Southern Baptist dissident group joins National Council of Churches
By John H. Adams, The Layman Online, Posted Friday, November 17, 2000
ATLANTA – While the nation’s largest Protestant denomination – the 15-million-member Southern Baptist Convention – chooses not to seek membership in the National Council of Churches, some dissident Southern Baptists have slipped in through the back door.
Delegates to the NCC voted unanimously Nov. 16 to accept the dissident Baptist Alliance, an 118-congregation, 60,000-member denomination, as full members of the national ecumenical body. That raises the number of NCC member communions to 36. Half of them pay some dues.
Many of the Alliance members, while opposing the conservative leadership of the Southern Baptist Convention, continue to hold dual membership in both denominations. But they emphasize their affiliation with the Alliance, which, according to Stan Hastey, executive director, was “born in the white-heat controversy that resulted in the capture [by ‘fundamentalists’] of the Southern Baptist Convention” in 1987.
Although the NCC warmly welcomed the Alliance, two delegates complained that the NCC had not been similarly hospitable to the Metropolitan Community Fellowship, a gay activist denomination that has twice applied for membership in the NCC but has been turned down both times.
Retired United Methodist Bishop Melvin Talbert, who continues as the UMC’s ecumenical delegate to the NCC and is a powerful figure in the strategy and work of the council, cast his delegation’s vote for the Alliance but said the Metropolitan Community Fellowship was unjustly denied membership.
Talbert’s personal endorsement of ordination of gay pastors and same-sex unions is contrary to United Methodist standards that were approved by the 2000 Quadrennial Conference and are registered in the Methodists’ Book of Discipline.
John Thomas, president of the United Church of Christ, the only mainline denomination that supports ordination of active homosexuals and same-sex unions, also complained about the exclusion of Metropolitan Community Fellowship.
After the Alliance membership was approved, the Rev. Leland Collins, a United Methodist who is executive secretary of the Georgia Christian Council, asked to make a point of personal privilege.
Collins said, “Our ecumenical officer, Bishop Talbert, expressed concern about exclusion of the Metropolitan Community Fellowship. I do have great respect for differences. I respect his opinions, but there are some of us who have different opinions on that.”
Talbert responded personally and angrily to Collins.