Southern Baptists leave Alliance

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The Southern Baptist Convention voted yesterday to sever its 99-year relationship with the Baptist World Alliance on the grounds that it includes a Baptist denomination with openly homosexual members.

At its annual meeting in Indianapolis, the Convention voted overwhelmingly to break away from BWA, because the worldwide umbrella group also includes American Baptist Churches USA, which has about 30 congregations that call themselves "welcoming and affirming" to homosexuals.

In a speech to the convention, the Rev. Paige Patterson, president of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, said the Falls Church-based BWA has churches "committed to being a gay-friendly place for churches and people of that disposition."

Mr. Patterson singled out the Seattle-based Evergreen Baptist Association, among the most liberal of the American Baptist's 35 regional associations, as being especially soft on homosexuality.

"What you give your name and your money to, you give your tacit approval to," Mr. Patterson said, adding that the Convention "can no longer afford to be aligned in any way" with such churches at a time when homosexual "marriage" is one of the nation's leading public issues.

After an appeal to reconsider from the Rev. Larry Walker, a delegate from First Baptist Church in Dallas, debate was cut off and the Convention voted with a show of hands, roughly 80 percent to 20 percent, to sever ties, according to Denton Lotz, BWA general secretary.

BWA and American Baptist officials reacted with fury afterward, saying both were being tarred falsely.

"We were unfairly accused of being associated with gay marriage," Mr. Lotz said. "The Baptist World Alliance doesn't accept gay marriage."

American Baptist, based in Valley Forge, Pa., has about 5,700 churches and 1.5 million members. It declared in 1992 that "the practice of homosexuality is incompatible with Christian teaching."

"To characterize American Baptist Churches USA as being in favor of gay marriage goes beyond the pale," said the Rev. A. Roy Medley, American Baptist general secretary. He added that a 1984 policy statement adopted by the denomination allows marriage only between a man and a woman.