WENDELL - The day after making national news with his motion to ban gay-friendly churches from the Baptist State Convention of North Carolina, the Rev. William Sanderson stood in the foyer of his church, greeting the children arriving for the Wednesday night ministry. "Give me five," he said to one boy raising his right hand. "Hi bro," he said to another.

Then his cell phone rang. "Yes, Brent," he said. "Tell me about your wife."

After listening for a few seconds, his eyebrows knit in concentration, Sanderson comforted the caller with the promise of a prayer.

For a man who has become a voice for the conservative majority in the state's largest denominational group, Sanderson is neither stern nor stodgy.

Though he looks his age -- 63, with a double chin and thin, graying hair tightly combed back -- the children of Hephzibah Baptist Church in Wendell call him Pastor Bill and greet him with affection. They shake his hand or give him a hug as they would a grandfather or uncle.

That's the way he likes it. Sanderson sees his strength not as an agitator for traditional values, but as a people-loving pastor who protects his flock from the sins of contemporary culture.

"We've got to fight for our children's lives," he said. "When they start saying in school that a man and a man is just like a man and a woman, well no, it's not."

On Tuesday, the state Baptist convention approved the so-called Sanderson motion, expelling churches that welcome practicing gays as members. The motion passed by more than two-thirds of delegates, known as messengers, and will allow the convention to investigate churches suspected of countenancing active gays.

The action put North Carolina's Baptist group ahead of most of its peer organizations in other states by defining membership on the single issue of homosexuality. Other denominations are also grappling with it. The nation's Catholic bishops last week worked to be welcoming toward gays while also defining homosexuality as a sin, and the Episcopal Church USA is struggling to remain in the Anglican Communion after ordaining a gay bishop.

At the North Carolina Baptist convention, Sanderson's motion was opposed by several hundred pastors, including the Rev. Don Gordon of Yates Baptist Church in Durham. Gordon agrees that homosexuality is a sin, but he said he doesn't think the Bible singles it out.

"Is the homosexuality movement of the 21st century more pervasive than the [pro-] slavery movement of the 19th century?" Gordon asked.

"I would contend the slavery movement was more evil, and caused more damage to people's lives than this movement."

Sanderson is unswayed. In an age of lightning-speed communication, he thinks drastic actions are called for.

A Kentucky native whose father also was a Baptist pastor, Sanderson has led the thriving Wendell church for nearly 30 years. The congregation, with 1,324 members, has outgrown its building. Sanderson preaches three Sunday services in the adjacent Family Life Center gym.

Members of Sanderson's church said he works hard, knows everyone's name and takes great interest in their lives.

"That's comforting to me and my family," said Juan Ortiz, a member. "He cares about us."

Growth and leadership

But along with his primary obligations as pastor, Sanderson balances a growing leadership role in Baptist life. He heads the Conservative Carolina Baptists, a nonprofit organization that fields candidates for convention leadership posts. He also serves as a trustee on the national Southern Baptist Convention's International Mission Board.

Sanderson said that as a boy, he wanted to be a veterinarian, but at age 19, he heard God's call and switched course. His father, Raymond, now 89, taught that the Bible is God's inerrant and infallible word. Sanderson upheld that teaching even when moderates ruled the national and state conventions -- a trend he proudly said he resisted.

He failed his New Testament class the first time he took it at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in Wake Forest, then a more moderate school.

"I believed in the miracles and the Virgin Birth, but it wasn't being taught that way," Sanderson said.

He graduated with a master's in divinity in 1981, and became a staunch supporter of the seminary under the leadership of former President Paige Patterson, who, beginning in 1992, replaced most of the faculty with strict biblical literalists.

At a Wednesday evening discipleship class, Sanderson taught a group of seven men and women, using the Hebrew book of Judges. Each time the Israelites sinned, he pointed out, God punished them.

"What symptoms of spiritual and moral decay do we see in our country today?" he asked his class. As class members answered, "taking God out of the Pledge of Allegiance" and "immorality on TV and radio," Sanderson nodded.

"When we take God out, what's God going to do?" he asked, answering his own question, "He's going to spank our hind."

And so, Sanderson told his class, he is trying to do what he can to stem the moral free-fall around him. Proposing to exclude churches that sanction gay sex is the first step.

"We've got to stand for what we believe," he said. "Otherwise our nation is going down the tubes."