Baptist group elects Arkansan as leader
Posted on Saturday, June 21, 2008
URL: http://www.nwanews.com/adg/News/229234/
The Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, a national group of moderate Baptists, elected an Arkansan as its next leader Friday.
Hal Bass, a political science professor and dean of the school of social sciences at Ouachita Baptist University in Arkadelphia, is now the moderator-elect of the 703, 000-member fellowship. Bass was the sole nominee for the post.
About 2, 000 Baptists are meeting in Memphis for the group’s annual general assembly.
“I want to effectively convey the energy and the enthusiasm I see in the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship not only at the national level but also in the states and congregations,” Bass said. “I want to let the story be told of all the exciting things that are going on — the missions and ministry projects.”
In his new role, he will serve as a sort of moderator-in-training for a year before automatically becoming the next moderator in July 2009 when the group has its general assembly in Houston.
The moderator serves a oneyear term as the public face of the fellowship and presides over its annual assembly and the Coordinating Council that governs the group. The position is unpaid. Jack Glasgow, the current moderator, is a North Carolina pastor. The Atlanta-based Cooperative Baptist Fellowship was established 17 years ago by Baptists unhappy with what they saw as the fundamentalist takeover of the Southern Baptist Convention.
Unlike the Southern Baptist Convention, the group approves of women in ministry and leadership positions. But according to its Web site at www. thefellowship. info, the group still holds many traditional Baptist beliefs such as the authority of the Bible, the priesthood of the believer and the autonomy of the individual church.
The national group has no agencies of its own but partners with a number of ministry organizations and supports about 150 global missions.
The fellowship is still far smaller than the Southern Baptist Convention, the country’s largest Protestant denomination. The fellowship has about 1, 900 affiliated congregations, while the Southern Baptist Convention has nearly 44, 700 churches.
About 20 congregations in Arkansas are affiliated with the fellowship. Many of the fellowship’s Arkansas congregations also remain affiliated in some way with the Southern Baptist Convention.
Dr. John Wikman, the Arkansas liaison to the fellowship’s Coordinating Council, served on the nominating committee that chose Bass.
“His experience and his education will make him a good moderator,” said Wikman, a retired medical missionary in Fort Smith. “He will be able to give us a lot of vision and guidance.... Being in political science, he knows how to see both sides of things and can help us reach a consensus.”
Bass, 59, has been involved with the fellowship since its start. He has served on both of the group’s national and Arkansas Coordinating Councils. He is a member of First Baptist Church of Arkadelphia. His home congregation, while not directly affiliated with the fellowship, allows its members to earmark offerings for the group.
The Rev. Randy Hyde, pastor of Pulaski Heights Baptist Church in Little Rock, said Bass will bring a great deal of insight on church-state relations to his new role. Bass has written articles on the role of religion in public life.
“Baptists historically have stood for separation of church and state and religious liberty,” Hyde said. “It’s just been in the last 30 years that those lines have been blurred terribly, and some Baptists have been associated with one political party. Our view is that God is not affiliated with a political party, so we focus on religious liberty.”
Bass said part of what drew him to the fellowship is its affirmation of the separation of church and state.
“I think we have a very useful and indeed I would say a very necessary role to play in the life of Baptists in the South and the life of Christians in the South,” Bass said. “From my perspective, [it’s ] maintaining traditional Baptist identities in areas such as religious liberty and the like.”