CABOT -- A Faulkner County minister was elected Wednesday to serve as president of the Arkansas Baptist State Convention.
Larry D. White, pastor of Woodland Heights Baptist Church in Conway, is replacing Hot Springs Baptist Church Pastor Manley Beasley Jr., who had served the previous two years.
Hundreds of delegates, known as messengers, attended this year's annual meeting, gathering at First Baptist Church in Cabot for two days of preaching, prayer, elections and other ecclesiastical business.
John McCallum, pastor of First Baptist Church, Hot Springs, nominated White for the post, calling him "a Great Commandment, Great Commission Christian."
"Larry is not mad at anybody. Larry has no axes to grind. He has no cause except for the cause of the kingdom of God, Woodland [Heights] Baptist Church in Conway where he pastors, and Arkansas Baptist work and Southern Baptist work in our state and beyond that," McCallum said.
J.D. "Sonny" Tucker, the state convention's executive director, called White "one of our greatest leaders in Arkansas."
In addition to White, messengers elected David R. Mitchell, pastor of Mount Carmel Baptist Church in Cabot, as first vice president, and Johnny Harp, pastor of Lakeview Baptist Church in Cave Springs, as second vice president.
All of the candidates ran unopposed.
In an interview after the vote, White said creation of a new task force on sexual abuse will be at the top of his agenda as president.
"Right now, I'm just praying over who those people will be on the task force and seeking counsel. That's our first priority," he said.
Messengers on Tuesday unanimously backed creation of a task force "to ensure the policies and procedures" of the convention "are above reproach in handling sexual abuse allegations."
When it comes to ministry, Arkansas Baptists are eager to work together, he suggested.
"I'm blessed to get to be president at this time," he said. "This is a peaceful convention, and there are good things happening."
Mitchell, the new first vice president, said there's a notable degree of harmony.
"In Arkansas, it's like a brotherhood; it's like a family. We have a great, great unity here," he said.
The Arkansas convention, founded in 1848, is part of the 14.1 million-member Southern Baptist Convention, the nation's largest Protestant denomination. Statewide, it includes 1,504 churches with total membership of 433,184, as of 2020.
In an interview Beasley, the outgoing president, said Arkansas Baptists have looked for common ground,
"If you're going to work together, you can't focus on the things you disagree about," he said. "You focus on things you agree about."
There's little division within the convention, he said.
"We're healthy, we're good, we're strong," he added.
Before returning home, the messengers expressed support for a constitutional amendment aimed at preventing casino gambling in Pope County and voiced opposition to the Equality Act, legislation barring discrimination on the basis of "sex, gender identity, and sexual orientation."
Arkansas Baptists also condemned racism, while rejecting "critical race theory" and any other theory or worldview "that sees the primary problem of humanity as anything other than sin against God and the ultimate solution as anything other than redemption found only in Christ."
In addition, the messengers reaffirmed their support for abolishing abortion, voting overwhelmingly to "state unequivocally that abortion is murder" and to "reject any position that allows for any exceptions."
Delegates opted to cut language from a previous draft allowing abortions "to save the life of the mother in a genuine life-threatening health emergency."
The Arkansas abortion resolution largely mirrored a similar resolution approved by Southern Baptists this year at their annual meeting in Nashville, Tenn.
The version approved Wednesday clarified that fetus deaths resulting from ectopic pregnancies "are not murder."