The Baptist State Convention of North Carolina has strengthened its membership criteria to specify churches that do not support homosexuality and do not allow homosexuals to be members until they repent.
Messengers voted by nearly a three-fourths majority to change the convention’s articles of incorporation concerning membership, as proposed in a motion last year by Bill Sanderson, pastor of Hephzibah Baptist Church in Wendell.
The original article stated, “A cooperating church shall be one that financially supports any program, institution, or agency of the Convention, and which is in friendly cooperation with the Convention and sympathetic with its purposes and work.”
The addition to the article states, “Among churches not in friendly cooperation with the Convention are churches which knowingly act to affirm, approve, endorse, promote, support or bless homosexual behavior. The board of directors shall apply this provision. A church has a right to appeal any adverse action taken by the board of directors.”
The action needed a two-thirds vote during two consecutive annual meetings.
Sanderson, who sought to change the articles of incorporation, said, “We are people of the Book. We are not willing to compromise. We have to be willing to take a stand. Others are willing to compromise.”
Last year when Sanderson brought up the issue of homosexual acceptance in Baptist churches, messengers directed the state convention’s board of directors to develop a policy defining “churches in friendly cooperation with this convention.” Don Warren of Gastonia, president of the board of directors, appointed a committee to study the issue.
Mark Harris, pastor of First Baptist Church in Charlotte and head of Southeastern Baptist Seminary’s board of trustees, chaired the committee, which also included Southeastern Seminary ethics professor Daniel Heimbach. They spoke with the Southern Baptist Convention lawyers, who referred them to the SBC constitution which was amended to include similar language in 1993. They worked with BSCNC staff and looked at whether various state conventions have provisions concerning homosexuals as church members and churches that support homosexuality being in good standing.
Harris said they found specific wording in the Georgia State Convention’s governing documents on membership addressing the issue of churches that affirm homosexual behavior.
Harris said, “It is important to know that this reflects biblical standards we all can unite on. This in no way attacks a person caught in the grips of homosexual behavior. This is the establishment of a standard for the North Carolina Baptist Convention.
“No one sin is worse than another. As believers, we have a responsibility to stand against an agenda which is contrary to scripture. Nothing would please me more than if this discussion was unnecessary. However, this convention must stand with courage,” Harris said.
About 20 BSCNC churches are members of the Alliance of Baptists, a Washington, D.C.-based group which does not exclude homosexuals as church members or “same-sex marriages.”
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