Assembly Consideration of Alliance's Eligibility for NCC Membership Postponed to 1999
The Alliance of Baptists
By Stan Hastey, Executive Director
From our beginnings in 1987, the Alliance of Baptists has been more a movement than an organization. Born in the white-heat controversy of a fundamentalist uprising that resulted in the capture of the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC), the Alliance was first named the Southern Baptist Alliance. Within five years, however, our sense of identity as a movement separate and apart from the convention out of which we came had solidified to the point of changing our name to the Alliance of Baptists and abandoning finally the struggle for the soul of the SBC.
By the grace of God, our journey away from the old has turned into a pilgrimage toward the "new thing" Isaiah the prophet testified to centuries ago. For the Alliance of Baptists, God's new thing has included a rediscovery of our deeper roots in the freedom movement which 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. Out of that conviction, we gratefully and humbly seek membership in the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the U.S.A.
The Alliance reports an estimated constituent membership of 60,000 persons with 125 churches and 200 clergy.