Jimmy Carter breaks lifelong ties with Southern Baptists

Former President Carter has severed lifelong ties with the Southern Baptist Convention, with an anguished rebuke of the denomination's "increasingly rigid" conservatism.

Carter is probably the country's most famous Baptist Sunday-school teacher, who brought born-again Christianity to the White House.

"I've made this decision with a great deal of pain and reluctance," Carter, 76, told The Associated Press yesterday. "For me, being a Southern Baptist has always been like being an American. I just have never thought of making a change. My father and his father were deacons and Sunday-school teachers. It's something that's just like breathing for us."

But he added: "I personally feel the Bible says all people are equal in the eyes of God. I personally feel that women should play an absolutely equal role in service of Christ in the church."

Carter was referring to the denomination's declaration in May that women no longer should serve as senior pastors in the nation's largest Protestant denomination. He also objected to a 1998 statement that wives must "submit graciously" to the leadership of their husbands.

Both statements, which the Southern Baptist Convention's leaders say are based on their reading of the Bible, are included in the "Baptist Faith and Message," the official statement of beliefs issued by the convention, whose member churches claim 15.7 million members.

"Over the years, leaders of the convention have adopted an increasingly rigid creed . . . including some provisions that violate the basis tenets of my Christian faith," Carter wrote in a letter mailed to 75,000 Baptists by a moderate Baptist group in Texas.

In leaving the denomination after 65 years, Carter said he would continue to serve as a Sunday-school teacher and deacon in his congregation, Maranatha Baptist Church in Plains, Ga. Last month, at Carter's urging, Maranatha voted to divert half its mission contributions from the Southern Baptists to a less conservative group of congregations.

Carter's declaration came as no surprise to denominational leaders.

"President Carter has not in fact been much of a Southern Baptist for a long time," said Paige Patterson, president of Southeastern Theological Seminary in Wake Forest, N.C., and the denomination's past president.

"I would imagine it will enhance our ministry overall and probably be the cause for not a few people who have questions about Baptists becoming Baptists," Patterson said of Carter's departure.

At the heart of the debate is the role of the Bible.

Baptists historically have believed that, instead of adhering to a formal creed, church members should be able to read the Bible for themselves to discern God's will in their lives.

But Carter said the emphasis on personal interpretation has been undermined by the convention's leaders. Their declarations have become "mandatory criteria" to be accepted by members, Carter said.

The denomination's leaders insist their declarations merely reflect a plain, but literal, reading of scripture.

"The moderates believe the Bible contains God's holy word. Southern Baptists' conservatives believe the Bible is God's holy word," said Morris Chapman, chairman of the denomination's executive committee.

That, Carter said, leaves no room for interpretation.