Baptists poised to hurdle divisions with new covenant

For the first time in more than 160 years, Baptists in North America will have a major convocation next month and differences of race, politics, or legalistic interpretations of the Scriptures will not threaten their unity, said former President Jimmy Carter earlier this week.

Some 20,000 Baptists are expected to join a historic effort, called the New Baptist Covenant, aimed at dispelling an image of division among Baptist groups and in hopes of emerging with a new Baptist voice. The meeting is scheduled for January 30-February 1 in Atlanta.

"One of the basic premises will be that the doors will be open to all Baptists who choose to share this long-awaited experience," said Carter, who spearheaded the initiative, in a statement this week in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

Leaders from more than 30 Baptist organisations will be gathering under the theme "Unity in Christ" but notably absent from the convocation will be leaders from the largest Baptist group in America - the Southern Baptist Convention.

Conservative Southern Baptist leaders have been critical of the list of speakers lined up for the New Baptist Covenant celebration. Along with Carter, former president Bill Clinton, Nobel Peace Prize winner and former vice president Al Gore, US Senators Lindsey Graham and Charles Grassley, and Children's Defense Fund founder Marian Wright Edelman are among those scheduled to speak at the meeting.

Southern Baptist Convention president Frank Page said he would not take part in a "smokescreen leftwing liberal agenda" and others have alleged there are political overtones, considering the line-up of speakers and the timing of the event - which takes place during the US presidential election year.

Rising Republican presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee withdrew his participation from the convocation in May and commented last week that being president would be "a heck of a lot easier job than getting all the Baptists to agree on everything".

At the time of his decision to withdraw from the meeting, he said it would be best for him not to participate and to "not appear to be giving approval to what could be a political, rather than spiritual agenda", he told Florida Baptist Witness.

Organisers of the New Baptist Covenant, including Bill Underwood - president of Mercer University - have denied any political motives and instead emphasised the compassion platform they will be pushing.

One of the major prongs to the New Baptist Covenant is following the compassion mandate through social work in the capacity of poverty, HIV and Aids and sex trafficking and also addressing religious diversity and evangelism among other issues. Carter has said he wants to bring together as many Baptists as possible on the ground of accomplishing the mission of Jesus.

"Our common ground will be the words of our Savior when he returned to his home town in Nazareth after his miraculous ministry had been demonstrated around the northern shores of the Sea of Galilee: The spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised, to preach the acceptable year of the Lord," Carter said in his opinion piece this week.

"These words are both inspirational and a call to action as we strive to emulate, in our own individual ways, the perfect life of Jesus Christ," he added.

The New Baptist Covenant Celebration is being organized under the umbrella of the North American Baptist Fellowship - a division of the Baptist World Alliance - which the Southern Baptist group left following concerns over its "leftward drift".

Meanwhile, Southern Baptist head Page has expressed concerns of divisions within their own 16.3 million-member convention. A negative image of Baptists as "legalistic and mean-spirited" - which the New Baptist Covenant is also trying to counter - has been highlighted by the media.

And despite ongoing mission works and the provision of millions of meals to needy communities, Page, like many, says Baptists are more known for what they're against than what they are for.

Baptists need to do a better job of "presenting reality", Page told Southern Baptists at a Tulsa, Oklahoma, church in October. The reality is that Southern Baptists are loving, caring people, said Page.

The Baptist groups supporting the New Baptist Covenant include the American Baptist Churches and the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship. Several historically African-American Baptist denominations, including the National Baptist ConventionUSA Inc, have also joined the effort.