ATLANTA — Jimmy Carter, a third-generation Southern Baptist and the first U.S. president to call himself a born-again Christian, has reached what he calls "a painful decision" to sever ties to the Southern Baptist Convention, saying that parts of its "increasingly rigid" doctrines violated the "basic premises of my Christian faith."
His decision, announced Thursday in a letter being mailed this week to 75,000 Baptists nationwide, comes four months after the Southern Baptist Convention, the United States' largest Protestant denomination, declared its opposition to women serving as pastors, and in the same doctrinal statement called for a literal interpretation of the Bible.
"I have seen an increasing inclination on the part of Southern Baptist Convention leaders to be more rigid on what is a Southern Baptist and exclusionary of accommodating those who differ from them," he said Friday. "In the last couple of years this tendency of the Southern Baptist Convention leadership to ordain their creed on others has become more onerous for me and more difficult for me to accept."
Carter's announcement is largely symbolic, since he has not had an official role in the national group. But it is intended to influence state and local Baptist organizations, several of which are considering actions to distance themselves from the national group. Member churches are autonomous, and the convention runs seminaries and missions.
Carter will continue to serve as a deacon and Sunday school teacher at his home church in Plains, the Maranatha Baptist Church, which is still affiliated with the national convention.
The Southern Baptist Convention president, the Rev. James G. Merritt, said Friday that while he was saddened by Carter's decision, he did not expect a mass exodus. More than 41,000 churches belong to the convention, he said. And while a handful of churches have left, he said, many more new Southern Baptist churches have been built.
"We felt the need to turn our denomination back to a more conservative theology, and for whatever reason the president did not agree with that." said Merritt, pastor of First Baptist Church in Snellville.
"I think it's a sad day for him," Merritt added. "It's a sad day for us."