The Southern Baptist Convention is halting 30 years of doctrinal talks with the U.S. Roman Catholic Church. The two enominations -America's biggest, with 78 million members total - share belief in central Christian
doctrines, but ecumenical contacts have been a "sore point" for some Southern Baptists, according to reports from the Chicago Tribune news service.

"We're not ecumenists. We're evangelicals committed to sharing the gospel," explained the Rev. Philip Roberts,president of Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in
Kansas City, Mo. Though the denomination's 1994 meeting endorsed talks with Catholics, Roberts said, "Many Southern Baptists became suspicious of these discussions." When the
talks began in 1971, both sides saw them as an opportunity to understand agreements and differences, though there was never any prospect of organizational union.

The Rev. Timothy George, like Roberts a participant in the talks on the Baptist side, noted that a small faction of Baptists had "a strong and somewhat strident reaction
against this." George, dean of Beeson Divinity School in Birmingham, Ala., said, "Ecumenism is not a high priority for most Southern Baptists."

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C U R R E N T N E W S S U M M A R Y
by the Editors of ReligionToday