RICHMOND, Va.—“We will not sign. We will not resign,” declared Ron Hankins, a veteran Southern Baptist missionary to Japan.

His response last week to Southern Baptist International Mission Board President Jerry Rankin summed up the views of three missionary couples expected to be fired next week by IMB trustees.

Letters from the three couples came in response to Rankin’s recent ultimatum for missionaries to affirm the 2000 Baptist Faith and Message statement by May 5, resign or face termination.

For Hankins, his wife, Lydia Barrow-Hankins, and two other couples—Rick and Nancy Dill, missionaries to Germany, and Leon and Kathy Johnson, missionaries to Mozambique—Rankin gave only two options: resign or be fired.

Rankin told the three couples they face dismissal “due to your unwillingness to be accountable to Southern Baptists who send and support you.”

The couples, who have served overseas more than 20 years each, apparently were singled out for publicly differing with Rankin’s directive in January 2002 to affirm the latest version of the SBC faith statement.

The Dills released a letter last fall emphasizing that “our authority is the Bible and no man-written document.”

Johnson noted in January that signing an affirmation of the revised faith statement “would place a man-made document in authority above the Bible and God’s self-revelation in Jesus. For us to sign would be a sin in our minds.”

The Hankinses took issue last summer with the faith statement’s view of women in ministry. Leaders of the Japan Baptist Convention “are troubled over the historic relationship with Southern Baptists if missionaries sent out with the IMB are required to sign agreement with such a statement,” said Barrow-Hankins, an ordained minister and chaplain.

In the latest flurry of letters, the Dills, Hankinses and Johnsons emphasized they have no reason to resign their IMB positions.

“We cannot resign,” the Dills wrote. “We are guilty of no misconduct or false teaching and have been accused of none.”

The Dills, the first Southern Baptist workers to enter East Germany after the fall of the Berlin Wall, currently are on a leave of absence and serving as missionaries-in-residence at Ouachita Baptist University in Arkadelphia, Ark.

Rankin told the three couples that failing to resign on their own initiative would “undermine the integrity and credibility of the IMB.”

The Dills asked Rankin why that is so. “The answer is simple,” they then wrote. “It is not possible with integrity to terminate missionaries who are guilty of nothing but years of faithful service and having a deep sense of love for God’s Word.”

Rankin has insisted that missionaries must sign the revised faith statement to remain “accountable to Southern Baptists.”

“To which Southern Baptists are we being accountable?” the Dills asked in response.

“The truth is that Southern Baptists have not required missionaries to sign the BF&M 2000. ... Even the trustees of the IMB have not required missionaries to sign. To whom are we not acting accountably? Who is actually requiring us to sign?”

Rankin has said non-signing missionaries are guilty of advocating “positions contrary to what Southern Baptists confess to believe.” Again, the Dills asked, what positions have they held that are contrary to Southern Baptist beliefs?

“Is it that we believe God’s Word must be supreme in our lives and that it is wrong to make a man-written document the test for our faith and calling?” they asked. “Or would Southern Baptists disagree that Christ is Lord of Scripture and that we must understand the Word of God first and foremost through His love, His teaching, His death and His resurrection?”

The only possible point of contention, they report, is their belief “that God can call whomever He chooses to serve wherever, whenever and however He so chooses.” That runs counter to the new faith statement’s declaration that women may not serve as senior pastors.

“Is a different understanding of Scripture in this matter really grounds for dismissal?” they asked.

In his response to Rankin, Johnson said the IMB president’s charge of the Johnsons failing to be accountable to Southern Baptists “is an untruth.”

“We already stand accountable to Southern Baptists,” Johnson wrote. “Signing a document will not make me more accountable.”

Johnson’s letter then asked Rankin: “Are you acting in accountability to the trustees of the IMB and the churches of the SBC by imposing upon us a requirement that they have not mandated?”

Concerning Rankin’s claim that the Johnsons “continue to advocate positions contrary to what Southern Baptists believe,” Johnson responded, “This is also untrue. I challenge you to produce one piece of evidence to substantiate this statement.”

Johnson said Rankin’s “disregard of the truth in making false accusations and insinuations in public … does more to undermine the integrity and credibility of the IMB than Kathy’s and my refusal to violate our consciences by signing a document.”

The Hankinses expressed concern over the BF&M’s “blatant sexual discrimination.”

The 2000 version “rewrites the role of every missionary woman on the field,” Hankins wrote. “Its marriage and ministry restrictions spell a setback of generations for the liberating power of Christ in the lives of women.

“Lydia and I cannot sign a document that would deny her call as a minister/preacher of the gospel,” he added. “Neither of us could sign a document that requires that we not encourage young women to follow God’s call in their lives, including the call to the pastorate.”

Claiming that “Rankin’s latest letter is rife with distortions and half-truths,” Hankins wrote, “This is not a case of biblical truth. If it were truth, it would have been true 22 years ago when we were ‘hired.’ This is a recent change that reeks of prejudice and malice.”

With additional reporting by Mark Wingfield of the Texas Baptist Standard