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M2
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« on: August 06, 2003, 10:46:49 pm » |
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I'm interested in your perspectives on the opinions expressed in this article.
Jun. 05, 2003
Doctrine trims ranks of Baptist missionaries
By Jim Jones
Special to the Star-Telegram
Forty-three Southern Baptist missionaries lost their jobs in May because they refused to sign a controversial faith statement that opposes women pastors and says wives should "graciously submit" to the servant leadership of their husbands.
Susie and David Dixon, missionaries in Madrid, Spain, received notice on Susie Dixon's birthday that they had been fired, after 15 years of service.
"I felt like I was excommunicated from the denomination I had been nurtured in all my life," Susie Dixon said in a telephone interview from Madrid. "I've gone through the whole gamut of emotions -- grief and anger and denying this could really happen, to sadness that it could come to this."
Since January 2002, overseas missionaries have been pressured to affirm the 2000 Baptist Faith and Message Statement, and most of the more than 5,000 missionaries have done that. But this spring, all missionaries were told they must affirm the statement or lose their jobs.
The firing of 13 missionaries and the resignation or retirement of 30 others serving in places such as the Ivory Coast, Spain and Japan widens the split between moderates and conservatives in the nation's largest Protestant denomination.
"We grieve over this," said Jerry Rankin, president of the International Mission Board in Richmond, Va. "We regret losing any missionaries, but we must move on. Our focus now is not on those leaving but in giving nurture and care to those still in the field."
At least 77 missionaries have left in recent months because they reject the statement, the largest exodus of Southern Baptist employees since the moderates and conservatives began pulling apart more than 30 years ago.
Many are now looking for other ways to support their missionary work.
Moderate Baptists say conservatives have made what was meant to be a general profession of Baptist doctrine into a binding creed with specific prohibitions and a litmus test for employment. They say the statement is sexist and elevates the Bible over personal experience with Jesus.
Rankin said that affirming the faith statement shows accountability to the denomination and that missionaries have been required to affirm Baptist faith statements in the past.
The statement is not a creed because it is not imposed on individual Baptists or their churches, Rankin said.
Other Baptist employees, including professors at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, have also been fired or forced to resign because they disagreed with changes in the Baptist doctrinal document.
Susie Dixon, who turned 51 on May 7, said she started thinking about becoming a missionary when, as a teen-ager, she went on missions to Mexico with the First Baptist Church of Midland. She met her husband while they were attending Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth.
David Dixon, 54, who served eight years as pastor of Iglesia Bautista Central west of downtown Fort Worth in the 1980s, was academic dean and professor at the Spanish Baptist Seminary in Madrid. He said he and his wife chose to be fired, rather than resign, to show support for the thousands of other Southern Baptists who also oppose the new faith statement.
"Of course, it is disappointing and it hurts, but we knew our convention in the states was moving in this direction," David Dixon said. He and his wife, who taught at the Madrid seminary, hope to return to Spain and continue their work using other avenues of financial support.
Baptist missionaries in Japan have particularly objected to sections of the revised doctrinal statement relating to women because many Japanese Baptist churches are led by women pastors.
Two missionaries to Japan who were fired, Ron Barrow-Hankins and his wife, Lydia, an ordained minister, said in an e-mail that they could not affirm the faith statement because it denigrates the role of women.
They said the statement reflects "blatant sexual discrimination" and "rewrites the role of every missionary woman in the field. Its marriage and ministry restrictions spell a setback of generations for the liberating power of Christ in the lives of women."
The moderate-led Baptist General Convention of Texas has established a $1.3 million fund to offer up to a year's assistance to missionaries who have lost their jobs. So far, more than $500,000 for housing, medical help and other needs has been allocated to missionaries who have been fired or resigned, said Steve Seaberry, an administrator of the fund.
Moderates in other states have pledged to help, and individual churches are expected to support some of the missionaries who want to remain in the field. The Park Cities Baptist Church in Dallas, for example, will allow the Dixons to stay in the church's missionary residence this summer when they return to the Metroplex.
"I think there will be a variety of responses to help these missionaries who had to leave," said Keith Parks, a moderate leader and former president of the Southern Baptist missionary agency. "Some institutions overseas have said they will assume financial responsibility to keep the missionaries."
Other displaced missionaries have found work with other church organizations.
Ron Gunter, a missionary who resigned, was formerly in charge of work in the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania and Moldova. He now represents the Baptist General Convention of Texas to churches in the Houston area.
Gunter, who served as pastor at the River Oaks Baptist Church in Fort Worth before becoming a missionary, also said that affirming the statement would be like accepting a creed.
"We Baptists have no creed but the Bible," he said.
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