Southern Baptist Fundamentalists Urge Moderates to Get Lost : Dissension: After winning the presidency for the 12th straight year, conservatives suggest that ‘spoilsports’ would be happier elsewhere.

NEW ORLEANS — After winning the Southern Baptist presidency for the 12th consecutive year, the fundamentalist camp declared this week that the rancorous battle was finally settled and that “spoilsports” ought to leave the country’s largest Protestant denomination.

The losers--the relatively moderate pastors and churches in the theologically conservative body--say they will not stage a mass exodus. However, moderate leaders say that some churches may selectively withhold funds from denominational agencies as they consider options of forming a new church or joining with another Baptist body.

This year’s convention, which drew more than 38,000 to the Louisiana Superdome, saw fundamentalists suggesting more pointedly than ever that dissenters should depart.

The Rev. Morris Chapman, pastor of the 7,700-member First Baptist Church in Wichita Falls, Tex., won the presidency Tuesday by a surprisingly comfortable 58% over the Rev. Daniel Vestal, a suburban Atlanta pastor making a second try at the office under the moderate banner.

Like fundamentalist flag-bearers before him, Chapman told a news conference that he would seek reconciliation in the denomination. But Chapman, 49, said he thought that opponents will likely find a church association “more in line with their (religious) convictions.”

Tennessee pastor Adrian Rogers, a key fundamentalist leader who won terms as president in 1979, 1986 and 1987, told some reporters that the complaining losers were “spoilsports.”

“If I were the minority in this convention, I would sublimate my views or I’d get out,” Rogers said. “I would join a group that shared my convictions and pray God’s blessings on the group that I left.”

In its doctrinal and social stances, the 14.9-million-member denomination is far to the right of any body in the National Council of Churches. It resembles the most conservative churches in the National Assn. of Evangelicals. But the Southern Baptists belong to neither group.

With 400,000 members, it is the largest Protestant denomination in California. Concerned mostly with creating new churches, including 65 ethnic congregations, California Southern Baptists have generally stayed out of denominational politics.

The lingering controversy is all the more bitter because the issues are defined differently by opposing forces.

Fundamentalists allege that evangelism suffers because not all of the seminary and church agency officials swear by such literalist interpretations that Adam and Eve actually existed.

Moderates say they also are ardent Bible believers but that a “power grab,” largely by pastors of large churches, is aimed at enforcing conformity despite the Baptist tradition of individual conscience. The resulting turmoil, they say, has slowed the growth of the denomination.

Asked about declines in baptisms, missionary appointments and seminary enrollments in recent years, Rogers told reporters that “you cannot say that if statistics sag for a while that therefore the course you are taking is wrong.”

Chapman said that in his one-year presidency he will not favor a “wholesale housecleaning” of moderate officials, but that they will be replaced with conservatives through attrition.

At the denomination’s six seminaries, one president resigned under pressure and two others have fought off accusations on the orthodoxy of their faculties.

Trouble may be on the way for Russell H. Dilday, president of the 4,500-student Southwestern Seminary in Ft. Worth, the largest of the six seminaries. He told reporters that political intimidation of the last 12 years was a “satanic and evil assault.”

Dilday defended his remark on the convention floor the next day, saying that methods “in the takeover of the convention these past 12 years--the crass, secular, political methodology--does have satanic, evil qualities of which I am desperately opposed.”

At the denomination’s executive committee meeting Wednesday, Don Taylor, a Southwestern Seminary trustee, called the remark degrading. Taylor asked for prayer that the Southwestern trustees “will have the stamina to do what needs to be done.” The executive committee meeting ended with a prayer that trustees “be led by the Holy Spirit.”

In other convention votes that demonstrated fundamentalist clout, the messengers, or delegates, slashed contributions by 87% to $50,000 for the nine-denomination Baptist Joint Committee on Public Affairs. The organization is a Washington-based group long under attack by fundamentalists who believe it is too liberal. Messengers also increased by $300,000 the budget of their own Christian Life Commission so it can begin lobbying for religious liberty and church-state separation in the nation’s capital.

Ron Sisk, a messenger from Tiburon, Calif., argued against the funding cut during the floor debate, saying it would damage the joint committee’s effectiveness.

“It has 50 years’ experience in dealing with religious liberty. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” Sisk said.

After the vote, the Rev. James Dunn, the Southern Baptist who directs the joint committee, said the group would raise money through donations to make up the difference. Dunn said it is possible that the two groups will send conflicting messages to Congress. “We will just have to live with that,” Dunn said.

The question of where moderates go now was answered similarly by Vestal, the defeated candidate for president, and Stan Hastey, who directs the 101-church Baptist Alliance, a group of moderate Southern Baptists. Both cited the possibility of eventual affiliation with the American Baptist Churches, based in Valley Forge, Pa., or the formation of a new denomination.

Hastey said he is against running a moderate candidate for president next year because Chapman would be highly favored to win a traditional second one-year term.

The denomination may feel a financial pinch if moderate churches redirect or lower contributions to Southern Baptist institutions, Hastey said. The moderate churches are among the heaviest contributors to the denomination.

Vestal said the Baptist tradition of local church autonomy and individual conscience still provides a reason for most moderate Southern Baptists not to despair.

“No Pope, no presbytery, no president and no judge can tell us what to do,” said Vestal. The latter reference was thought to be to Paul Pressler, a Houston appeals court judge.

The fundamentalist campaign to move into leadership positions was hatched in the early 1970s when the combative judge, now vice chairman of the denomination’s executive committee, met at the riverfront Cafe Du Monde here with the Rev. Paige Patterson, now of Dallas.

While munching on beignets, the sugar doughnut speciality of the restaurant, the two decried what they called the denomination’s “liberalism” and talked about strategies for change.

Late Wednesday night at the Cafe Du Monde, supporters held a celebration honoring Pressler and Patterson “at the place where it all began,” according to the invitation card.

Asked at the cafe whether the battle has ended, Pressler told a reporter, “After 12 years of losing, I think (the moderates) would see a clear message.”