Pastor Calls His Effort to Head Southern Baptists Conciliatory

The Rev. Jess Moody, pastor of the nearly completed $15-million Shepherd of the Hills Church in Chatsworth, has told a Southern Baptist news agency that he agreed to be nominated for the presidency of that denomination in a last-ditch effort at reconciliation between victorious fundamentalist leaders and moderates who have drifted away.

Most Southern Baptists, who make up the nation’s largest Protestant denomination, felt that the battle ended last year with the 12th consecutive presidential victory by a fundamentalist pastor.

Moody, 66, vacationing out of state this week, told Associated Baptist Press that he would bow out by December “if there is no groundswell” for his candidacy at the June, 1992, Southern Baptist convention. A group of Florida pastors asked Moody, a former West Palm Beach pastor, to permit his nomination.

The moderate forces, which ran no candidate at the 1991 meeting, have bitterly denounced the fundamentalist takeover of seminary boards and mission agencies. They have either fallen quiet or put their hopes in the small, moderate-led Cooperative Baptist Fellowship. Moody is calling for dissolution of the moderate fellowship, but admits that it will cost him backing from that camp.

The Rev. Paige Patterson of Dallas, a leading fundamentalist strategist, told Religious News Service that Moody “ought to be more forthright and admit that what he’s trying to do is to derail the conservative resurgence.”