Editors Note: The following is the full context of Roger Moran's response to Dr. Vestal's March 11, 1999 letter. This letter, dated April 30, 1999, was sent to Dr. Vestal certified mail and was carbon copied to Gary Taylor, Moran's pastor, Kerry Messer, President of MBLA and John Tyler, Moderator of the CBF. Please note the primary thrust of this letter: if there is to be a "public apology" or a "formal written retraction," as Dr. Vestal demanded, he needs to provide "a full list" of "factual errors" (so as to know what to apologize for) and a list of  "legitimate concerns" raised by MBLA (so as to find some basis for at least a degree of reconciliation). However, neither of these requests were provided. Neither did Dr. Vestal answer any of the additional 15 questions at the end of this letter. Along with this letter, Dr. Vestal was sent a copy of the April 1999 issue of "Viewpoint, " an MBLA publication providing full documentation for the 15 questions at the end of this letter. Bold print emphasis added.

Dear Dr. Vestal,

    I apologize for the time it has taken to respond to your March 11^th letter.  My original intent was to provide you with a full, documented response.  However, after careful consideration of your letter, I felt it would be more appropriate to first ask some questions of you. 

    You have asked for a “written retraction and a formal, public apology” from MBLA in part for the “untrue” statements we have made.  However, you cited no examples.  Would you please provide me with a full list of those statements along with specific details about the factual errors we have made.  If we have made such errors, as you have declared, then the burden to make things right certainly falls upon me as MBLA’s research director and author of our materials.     

    You also stated that you welcome “honest disagreement” about CBF.  But you identified the concerns raised in our materials as “outrageously convoluted and distorted examples of guilt-by-association which exploit the feelings and fears of fellow Christians…”  The question then arises -- are there any concerns that we raised in our materials that you consider legitimate  --  or “honest disagreements?”  If so, would you please provide us with a list of those legitimate concerns. 

    In our effort to make our concerns about the CBF known to Missouri Baptists, we have simply presented what CBF and CBF-related leaders have written, said and done.  In almost all cases, we have cited “moderate,” CBF-friendly sources.  Everything we have presented to Missouri Baptists has been public information.  We have dealt strictly with issues, not personalities.  We have been very specific in the concerns we have raised and we have always provided documentation.  Thus, if our presenting to Missouri Baptists what CBF and CBF-related leaders have written, said and done publicly has caused such concern on your part, why did you not vent your anger and frustration toward those leaders instead of us? 

    Furthermore, it seemed strange to me that in your letter you would issue a blanket defense of those we raised concerns about, and then issue a blanket condemnation of the materials published by MBLA.  Again, if our materials, which only presents what CBF and CBF-related leaders have written, said and done publicly, “exploit[s] the feelings and fears of fellow Christians and cast a net of suspicion over CBF,” then you should address your concerns toward those CBF and CBF-related leaders, not toward MBLA. 

    Let me also reemphasize our primary concern about CBF.  It is not that CBF as an institution supports or defends child pornography, homosexuality or abortion, as you noted in your letter.  Our concern has been the CBF’s blatant willingness to embrace those who do support and defend those things.  In our 1997 publication entitled, The Cooperative Baptist Fellowship: Serious Questions for Serious Consideration, we stated: 

There are, however, serious questions that need to be answered regarding the CBF.  The organization’s willingness to accommodate blatant theological liberalism and its openness to those who hold extreme positions on such issues as abortion, pornography and homosexuality should cause grave concern.

    We were also very careful not to cast a broad net over everybody who identifies themselves as “moderates.”  We further stated in the same publication: 

And though every one who identifies himself as a “moderate” is certainly not theologically or socially liberal - liberalism has certainly found a place within the moderate movement.           

    In response to your recent statements in the North Carolina Biblical Recorder and Associated Baptist Press that CBF is being falsely accused of promoting a gay and lesbian agenda, I am enclosing a copy of our most recent publication which deals specifically with the issue of homosexuality.  Though we have never charged CBF as an institution with promoting a gay/lesbian agenda, we did raise several questions that we believe deserve honest answers.  Let me now direct some of those questions to you, Dr. Vestal:   

Does it not matter…

·         …that a significant portion of CBF leadership and CBF-related organizations consistently align themselves with Religious Left groups supportive of homosexuality? 

·         …that the CBF-funded BJCPA played a leadership role in the production of an extreme pro-homosexuality political training manual? 

·         …that the CBF-funded Baptist Peace Fellowship of North America advocates the ordination of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered persons? 

·         …that numerous members of the CBF’s Coordinating Council serve (or have served) on the governing board of Americans United, a participating organization in the National Religious Leadership Roundtable which exists to support and affirm gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered persons?

·         …that the CBF’s Coordinating Council includes the executive director and a board member/treasurer of The Interfaith Alliance, also a member of the National Religious Leadership Roundtable which claims that its existence confirms the broad base of religious support for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered persons?   

·         …that the president of the CBF-funded Baptist Women in Ministry served (until recently) as associate pastor of University Baptist Church in Austin, Texas, which was “kicked out” of the Baptist General Convention of Texas for ordaining a homosexual as a deacon?  (Kathy Manis Findley, pastor of Providence Baptist Church in Little Rock, Arkansas, and a former president of Baptist Women in Ministry, received a mission grant from the Alliance of Baptists in 1997.  According to Stan Hastey, that church also has a “pro-gay stance.”  Findley is a member of the CBF’s Coordinating Council.) 

·         …that the CBF-funded, national, moderate newspaper, Baptists Today, operated for years out of Oakhurst Baptist Church in Decatur, Georgia, which has ordained openly homosexual deacons, named a homosexual to the chairmanship of the deacons’ board, and ordained a homosexual minister?

·         …that Wake Forest Baptist Church in North Carolina -- whose pastor, Richard Groves, served on the Interim Steering Committee of the CBF and from 1991 to 1995 on the CBF Coordinating Council -- allows its ministers to perform gay marriages and has openly homosexual members serving on the deacon board, in the choir, and as Sunday School teachers?

·         …that the Alliance of Baptists, which claims to have “provided much of the leadership of the [Cooperative Baptist] Fellowship,” has openly declared its support of homosexuality, giving all six mission grants in 1997 to churches that “have a pro-gay stance?” (Kathy Manis Findley’s church was one of those churches.)  

·         …that you, as CBF coordinator, served on the BJCPA board of directors with Carole Shields, president of People for the American Way, whose organization has been working in the courts to legalize homosexual marriages? 

·         …that the BJCPA, which receives about a quarter-million dollars each year from the CBF, played a significant role in an extreme pro-homosexuality AIDS conference sponsored the AIDS National Interfaith Network (ANIN), an organization headed up by two homosexual men? 

·         …that the CBF’s AIDS resource packet, which recommended ANIN as an AIDS resource, re-defines the family to include “gay families and lesbian families” by virtue of their “enduring covenants?” 

·         …that the CBF’s AIDS resource packet declares that:  “We do not choose our sexual orientation, but rather we ‘awaken’ to it?” 

·         …that former CBF Coordinating Council member Paul Duke (a leading Baptist advocate for Biblical acceptance of homosexuality and currently a professor of New Testament at the CBF-funded McAffee  School of Theology at Mercer) states in his two part series entitled: “Homosexuality and the Church,” that:  “Having taken the time to study the [Biblical] texts, I cannot with confidence say that the Bible condemns all forms of homosexual behavior?”  (Duke led a CBF Pre-Assembly Institute by the same title at the 1994 CBF General Assembly)

·         …that a significant portion of CBF leadership and CBF-related organizations consistently oppose conservative Christian organizations that have stood firm regarding the sinfulness of homosexual behavior (organizations like James Dobson’s Focus on the Family, Don Wildmon’s American Family Association, Beverly LaHaye’s Concerned Women for America…), referring to such groups as the “Radical Religious Right?”  (In 1995, it was you, Dr. Vestal, that signed the statement published by the CBF-funded Center for Christian Ethics, condemning the “Radical Religious Right,” stating that:  “We are alarmed because the Radical Religious Right poses significant dangers to our churches, our political system, and our American way of life.” 

    Do any of these things matter to you Dr. Vestal?  In your eyes, are any of these concerns legitimate?  Or will you continue to dismiss all of our concerns as “guilt-by-association, inflammatory language, sweeping generalizations, misleading and untrue statements?”

    Clearly, there are significant differences of opinion between those sympathetic to the CBF and those sympathetic to the SBC.  But for us, the many concerns we have raised about the CBF go far beyond legitimate social or theological “diversity.” 

    We are Missouri Baptists concerned about the growing influence of the CBF within the Missouri Baptist Convention.  We send our tithes and offerings to the MBC and our work has been specifically to make Missouri Baptists aware of our concerns about the CBF.  We have defended our positions and articulated our concerns about the CBF just as the Missouri CBF has defended its positions and articulated its concerns about the SBC.  In that context, I am somewhat puzzled by your efforts to silence our tiny group of laymen, without the slightest explanation for the multitude of concerns we have raised about the organization you head. 

    With all due respect, it is my personal opinion, Dr. Vestal, that your complaint is not with the MBLA, but with those CBF and CBF-related leaders whose activities and statements you apparently are unwilling to criticize and unable to defend.  I would call upon you, Dr. Vestal, to correct those things that are within your power that are clearly wrong in CBF.  Meanwhile, as we await your response, we will continue to stand where we believe the Scriptures speak clearly. 

Yours in Christ,

Roger A. Moran

Research Director, MBLA