Southern Baptist split over politics

By ERIC GORSKI
AP Religion Writer

SAN ANTONIO --Folded into the Rev. Frank Page's wallet is a yellow scrap of paper with the date and time he is to speak with yet another Republican candidate for the White House.

He already has visited one GOP front-runner over breakfast at a country club and met another at the headquarters of a car dealership in his home state.

The South Carolina pastor seems taken aback by the attention, but he shouldn't be: He leads a large congregation in a state with an early primary and is president of the 16.3 million-strong Southern Baptist Convention, perhaps the largest single bloc of evangelical voters and a must-have Republican constituency.

Page, in an interview at his denomination's annual meeting here last week, said he offers his thoughts about salvation to candidates but never an endorsement. And he talks to Democrats, too. He sees the political courtship as a duty: The nation's leaders need to hear a Christian viewpoint, he believes.

But some Southern Baptists would rather stay out of politics altogether. A small but vocal number of pastors believe the denomination is too cozy with Republicans and too political in general. By flirting with the line separating good citizenship and a grab for power, they say, a denomination already experiencing flat membership risks alienating more people.

Others contend such talk might inspire Southern Baptists to retreat from the public square and cede ground on urgent social issues such as abortion.

If anything, the debate is likely to become even more magnified in coming months because no one Republican candidate has captured the conservative evangelical imagination - and all of them are trying.

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