Charlotte, USA - A key member of the Southern Baptist Convention's conservative leadership has made a late entry into the SBC's presidential race as the nation's largest Protestant denomination prepares to meet next week in Greensboro.
Jerry Sutton, pastor at Two Rivers Baptist Church in Nashville, Tenn., says he will allow his name to be placed in nomination for the presidency at the annual meeting, which starts Tuesday. Sutton is currently first vice president of the SBC, the No. 2 position in the denomination but not traditionally a stepping stone to the presidency.
In an interview Wednesday with The Associated Press, Sutton said he had been urged for the last month by Baptist pastors from across the country to enter the race as an alternative to Ronnie Floyd of First Baptist Church in Springdale, Ark., and Frank Page of First Baptist Church in Taylors, S.C.
"They told me, 'We're really not at peace about the two candidates. You fall between them,'" the 54-year-old Sutton said. His running for the presidency "is really to give the Southern Baptist Convention a third option."
Sutton said the people who urged him to run expressed concern that Floyd's church lags in giving to the cooperative program in which autonomous Southern Baptist congregations pool money for enterprises like foreign and domestic mission work.
"On the other hand, Frank Page gives very well to the cooperative program, but a lot of people are concerned that he really hasn't identified himself as a strong conservative over the years," Sutton said. "There's a suspicion and a concern there."
A message left with the communications office at Floyd's church in Arkansas was not immediately returned; neither was a message left after business hours at Page's office in South Carolina.
Forrest Pollock, a Brandon, Fla., pastor who has said he will place Page's name in nomination, issued a statement earlier this month that vouched for Page's conservative credentials. "Frank is a conservative Bible-believing inerrantist," Pollock said.
In the denomination of 16.3 million, where conservatism for years has been a requirement for leadership, Sutton's credentials are unassailable. He is author of "The Baptist Reformation: The Conservative Resurgence in the Southern Baptist Convention," published in 2000, and is editing the new "Encyclopedia of Southern Baptists."
He also has not been afraid to mix politics and the pulpit. Last August, his church hosted the "Justice Sunday II" rally, when then-House Majority Leader Tom DeLay and others criticized judicial activism via satellite to a national audience of evangelical Christians.