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Tentative plans have been quashed for a meeting between Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) President Paige Patterson and six Jewish leaders who charged the SBC with "deception" in evangelistic outreach to Jews.

Patterson, in a December 7 letter to Gedale B. Horowitz, president of the New York-based Jewish Community Relations Council, wrote:

"You have now made it crystal clear that our people cannot sit down with the very people who signed the letter of complaint and look them in the eyes and talk with them as friends. With regret, I accept your refusal of our offer, and there the matter ends."

Patterson said he is left to conclude what he had "feared is true. You are not interested in discussing the matter as friends and coming to a credible understanding. You apparently simply wanted to have the opportunity to bash Southern Baptists in the newspaper.

"I, for the life of me, can fathom no other possibility in the light of the willingness of six of you to sign a letter, which you send first to the press, and then refuse to accept our invitation to meet with you for discussion."

Horowitz, in a December 3 letter to Patterson, had reiterated a counterproposal for a "one-on-one" meeting "in a private setting." He had proposed the meeting after a correspondence between Patterson and six Jewish leaders, including Horowitz and the top administrators of four Orthodox and non-Orthodox Jewish rabbinical schools.

A private meeting "would be most conducive" to discussing their concerns, Horowitz wrote, further stating, "I am confident that we can arrive at a mutually agreed upon and amicable resolution of our conflict."

Patterson's original proposal was for a daylong conference at a neutral site that would involve "eight Jewish leaders, the six of you and two others of your choice. Southern Baptists will also bring eight leaders to the table in an attempt of Jews and Baptists to enhance understanding and encourage absolute integrity of religious expression as we relate each to the other."

Patterson listed two conditions: "First, that our Jewish friends would have to understand that Baptists cannot abandon the proclamation of our faith, and second, that two of our eight representatives would be, in the interest of maximum understanding, 'Messianic Jews.'" In a November 22 letter, Patterson also suggested that a conservative Orthodox rabbi, Daniel Lapin of Seattle, moderate the discussion.

Patterson, in another exchange of letters, responded to Chicago Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein, founder and president of the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews. In an announcement carried by the Associated Press, The New York Times, and other national media last Friday, Eckstein said, "I have no choice but to suspend cooperation with the SBC until it clearly and unequivocally repudiates the targeted proselytizing of Jews."

Among factors Eckstein cited for his decision were an SBC-wide evangelistic focus on the city of Chicago for the year 2000; a Jewish prayer guide issued in September by the SBC's International Mission Board focusing on the Jewish High Holy Days; and a Jewish evangelism resolution adopted during the SBC's 1996 annual meeting.

Breaking relations with Southern Baptists, Patterson wrote to Eckstein, "does not change our loyalty and love for Jews. It does not change my personal love and appreciation for you, and it does not change the fact that if misunderstood and misrepresented to the whole world, we are going to continue to share the glorious gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ with every human being on the globe and that includes our Jewish friends."

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December 6 1999, Vol. 43, No. 14