PHOENIX — Southern Baptists, who split from Northern Baptists in 1845 over the issue of slavery, on Tuesday elected a black pastor to serve as first vice president of the nation’s largest Protestant denomination.
Fred Luter, pastor of Franklin Avenue Baptist Church in New Orleans, soundly defeated Richard Ong, a deacon at First Chinese Baptist Church in Phoenix, to claim the second-highest office in the Southern Baptist Convention.
Luter, 54, is the highest ranking black to ever win office in the predominantly white denomination, which allowed its churches to exclude blacks from membership at least into the late-1970s.
In 1989, the convention voted to “repent of any past bigotry.” It promised to stand “publicly and privately for racial justice and equality” and to seek “greater racial and ethnic representation at every level of Southern Baptist institutional life.”
On Tuesday, the mostly white crowd, gathering at the Phoenix Convention Center, burst into applause when Luter’s election was announced.
He outpolled Ong 1,558 to 441, and received more than 77 percent of the vote.
Luter could not be reached for comment after Tuesday’s vote.
Former Southern Baptist Convention President Frank Page welcomed Luter’s election.
“Fred Luter is one of the finest men I’ve ever known,” Page said. “He’s a great father, a great husband, he’s a pastor whose been steadfast in good times and bad.”
Page said he hopes there will be other elections in Luter’s future.
“I have encouraged him on numerous occasions to run for the president of the Southern Baptist Convention,” Page said.
Ronnie Floyd, president of Cross Church in Northwest Arkansas, also said Luter has a shot at the top job. “I think the potential is there,” Floyd said. “Only the Lord knows,but it could happen.”
Earlier Tuesday, on the first day of the denomination’s annual meeting, Bryant Wright won a second term as Southern Baptist Convention president.
Wright, pastor of Johnson Ferry Baptist Church in Marietta, Ga., defeated Wiley Drake, pastor of First Southern Baptist Church in Buena Park, Calif., and a perennial candidate for Baptist leadership posts.
Wright thanked his fellow Baptists for entrusting him with a second term.
“It’s been a joy this past year to serve the Lord and serve you,” Wright told the crowd.
A total of 2,384 delegates, known as messengers, cast votes for president - roughly half of those eligible to vote - but they overwhelmingly backed Wright. The Georgia preacher received 2,274 votes (95 percent), while the California minister garnered 102 (4 percent).
Tuesday afternoon’s lopsided vote for president was no surprise to Emil Turner, executive director of the Arkansas Baptist State Convention.
“Rarely is there any opposition for a second term for a Southern Baptist Convention president. I think the lack of opposition reflects on our traditional way of doing things.”
Overall, there were 4,791 messengers in Phoenix, officials said, the lowest number, by far, since the 1944 annual meeting in Atlanta, when the nation was in the midst of World War II.
The Southern Baptist Convention is the nation’s largest Protestant denomination and experienced decades of growth before plateauing around the turn of the century.
For the past four years, Southern Baptist membership has dropped, reaching 16.1 million in 2010. Baptisms, average Sunday attendance and giving also dropped last year.
Rick Warren, pastor of Saddleback Church in southern California and the author of The Purpose Driven Life, said the denomination’s membership has peaked and is following a bell curve downward. If something doesn’t change, the losses will not only continue but they’ll accelerate, he said in an interview.
To turn things around, the church must embrace “two things - diversity and church planting.”
“We will not last as a denomination if we do not reach out,” Warren said.
It’s not that Southern Baptists have grown spiritually lukewarm, he said. “I think you can over spiritualize it and say ‘Well, what it is is we don’t love Jesus enough.’ The people I meet here, they love Jesus with all their heart,” Warren said.
The key is to find the right tools for spreading the Gospel and harvesting souls, he said.
“If I’m a farmer and I have a wheat field and I go out and I use a corn harvester, no matter how much I pray, it’s not going to work,” Warren said. “And if I try to harvest tomatoes with a grape picker, I can love it and I can be dedicated and I can be praying. It still isn’t going to work.”
New technologies and new methodologies must be embraced to spread the Gospel, Warren added.
Despite discouraging membership statistics, messengers from Arkansas said they are upbeat about Wright and the direction he is taking the convention.
“I think he’s handled himself great and been a great leader for our denomination,” said Hutch Kufahl, a youth pastor at First Baptist Church in Bentonville.
Wright is “doing a great job,” agreed Ken Jerome, pastor of First Baptist Church in Jacksonville.
And the denomination is getting back on track, he said.
“I think we’ve been asleep for awhile, and we’re waking up,” Jerome said. “We’re seeing our world in a new light and beginning to be interested in reaching people for Christ.”
Front Section, Pages 7 on 06/15/2011