Europe’s Baptists Debate Church-State Relationship

A debate on the relationship between the church and state during a Council meeting of the Union of Evangelical Baptists of Spain in Gandia near Valencia has drawn inconclusive results on the issue of government funding.

|TOP|The debate follows an offer from the Spanish Government to financially support the work of three religious minorities in the predominantly Catholic country.

A total of three million EUR has been offered for the current year to Protestants, Muslims and Jews by the socialist government of Prime Minister José Luis Zapatero.

The 227 delegates at the meeting, however, were undecided as to whether the Baptists should accept their share of the payment – EUR 12,000 – with the fear expressed that this would lead to a greater dependency on the state.

The draft of a new constitution for the Union also arose at the meeting. The draft proposes to limit the service of the Union’s primary executive to four years and decentralise the Union’s structure. The draft failed to win the approval of the majority, however.

During the meeting, Roberto Velert, pastor of one of Barcelona’s four Baptist congregations, was elected as the new president, succeeding the outgoing Pablo Simarro. Velert is also director and founder of “Radio Bona Nova” (Good News Radio).

The Union of Evangelical Baptists of Spain covers a total of 132 congregations, with nearly 9,600 members. Catholicism remains the dominant religion, with around 94 per cent of the country’s 39.5 million citizens being Catholic.

Just last week the Baptist World Alliance (BWA) continued its efforts to increase its impact in the world, as it appointed a new Associate Director of Communications. Rev Eron M. Henry, an editor, pastor and lecturer from Jamaica, who will take up the role officially from Jan. 9th, 2006.

|AD|New drives for the Baptist Church, in Europe particularly, are needed after it was announced in October that the Baptist Union of Great Britain (BUGB) has suffered the loss of more than 30,000 children below the age of 12 from its churches in the last two years.

The Baptist Church’s mission advisor, Pastor Nick Lear, called the latest decrease “a staggering drop”.

The figures are from the annual statistics gathered by the Church from its approximately 2,000 congregations nationwide, and show that the reasonably steady attendance of around 100,000 children in the Church throughout the nineties has dropped to around 65,000.

Lear announced that the Mission Department of the Baptist Church would launch a larger investigation to root out the causes of the downturn.

The drop in children is cause for concern in light of the increase in adults to the Baptist Church in the same period. In 1998, adult attendance stood at around 137,000, increasing to 164,000 by 2003, an increase of around 21 per cent.

The number of baptisms within the same period has also seen an increase from around 3,854 to 4,844, an increase of around 26 per cent.

Lear admitted that the church had played a role in the drop in the number of children: “We’ve tended to focus on adults and young people in our mission.”

He added: “I believe that children need as much opportunity to meet Jesus as adults, not just because they are the church of the future, but because without children, the body of the church is severely diminished.”

The Baptist Church in Germany has also reported a drop of around 2,800, or 15 per cent, in the number of children attending in the last two years. The number of children in the German Church now stands at around 16,000.

Statistics from the Baptist offices in Elstal show a decrease in children’s work within the same two-year period, with the number of children’s groups decreasing by 23 per cent to 1,533 between 2002 and 2004.

Youth Pastor at the Elstal chapter, Christoph Haus, however, also attributes the drop to demographic trends in Germany as well as conservative survey methods. He assured: “Children’s work is booming in many of our federation’s congregations.”