Members of First Baptist Church in downtown Chattanooga have adopted the values of the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, a group whose theology is more moderate than the Southern Baptist Convention.
The vote Sunday, which followed a year-long committee review of the church’s history and values, is the church publicly embracing what it has been for decades, said the Rev. Dr. Thomas Quisenberry, pastor. The church, which has been an institution in the city since the mid-19th century, had been part of the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship for years.
“Instead of running from anything, we are running and embracing this partnership that we have already been in partnership with,” Quisenberry said. “We are making a more definitive claim on this partnership.”
The Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, headquartered in Decatur, Georgia, formed in the early 1990s. Members of First Baptist helped form the cooperative, Quisenberry said. Its group of nearly 2,000 churches takes a more progressive approach to church issues than the larger, more conservative Southern Baptist Convention. First Baptist has hosted planning sessions for the Southern Baptist Convention multiple times in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, according to the church website.
The Southern Baptist Convention does not allow women to serve in leadership positions in the church, but it says men and women have equal but different duties in the Christian church. Women are to work on building Christian values in the homes and are not to “assume a role of authority over men lest confusion reign in the local church,” according to a resolution passed by the Southern Baptist Convention in 1984.