The big challenge Baptists worldwide face is a greater manifestation of unity amid differences that sometimes challenges the oneness in Christ, says a top Baptist official.
And unity, among Baptists at least, is especially a struggle in the United States, noted the Rev Neville Callam, the newly elected general secretary of the Baptist World Alliance.
"There's a crying need for all Christian communions to live out a life of unity, as a way of modelling to the world what it means to live in a united life despite your diversities," said Callam in an interview with Christian Today.
Within the 38-million-member BWA, regional fellowships, member bodies and local churches are autonomous and establish their own positions on a range of issues, not including the "essentials of Baptist faith". And not all Baptists in the world claim membership to the BWA.
With over 69,000 BWA churches in the United States - where membership is most concentrated - alone running independently, diversity on theological emphases and social issues "sometimes challenges the unity that we want to express to the world", said Callam.
"It's a reality that we have to struggle with, especially here, it seems to me, in the US," he pointed out. A Jamaican native and the first nonwhite head of the BWA, Callam recently moved to Falls Church, Virginia, to assume his new position.
More than 20,000 Baptists next January are expected to join for what has been billed the broadest Baptist meeting in the US since Baptists divided over slavery before the Civil War. Former US President Jimmy Carter is spearheading the Celebration of a New Baptist Covenant to counter the most common opinion about Baptists - that they cannot get along, according to Carter - and the negative Baptist image in North America by demonstrating Baptist unity around common social concerns such as poverty.
Organised under the umbrella of the North American Baptist Fellowship - a division of the BWA - participants include Baptists from predominantly black conventions, including the National Baptist Convention USA and the ethnically diverse American Baptist Churches USA - also a member of the BWA - among others.
Critics, mainly from the more conservative Southern Baptist Convention, which withdrew from the BWA following concerns over a "leftward drift", are pointing to political overtones in the New Baptist Covenant, considering the participation of former president Bill Clinton and the convocation date set for January 2008, the presidential election year. Callam, however, is pleased to see US Baptists making the effort to reflect Baptist unity.
