NEWS ADVANCE:Embattled Baptist leader seeks to retain presidency

c. 1998 Religion News Service UNDATED _ Despite being engulfed in scandal, it appears the Rev. Henry J. Lyons will try and retain the presidency of the National Baptist Convention, USA, which holds its annual meeting next week in Kansas City, Mo. Moreover, say officials of one of the nation’s largest black denominations, Lyons may […]

c. 1998 Religion News Service

UNDATED _ Despite being engulfed in scandal, it appears the Rev. Henry J. Lyons will try and retain the presidency of the National Baptist Convention, USA, which holds its annual meeting next week in Kansas City, Mo.

Moreover, say officials of one of the nation’s largest black denominations, Lyons may be planning to seek a second five-year term in the church’s 1999 presidential election.


Last year’s annual meeting was overshadowed by allegations swirling around Lyons concerning marital infidelity and financial impropriety. However, Lyons repeatedly denied the accusations that arose after his wife set fire last summer to a pricey home he had co-purchased with a female denominational official.

Since then, the allegations have become legal charges against Lyons. He now faces federal and state charges that include grand theft, fraud and conspiracy stemming from accusations that he and some of his aides gained money in the denomination’s name and used it to purchase personal luxuries.

He has yet to go to trial in either the federal or state cases.

Despite his problems, Lyons, who pastors a congregation in St. Petersburg, Fla., has steadfastly refused to resign the denomination’s presidency.

At last year’s NBCUSA gathering in Denver, opponents led an unsuccessful drive to unseat Lyons from the presidency he has held since 1994. A motion to remove Lyons was defeated overwhelmingly during a closed-door session.

His supporters spoke of the need to extend Christian forgiveness to Lyons. Some also viewed the allegations as resulting from attempts by white-owned media to bring down a black leader.

At this year’s meeting, scheduled for Sept. 7-11 at the Kansas City Convention Center, a similar move to remove Lyons appears unlikely _ despite the worsening of his legal troubles.

The Rev. Roscoe Cooper, NBCUSA general secretary, expects that neither the denomination’s board nor the convention as a whole will attempt to take any further action concerning Lyons’ presidency.”The convention has made its decision in Denver and hasn’t wavered from that decision,”said Cooper, a pastor in Richmond, Va.”The convention has made use of its processes and our government has to make use of its processes.” The Rev. Robert Franklin, an expert on African-American churches who was an observer in Denver, said he suspects many convention members have simply decided to wait until next year’s election rather than attempt to oust Lyons in Kansas City.”I’m not aware of any organized effort to bring a demonstration to the floor,”he said.


Experts on the denomination expect the NBCUSA will attempt to move on to other matters _ including gearing up for the 1999 election. But that may not free the church from having to deal with the Lyons issue.

Walter Cade, executive director of the Baptist World Center, the denomination’s headquarters in Nashville, Tenn., said Lyons has”publicly announced to the convention that he would run”in 1999.

Cooper said he expects Lyons will continue to have support.”I’m assuming there are many people who are still very loyal … and feel he’s done a reasonably good job,”he said.

But Franklin, president of the Interdenominational Theological Center in Atlanta, believes Lyons will not get a second chance.”My sense is that people have been generous in permitting him, should this occur … to complete his term,”he said.”It has been an embattled, tarnished and embarrassing final half-term. … I don’t think people will respond favorably to his candidacy.” NBCUSA members will have an opportunity in Kansas City to meet other candidates who could succeed Lyons.

Warren H. Stewart Sr., executive secretary of the denomination’s Home Mission Board, said discussions about the pending election have picked up in the weeks leading up to the convention.”A lot of people are jockeying for position and are considering or announcing their candidacies to be the next president,”he said.”It’s like it’s come very much alive.” Other than preparing for the pending election, the convention _ which is likely to draw about 30,000 people _ is expected to hear traditional reports from its various divisions, including its Home Mission Board, which supports seminary interns in community outreach throughout the country, and its Foreign Mission Board, which has established missionaries and churches in Africa and the Caribbean.

Still, Stewart, the Home Mission Board executive, said it will be a struggle to return to the routine while questions about the status of the denomination’s president continue.”All of us are concerned that this issue is distracting us from the cause of Christ and spreading the Gospel,”he said.


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