New Baptist Covenant: Unity. Harmony. Now, what comes next?

ATLANTA — Fifteen thousand participants in the New Baptist Covenant convocation arrived in Atlanta Jan. 30 seeking unity in Christ and departed Feb. 1 wondering where their quest will lead.

In the meantime, they demonstrated racial, theological and geographic harmony as they prayed, sang, listened to sermons and attended workshops focusing on ministry to the people Jesus called “the least of these” in society.

The unprecedented event brought together African-American, Anglo, Asian-American and Hispanic Baptists. They represented 30 Baptist conventions and organizations, all affiliated with the North American Baptist Fellowship, the regional affiliate of the Baptist World Alliance. They also heard from two former U.S. presidents, Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton, and a former vice president, Al Gore — all Baptists.

Participants scaled a 163-year-old wall that has divided the denomination since U.S. Baptists parted company over slavery more than a decade before the Civil War.

As women and men of numerous races sat side by side through sermons and hugged and laughed in hallways, they embodied a dream come true for Baptists who dreamed of racial reconciliation in their denomination.

“This is the most momentous event of my religious life,” declared an emotional Carter, a son of the South and a lifelong Baptist.

“For the first time in more than 160 years, we are convening a major gathering of Baptists throughout an entire continent, without any threat to our unity caused by differences of our race or politics or geography or the legalistic interpretation of Scripture,” said Carter, who co-chaired the gathering with Mercer University President Bill Underwood.

Carter’s euphoria echoed the aspiration of another Baptist from Georgia, and the convocation fulfilled the prophecy of Martin Luther King Jr., Underwood told the crowd.

“Forty-five years ago, a native son of Atlanta, a Baptist pastor, shared with all of us his dream: One day, on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave-owners would be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood,” Underwood said to sustained applause.

“Today, here on those red hills of Georgia, Baptists have come together to take a step in the long and difficult journey toward achieving Dr. King’s great dream. After generations of putting up walls between us — separation, division by geography, by theology, but most of all division by race — a new day is dawning. … Today, we all sit down together at the table of Christian brotherhood and sisterhood.”

Leaders of most of the participating groups first affirmed the New Baptist Covenant in April 2006, when Carter and Underwood invited them to Atlanta to talk about bridging Baptists’ racial, theological and geographic divisions by working together “to promote peace with justice, to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, shelter the homeless, care for the sick and marginalized, welcome the strangers among us, and promote religious liberty and respect for religious diversity.”

That effort piggybacked on a historic gathering of the four predominantly African-American Baptist conventions five years ago, plus ongoing discussions of unity within the North American Baptist Fellowship, NABF President David Goatley said.

“Never before have Baptists on this scale sought to cross the boundaries we choose to live behind — ethnicity, ideology, theology. Never before have Baptists on this scale come together for cooperation and collaboration for missional ministry impact.”

“We are at the threshold of great possibilities,” Goatley said.

“Unity in Christ” provided the convocation’s theme. Plenary sessions focused on creating Baptist unity by following Jesus’ mandate set out in his first sermon: “to preach good news to the poor … to proclaim freedom and recovery of sight to the blind, to release the oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

Other speakers amplified the unity theme from a range of perspectives:

— Christian oneness centers on fulfilling Jesus’ “radical mission,” stressed William Shaw, president of the National Baptist Convention, USA, one of the four African-American conventions, and pastor of White Rock Baptist Church in Philadelphia.

Jesus was not satisfied merely to bring relief to the persecuted and victimized, he explained, noting Jesus “concretized” his mission by seeking to reverse the structures and situations that caused oppression.

The heart of that quest is establishing justice and uprooting injustice, Shaw noted. “When God made mankind, he made us male and female — in his image. To do injustice to anybody is to do injustice to the reality of God, because we are in his image, and his image is not to be demeaned.”

That calls Baptists to seek change in society, he added. “You can’t embrace the mission of Jesus and not encounter the reality of injustice. He came not with actions of charity. He came to change. … Justice says we need to change the structures of victimization.”

— Baptists could express their unity by giving themselves-and their means — to rescue the poor, Tony Campolo said.

Jesus pronounced his priorities in Luke 4, beginning with preaching good news to the poor, noted Campolo, author and professor emeritus at Eastern University near Philadelphia.

“Do you think Jesus meant what he said, or do you think he was kidding?” he asked.

“There is nothing wrong with making a million dollars. I wish you all would make a million dollars. There is nothing wrong with making it, but there is something wrong with keeping it,” he said. “My Bible tells me in 1 John 3:17, ‘If anyone has the world’s goods and sees his brother in need but shuts off his compassion from him — how can God’s love reside in him?’”

After calling on both individuals and churches to pour themselves into ministering to the poor, he shouted, “Rise up, you suckers, and go out and do the work of Jesus!”

— Gore called for Baptists to protect the environment. He pleaded with participants in the convocation to make creation care one of their major initiatives.

“There is a distinct possibility that one of the messages coming out of this gathering and this new covenant is creation care — that we who are Baptists of like mind and attempting in our lives to the best of our abilities to glorify God, are not going to countenance the continued heaping of contempt on God’s creation.”

Ministerial students who attended each session took notes on the outcomes and proposals for cooperation in ministry, he said. They also gathered e-mail addresses of participants who want to continue collaboration on a range of poverty, racial, equality, peacemaking and other policy issues.

This spring, the convocation leadership group will reconvene in Atlanta to consider hundreds of suggestions and discuss how to follow up, Carter said.

The answer will not be creating yet another Baptist convention, said Jimmy Allen, program chairman for the event.

Answers likely will include opportunities for individuals, congregations and larger Baptist groups “to add our voice to common commitment” to implement the ideas for ministry that surfaced in Atlanta, Carter said.

Implementation of those commitments could answer one criticism of the New Baptist Covenant — absence of Southern Baptist Convention leadership, he added.

Carter noted he had developed a positive relationship with SBC President Frank Page, who initially criticized the endeavor. Carter also said he would provide Page with a full report on the convocation and its possible outcomes.

“The results of this meeting will determine how the Southern Baptist leaders respond to us,” he predicted. “We will reach out” to them to participate in follow-up projects, he added.

Historian Walter Shurden, recently retired director of the Center for Baptist Studies at Mercer University and one of the early organizers of the convocation, said the event could become “a major step in racial reconciliation and gender recognition of Baptists in North America.”

“It’s the most significant Baptist meeting in my life, after playing in the Baptist yard 55 years or so,” he said. “I’ve never been to a Baptist meeting where there was the equality as well as the presence” of multiracial, multigender participation.

“It bears the marks of the ministry of Jesus.”

— Marv Knox via ABP