More than 150 Southern Baptists and Jewish leaders concluded a three-day conference here yesterday with the adoption of a resolution that was sent to President Carter, saying that “Southern Baptists and Jews support the efforts of our government to serve as a constructive catalyst for the advancement of peace and reconciliation between Israel and Egypt and the other Arab countries through face-to-face negotiations.”
The resolution said, “We urge our government not to be deterred from its reconciling role as peace-maker by those who would repudiate the ideals of peaceful co-existence in a pluralistic Middle East.” The resolution was signed by the Rev. Dr. Jimmy Allen, of San Antonio, president of the 13 million-member Southern Baptist Convention and Rabbi Marc H. Tanenbaum, national interreligious affairs director of the American Jewish Committee.
Rep. James Wright (D. Tex.), the House Majority Leader who addressed the conference, deplored the hatred and hostility of the rejectionist Arab states at Tripoli, saying that “they are not the wave of the future, they are the ebb tide of the past.” Wright said “The day of war has passed. All people in the Middle East are weary of war and hatred.” Wright was in the region last month as head of a Congressional delegation and was in Jerusalem at the time of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat’s visit.
The conference issued a statement affirming that Baptists and Jews “will seek to strengthen human rights in this country and abroad through our firm support of both political and civil liberties as well as economic justice.” The statement expressed the solidarity of Baptists and Jews “in the common effort to assure the human rights of our brethren in the Soviet Union.”
The conference, held at the Southern Methodist University, was sponsored jointly by the AJ Committee’s Interreligious Affairs Department and the Christian Life Commission of the Texas Baptist Convention, the largest Baptist Convention in the country. Its theme was “Agenda for Tomorrow–Baptists and Jews Face the Future.”
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