Unfortunately, the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC), whose leaders need to hear Grisham’s message most, did not participate in the New Baptist Covenant.
Mega-best-selling author John Grisham doesn’t deliver public speeches often. But he made a recent exception for a massive national gathering of Baptists in Georgia.
At the “Celebration Of A New Baptist Covenant” in Atlanta over a three-day period, almost 15,000 Baptists from about 30 varying denominations and associations gathered to discuss how to become more involved with helping the less fortunate and less involved with internal divisiveness.
In a Jan. 31 address, Grisham, a member of University Baptist Church in Charlottesville, Va., said Baptist churches must stop being so exclusive and so closely tied to partisan politics.
“Evangelical politics has become a big business, and the results are disastrous,” he said. “When the church gets involved in politics, it alienates many people it is supposed to serve.”
Instead of floundering in politics, Grisham added, “As a church, our mission is to serve God through teaching, preaching and serving others.”
Unfortunately, the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC), whose leaders need to hear Grisham’s message most, did not participate in the New Baptist Covenant. The nation’s largest Protestant denomination has been in the grip of the Religious Right movement since the early 1980s.
The SBC has aligned itself with Religious Right causes, such as banning abortion, opposing gay marriage and bringing church and state closer together. Its leaders have also frequently lent support to Republican candidates for office.
Grisham, during his address to the New Baptist Covenant, said Baptists’ public image has suffered greatly, and he encouraged Baptist churches to embrace diversity.
“God made all of us, loves us equally and expects us to love each other equally,” he said, “without respect to gender, race, sexual orientation or other religions.”
Baptists have historically been staunch supporters of church-state separation. The SBC, however, along with its allies in the Religious Right, have spent decades working to undermine that constitutional principle.
At the New Baptist Covenant gathering, which former President Jimmy Carter helped launch, Grisham’s call for a break from politics was joined by a plea from traditionalist Baptist leaders for a return to championing church-state separation.
Brent Walker, The Texas Baptist Standard reported, called on Baptists to embrace a universal standard: “I must not insist that government promote my religion if I don’t want government to promote somebody else’s religion, and I should not permit government to harm someone else’s religion if I don’t want religion to harm my religion.”
Walker, who heads the Washington, D.C.-based Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty, noted that church-state separation has helped America flourish religiously without the deadly sectarian strife that has troubled other nations.
James Dunn, a professor at Wake Forest University and a former member of Americans United’s Board of Trustees, said the wall separating church and state must continue “to keep the institutions of religion from cozying up to the institutions of government.”
The principles celebrated at the New Baptist Covenant gathering are not foreign to Baptists. But those vaunted ideals have been overshadowed by the SBC’s high-profile involvement in the Religious Right movement.
Many voices at the Atlanta gathering are urging Baptists to return to more inclusive and productive ways. That call is very welcome and long overdue.
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