Harriett Parker is having an identity crisis at 78.
After serving almost half her life as a Southern Baptist missionary in Japan, she retired to Mars Hill.
In the early 1990s, she said, she started to think that the Southern Baptist Convention was putting too much emphasis on politics and not enough on missions. She began attending the annual meetings of the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, an organization that also does missions.
Parker, who was in Charlotte as the fellowship began its annual meeting yesterday, said she liked meeting with other 'faithful Baptists' but something was missing.
'I don't know who I am any more,' she said. 'Because I was raised a good Southern Baptist in a good Southern Baptist church. I feel comfortable with the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, but it's not a denomination.'
Other meeting participants reported similar feelings. And some say that their organization of as many as a few hundred thousand, which began in 1991 in large part as an alternative to the increasingly conservative bent of the Southern Baptist Convention, is also trying to define its identity as it competes for money and members with the 17-million-member convention.
Some convention members say that the fellowship is radically liberal, but fellowship members describe themselves as moderates.
'CBF understands itself it to be a Bible-believing, mission-committed, evangelical group of folks,' said the Rev. David Hughes of Winston-Salem, who was at the Charlotte meeting.
'Now, you've got wide diversity within it, but to say that CBF is a liberal, left-leaning organization the way it's accused of being by people in the SBC is really just off the mark,' said Hughes, the moderate candidate for the presidency of the Baptist State Convention of North Carolina.
Another identity issue that CBF wrestles with is its organizational structure. In contrast to the Southern Baptist Convention - the nation's largest Protestant denomination - fellowship leaders have shied from calling their group a denomination but have recently began to say that it is 'denominationlike.'
The fellowship doesn't issue resolutions on cultural issues to the outside world as the Southern Baptist Convention does at its annual meetings, nor does it issue resolutions defining the role of men and women within their churches as the convention does. But like convention members, fellowship members take part in meetings for worship and business - although they generally dress more casually.
Fellowship members differ over whether they want to become a denomination. To do so, said the Rev. Brenda Dedmon of Georgia, might lead to the hierarchal structure that she said the Southern Baptist Convention now has. But others, like Parker, would like to see the fellowship become a denomination.
'I think CBF is, in a sense, trying to forge a new way - less connected and more partnering, networking, bridge-building.' said the Rev. Nathan Parrish of Peace Haven Baptist Church in Winston-Salem, who was at the Charlotte meeting. 'But for a lot of people, there's just a frustration.
'They want a kind of formal way to make a break (with the convention) and they don't feel like CBF provides that. But CBF is as much a denominational identity as you choose to make it,' he said.
Some fellowship members say they're posing a serious challenge to the convention. But other members, as well as convention members, say that's not so.
'I believe it (the fellowship) has come to a place where it's kind of holding on, it's kind of leveled off,' said the Rev. Mark Corts of Winston-Salem, a Southern Baptist leader.
Complicating the identity issue further is the fact that many churches contribute money both to the fellowship and the Southern Baptist Convention.
In the Pilot Mountain Baptist Association of 85churches in the Forsyth County area, most of the churches are aligned with the Southern Baptist Convention, but about 40 percent of those 85churches also contribute to the fellowship, said the Rev. Jim Hamblen of the association.
Both organizations are struggling for money, although the fellowship's financial situation is much harder. The fellowship is finishing the fiscal year about $650,000 in the red, said Lance Wallace, a fellowship spokesman.
In the hard economic climate, dual giving has been a source of tension between conservatives and moderates within the Baptist State Convention. The tension could flare up again when that group meets at Joel Coliseum in November. Supporters of the SBC within the state convention could once again push for a plan that would restrict giving to the fellowship, setting off a clash with fellowship supporters within the convention.
'I want things to settle down,' Parker said.