of Knoxville, Tenn.
___After debate, the council declined by a vote of 38-13 not to change its earlier statement. However, the council did change terminology in the statement to call it a "personnel and administrative funding policy" rather than an "organizational value."
___That change was widely understood to be an effort to appease critics of the policy by indicating that the statement expresses the opinion and policy of the Coordinating Council, not of every person affiliated with CBF.
___Unsatisfied with the results in the Coordinating Council, though, opponents of the policy statement took their concern to the full assembly June 29.
___ Larry and Carolyn Dipboye of Oak Ridge, Tenn., presented a three-part motion that sought to suspend the policy statement for one year, appoint a committee to study "the issue of a Christian sexual ethic" and ask the committee to report its findings and make recommendations at next year's general assembly in Fort Worth.
___In CBF's structure, motions are introduced in a general business session, then assigned to a breakout session for discussion. For the motion to be brought back to the full body for consideration, participants in that breakout session must vote to do so.
___In this case, the assigned room for the breakout session discussion overflowed with several hundred participants. After the allotted one hour of discussion, those present voted to send the motion back to the floor for consideration.
___However, the CBF advisory council, a core group of elected leaders given oversight of various administrative matters, voted not to recommend the motion for adoption.
___Indeed, at every step of the yearlong debate over the homosexuality issue, CBF's elected leadership have taken more conservative positions, while challenges to those positions have come from more liberal constituencies and from those who are more disturbed over the process by which the policy statement was adopted than with the statement itself.
___Former Texas pastor Daniel Vestal, the CBF's top administrator, defended the policy statement before the assembly, explaining he had drafted the text "the best I knew how to do at the time."
___He did so, he said, after receiving notice from a pastor of his intent to bring a motion to defund any educational institution that admits gays and lesbians. Vestal said he urged the pastor to wait and let him work with the Coordinating Council to address the issue first.
___Subsequently, Vestal said, he received communications from "a large number of people" who asked for CBF to adopt a policy statement on homosexuality in order to silence CBF's critics and put the issue to rest.
___While acknowledging the policy statement does not reflect the opinion of every person affiliated with the CBF, Vestal said he believes it "represents where most moderate Baptist churches are on this issue."
___Those sentiments were echoed by others in the business breakout where the motion was debated.
___ "Most of our churches, and I don't mean 51 percent, would not hire a person who said, 'I am gay,'" explained Mark Olson of Virginia Beach, Va. To send a signal otherwise by funding admission of gay students to theology school would be wrong, he added.
___ Bill Sherman of Nashville, Tenn., also made this argument.
___ "If you expect Baptists in the pew to affirm a pro-gay and -lesbian missionary-sending agency, there's not going to be an agency," he declared.
___ Likewise, Mark Newton of San Antonio warned the group that if the statement on homosexuality were suspended or revoked, "the funding will end for CBF."
___ Opponents of the policy statement spoke frequently of the way moderate Baptists were treated by fundamentalists in their quest to dominate the Southern Baptist Convention. The way the CBF adopted this policy statement is similar to those heavy-handed tactics, they charged.
___ "I recognize we must have policies, … but we must never forget that CBF is not just an institution but a community as well," said Stanley Johnson of Orange, Va.
___ "I hope I would never get to the point of voting to shut off discussion on any issue," added Dorothy Murfree of Asheville, N.C.
___ "The point of this is that we be given the right to struggle together," said Anita Roper of Louisville, Ky.
___ While debate on the issue within the one-hour breakout session was orderly and moderated by a professional parliamentarian, the brief period of debate and voting before the full assembly was chaotic.
___ As debate rambled on, Bart Tichenor, the professional parliamentarian who had moderated the debate the day before, went to a microphone to remind CBF Moderator Donna Forrester that the group's bylaws allow only eight minutes for debate of any motion before the full assembly.
___ After competing attempts to end debate and extend debate, Forrester finally called for a standing vote. She reported that the motion to rescind the policy statement appeared to have failed by a margin of 60 percent to 40 percent, but she ordered a count of the vote.
___ Ushers, who were not prepared to count a vote, scrambled into place and attempted to count as registered participants stood once again to vote. That vote, Forrester announced, was 701 (58 percent) against the motion and 502 for it.
___ While some had predicted this debate might create a formal schism within CBF, Larry Dipboye went to a microphone after the vote to assure the assembly he did not want that to happen.
___ "We did not get our way in this vote," he said. "We are not leaving. We plan to remain in this fellowship and encourage you to do so."


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