Mainstream Missouri Baptists:  An Affiliate of Texas Baptists Committed

In March of 1998, a group of about 100 moderate Baptists met in Nashville, Tennessee to form a national council, called the “Baptists Committed Connection,” to help form Texas Baptists Committed-type organizations in as many as 15 states.  The meeting was billed as a “Mainstream Baptist Gathering” and included representatives from:  Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and Virginia.[i]  According to John Baugh, an organizer of the Nashville meeting and a member of the Texas Baptists Committed Executive Committee:  “Moderates should instead be called ‘mainstream Baptists’… because they stand for the traditional Baptist values.”[ii]  (emphasis ours)  

According to Associated Baptist Press, the CBF-funded news agency:  “Texas Baptists Committed is offering moderates in other states no-interest loans up to $25,000 to help them form new [Baptists Committed-type] groups.”[iii]  Attending that meeting from Missouri was former MBC president and CBF Coordinating Council member Dr. John Hughes.[iv]  Approximately four months after the Nashville meeting, Mainstream Missouri Baptists announced its formation with Dr. Hughes serving on its board.   

Though Mainstream Missouri Baptists claims to have no affiliation with Texas Baptists Committed, the October 1999 National Edition of the Texas Baptists Committed newsletter, which is sent “to over 35,000 persons outside the state of Texas,”[v] identifies Mainstream Missouri Baptists as one of four Texas Baptists Committed affiliates.  The newsletter states:   

If you live in Missouri, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Tennessee, then you have a Baptist Committed-type organization already formed and operating.  We are providing the address of each of these organizations on page 27 of this newsletter.[vi] 

On page 27, the newsletter states:  “Join the Baptists Committed organization in your state!”  Under that heading, the four groups are listed:  Mainstream Oklahoma Baptists, Mainstream Tennessee Baptists, Arkansas Baptists Committed and Mainstream Missouri Baptists.  The newsletter further states:  “Every one of you who lives in those states should send in your membership dues immediately…” noting that 50% of your $25 contribution to Texas Baptists Committed will be sent back to your state Baptist Committed-type  group.[vii]  

The most recent addition to the national “Mainstream” network has been “Mainstream Louisiana Baptists.” Like Missouri, Mainstream Louisiana Baptists also includes both state and national CBF leaders on its Executive Committee.

Texas Baptists Committed and Mainstream Missouri Baptists:

Extreme Anti-SBC

Mainstream Missouri Baptists’ affiliation with Texas Baptists Committed becomes even more significant when the Texas group’s close relationship with the CBF is known.  According to Dr. Jimmy Allen, a former SBC president and a leading CBF moderate: “[Texas Baptists Committed] is the functioning unit of the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship” in Texas.[viii]  Thus, it should come as no surprise that in addition to serving as coordinator of Texas Baptists Committed, Dr. David Currie also serves on the CBF’s Coordinating Council[ix] and as chairman of the CBF’s finance task force.[x]  Texas Baptists Committed associate coordinator Charles C. McLaughlin serves as coordinator of the newly formed Texas CBF.[xi]  Dr. Bruce Prescott, executive director of Mainstream Oklahoma Baptists, is also a former member of the CBF Coordinating Council,[xii] has served as a CBF “breakout leader,”[xiii] and is a former member of the Texas Baptists Committed Executive Committee.[xiv]       

According to Dr. Currie:  “Texas Baptists Committed is not interested in becoming a national organization.  However, we are interested in other Baptist state conventions staying true to Jesus and the Baptist way of doing things.  We are interested in other Baptist state conventions not going through a fundamentalist takeover, similar to that which has occurred in the Southern Baptist Convention…  We want to see other states start Baptists Committed organizations to protect the freedom of all Baptists, including fundamentalist Baptists.”[xv]  (emphasis ours)  

However, in the same article, Dr. Currie states:  “To prevent fundamentalist control [of your state convention], one cannot compromise Baptist principles, one cannot compromise with fundamentalist leaders, one cannot co-exist with fundamentalist leadership.  Twenty years of fundamentalist control at the SBC level prove these truths…  Do not be deluded in your thinking, defeating fundamentalism is the ONLY way to have peace in your state convention.”[xvi] 

Dr. Currie and his Texas Baptists Committed’s extreme hostility toward  the conservative leadership of the SBC is well documented.  Speaking at the March 1998 Baptist Committed meeting in Nashville, Dr. Currie is quoted by the CBF-funded Associated Baptist Press:  “Sometimes ‘the best way to build the Kingdom’ is by supporting ministries not controlled by the Southern Baptist Convention, Currie said.  Rather than sending money to Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, an SBC school, he said, ‘I would rather you drive down the street and throw your money out the window, because it is more likely to be picked up and used to build the Kingdom of God.’”[xvii]  The president of Southeastern Seminary is Dr. Paige Patterson, who is currently the president of the SBC.

According to Dr. Currie:  “We [Baptist General Convention of Texas] are distancing ourselves from the Southern Baptist Convention and rightly so.”[xviii]  In the January 2000 issue of the Texas Baptists Committed state newsletter, Dr. Currie states:  “My vision is that over the next 10 years, all traditional Baptist churches will stop supporting the SBC…”[xix] 

Building the CBF with SBC Churches

Dr. Currie’s “vision” that SBC churches would stop supporting the Southern Baptist Convention is rooted in his stated belief that “75% of [SBC] churches nationwide would find they agree with CBF much more than the SBC.”[xx]  Echoing that same rhetoric, Texas Baptists Committed co-chair (and former president of the Baptist General Convention of Texas) Jerold McBride states:  “In fact, I think 80 percent of Texas Baptists have much more in common with the CBF than they do the SBC and just do not realize it.  I have been active in both the [Baptist General Convention of Texas] and CBF.  Their goals, beliefs and commitments are the same…  Every effort being made to keep Texas Baptists closely tied to the SBC is an effort that distracts us from our main job.”[xxi]  McBride further stated:  “The [Baptist General Convention of Texas] will not be safe until the majority of churches in Texas know what has happened and is happening and no longer feel an emotional connection nor have a strong financial tie to the SBC.”[xxii]   

At the 1999 CBF General Assembly in Birmingham, Alabama, speaking as the CBF finance task force chairman, Dr. Currie explained to the General Assembly why CBF income has not grown, but also noted that there are 37,000 SBC churches, most of which, in his opinion, could be recruited to the CBF. According to the CBF-funded Associated Baptist Press: 

Currie said he believes, however, there is a potential for the Fellowship to reach many new churches.  “If there are 37,000 churches that relate to the name Southern Baptist  --  as we still do  --  the vast, vast majority of the people in those churches would be more comfortable here [in CBF] than they would be in [the SBC]…  We are the real Baptists”, he added.[xxiii]  

Operating as a Political Front Group for the CBF

Believing that most SBC churches would “agree with CBF much more than the SBC” and that the “37,000 churches that relate to the name Southern Baptist” represents the potential growth of the CBF, Texas Baptists Committed, with its growing national network of “Mainstream” Baptist organizations, has operated  as a political front-group for the CBF with a basic three-fold agenda:  First, to oppose conservative pro-SBC leaders (fundamentalists) on the state convention level; Second, to distance the state conventions from the national SBC; and lastly, to strengthen the CBF on the state level by working to move the state conventions toward “partnering” with the CBF. 

The end result of this political strategy has been to allow anti-SBC and pro-CBF “moderates” to take back on the state convention level what they lost on the national SBC level, as demonstrated most clearly in Virginia and Texas.  In those states, conservative Southern Baptists were forced to either leave their state convention, or stay, knowing that the anti-SBC/pro-CBF leadership was moving as quickly as possible toward embracing the CBF and toward severing ties with the SBC.

Evidence of this fact was clearly presented by Dr. Russell Dilday, speaking at Calder Baptist Church in Beaumont, Texas on May 2, 1999.  Speaking as the president of the Baptist General Convention of Texas,  Dr. Dilday describes the role Texas Baptists Committed has played in Texas; its intention to export their activities to other state conventions; and how the Baptist General Convention of Texas leadership had changed the rules to assure that conservative, pro-SBC churches in Texas would be unable to steer the Texas convention back toward the SBC.  Dr. Dilday states:        

Texas Baptists Committed is a group that organized here to avoid and oppose the fundamentalist takeover of Texas, so it became purely and unapologetically a political organization…  I think Texas Baptists Committed has now accomplished that purpose in Texas, and we still need them to be there in case we have another attempt by any right wing group to take over, although now, having the majority, Texas Baptists were able to make some changes in the way messengers are appointed so it will be very difficult in the future for any group, right or left, to organize small churches and bring in messengers and take over.  We’ve tried to create some ways in which that won’t work in the future and I think the threat of that is not likely to happen again.  But Texas Baptists Committed now is beginning to expend its energy toward creating similar organizations in other states where fundamentalist threat is very real or where they’ve already been strong, and I think that’s a fitting thing to happen.  They also are putting more emphasis in Texas Baptists Committed on a CBF or Cooperative Baptist Fellowship work in Texas.[xxiv] (emphasis ours) 

Dr. Dilday was a program leader at the 1995 CBF General Assembly in Fort Worth, Texas[xxv] and the keynote speaker at the 1998 Missouri CBF annual luncheon held during the annual meeting of the Missouri Baptist Convention.[xxvi]  It is also worth  noting that the newly elected executive director of the Baptist General Convention of Texas, Charles Wade, is a former member of the national CBF Coordinating Council[xxvii] and served as chairman of Texas Baptists Committed.[xxviii]   

Table of Contents

Previous page 

Next page