Baptist Moderates Trying to Organize in Wake of Defeat by Fundamentalists

In the wake of their latest defeats at the annual meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention last week, moderates in the 14.9-million-member denomination are trying to organize a national strategy session to plan for their future.

The Rev. Daniel Vestal of Atlanta, who was defeated for the second year in a row in a bid for the presidency at the denomination’s June 12-14 convention in New Orleans, urged moderates to organize a national meeting to discuss “the future of the Southern Baptist Convention.”

Five moderate organizations have expressed an interest in such a meeting--Baptists Committed to the Southern Baptist Convention, the Southern Baptist Alliance, the Southern Baptist Forum, SBC Today and Women in Ministry. Spokesmen of several of the planning groups speculated that the meeting might be held in late August or early September in Atlanta, where Dunwoody Baptist Church and the SBC Today periodical are both located.