Moderate Baptists are conservative when compared to most other Christians.  Most of them are now involved with the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship (Jimmy Carter Baptists) which was formed in 1990 after Fundamentalist Baptists (Jerry Falwell Baptists) took over the Southern Baptist Convention.

The Baptist General Convention of Texas is related to both CBF and the SBC.  The relations with the SBC are severly strained.

by Mainstream Baptist on Wed Oct 04, 2006 at 10:32:46 AM EST

American Baptist Churches USA
American Baptist Mission -- Hong Kong
Associated Baptist Press
Association of Professional Chaplains
Association of Welcoming and Affirming Baptists
Baptist Center for Ethics
Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty
Baptist Peace Fellowship of North America
Baptist Theological Seminary at Richmond
Baptists Today
Baptist Women in Ministry
Baptist World Alliance
Brite Divinity School
Candler School of Theology Emory University
Christian Church, Disciples of Christ
Church World Service
Churches for Middle East Peace
Cooperative Baptist Fellowship
Duke Divinity School, Baptist House
Evangelical Church of Georgia
Furman University, Greenville, SC
Global Campaign for Rebuilding Palestinian Home
McAfee School of Theology, Mercer University
National Council of Churches USA
Progressive National Baptist Convention
Smyth and Helwys Publishing
Tapestry 2006
United Church of Christ
Wake Forest University Divinity School
World Council of Churches
Worldwide Faith News

Yes, you read that right; among the Alliance's members are the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) and the United Church of Christ -- but that shouldn't be so surprising, since the two denominations are very similar to the historic mainstream ABC in their beliefs and practices. In fact, at one point (in the 1940s if I remember right), the ABC and the CC(DofC) gave some serious consideration to a merger.

(I'm a lifelong ABC'er myself, but when I lived in Louisville, KY in the early 80s, I tried a couple of relatively "moderate" SBC churches in the area and found them to be a very strange planet, so a small CC(DofC) church became my church home for those five years. When I moved back to the northeast, I joined an ABC church that became one of the Alliance's first non-SBC congregations.)

From the Alliance's Timeline:

Born in the white-heat controversy of the fundamentalist uprising that resulted in the capture of the Southern Baptist Convention, the Alliance within our first few years moved from acute grief to joyful anticipation.

What we at first counted an incalculable loss we came to see over time as unimagined gain. By the grace of God, our journey away from the old has become a pilgrimage toward the "new thing" Isaiah the prophet testified to centuries ago. For the Alliance of Baptists, that divine initiative has included a rediscovery of our deeper roots in the freedom movement that marked the beginnings of the Baptist denomination in the 17th century. And it has included the wonderful discovery that we are part of the larger church of Jesus Christ and the whole people of God.

Within the larger Baptist family specifically, the Alliance has ceased to be a regional body of casualties from the war of attrition over the Southern Baptist Convention. More and more every day, we are evolving instead into a broad-based movement of freedom-loving Baptists in all regions of the country, especially in places where the emerging crisis in the American Baptist Churches in the USA more and more resembles the SBC debacle of two decades ago. In January 2002, for example, we co-sponsored a special event in Oakland, CA, with the new Pacific Coast Baptist Association, formed in 2001 in the aftermath of the expulsion of four churches in northern California from their ABC/USA region over issues of congregational freedom.

Here are some more direct links to pages within the Alliance's website:

What We Believe
Our Covenant
Our Mission Statement


by anomalous4 on Thu Oct 05, 2006 at 09:50:23 AM EST