BOWLING GREEN, Ky. — Kentucky Southern Baptists will bar politicking on behalf of church candidates at future conventions after a contentious election this week.

        But conservatives, who backed their own candidate for president of the Kentucky Baptist Convention, say it won't eliminate the politics.

        The Kentucky Baptist Convention wrapped up its two-day annual meeting Wednesday after voting 1,091 to 978 to elect Jim McKinley of Louisville as president. Mr. McKinley, a retired missionary, sees himself as a theological conservative open to compromise.

        The election came amid a sharply divided season of similar conventions in other states where Baptists were asked to approve a Southern Baptist Convention statement of faith that said the Bible is without error and women shouldn't be pastors.

        Kentucky's Baptists instead formed a committee to study whether to take up the statement of faith, effectively tabling the issue.

        The convention voted Tuesday to ban the distribution of literature on behalf of candidates at annual meetings.

        A conservative group, the Kentucky Baptist Laymen's Network, handed out newsletters endorsing Kevin Ezell, seen as the more conservative candidate, and scolding critics of the Southern Baptist Convention.

        John Michael, president of the network, said he would honor the ban but continue to mail out his newsletter.

        Among the moderates who helped elect Mr. McKinley there was surprise and relief.

        “I thought there had been a machine-like mobilization among the fundamentalist element,” said Robert Long, pastor of Walnut Street Baptist Church in Louisville. “I was pleased to see the Kentucky Baptists just rejected that kind of takeover.”

        But conservatives cited Mr. Ezell's high vote count as a sign that, sooner or later, the Kentucky Baptist Convention would follow the Southern Baptist Convention's right turn.

        Mark Overstreet, a doctoral student at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, said convention leaders banned the campaign literature to suppress dissenting views.

        Mr. Overstreet said he hoped more conservative views would be preached from Kentucky Baptist pulpits and taught in the state convention's schools.

        “Eventually those changes need to trickle down to the colleges,” he said.

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