March 1, 2000
WMU reclaims nearly $1 million from Southern
___By Mark Wingfield
___Managing Editor
___NASHVILLE, Tenn.--Nearly $1 million in endowment funds has been transferred from control of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary to Woman's Missionary Union as part of a formal mediation over the disputed assets of the Carver School of Church Social Work.
___Though the mediation reportedly took place last summer, officials of Southern Seminary and WMU have refused to speak publicly about the matter since then. Sources familiar with the negotiations said a gag order was included as part of the deal at the request of the seminary.
___The transfer of $928,541 from the Southern Baptist Foundation to the WMU Foundation does appear in WMU's audited financial report for last year, however. That audit, which must be submitted each year to the Southern Baptist Convention's Executive Committee, is a public record. It was available for review during the Executive Committee's Feb. 21-22 meeting in Nashville.
___The audit states that the funds in question were transferred to the WMU Foundation by the seminary after a previous trust was terminated.
___Asked about the matter last summer before her retirement as WMU executive director, Dellanna O'Brien said she could not speak about the endowment dispute. The most she would say is this: "Yes, we have had a mediation and settled to each party's satisfaction."
___The matter reportedly was discussed in executive session during the WMU executive board meeting in Shocco Springs, Ala., in January. During that meeting, board members approved the distribution of large sums of money from an undisclosed source. The distributions will benefit the Eleanor Terry Chair for Christian Women's Leadership at Samford University and the new graduate program in social work at Baylor University, among others.
___Baylor has taken up the mission once held by the Carver School before its termination at Southern Seminary. Baylor not only offers the master of social work degree with an emphasis on church social work, but the program is run by Diana Garland, the previous dean of the Carver School at Southern Seminary.
___In 1998, the seminary sold the Carver School name and certain undisclosed assets to Campbellsville University, a liberal arts school affiliated with the Kentucky Baptist Convention. That transaction capped a tumultuous saga of transition that began in 1993, when Al Mohler became president of the Louisville, Ky., seminary--put in place by conservative trustees who wanted the seminary to reflect a much more conservative theology and ideology.
___Amid several years of faculty upheaval--with a turnover rate of more than 60 percent--a dispute arose between Garland and Mohler over faculty hiring requirements for the Carver School. After Mohler insisted that all prospective faculty members must affirm belief that God will not ever call a woman to the pastoral ministry, Garland said the Carver School's accreditation was threatened.
___Mohler promptly fired Garland for making such a claim in a public forum before students and the press.
___In the ensuing months, Mohler and the seminary trustees launched a study of whether the seminary should continue operation of the church social work school, the only one of its kind in the nation. Ultimately, Mohler declared, and the trustees affirmed, that the tenets of social work are not compatible with biblical theology.
___Nearly four years passed while WMU sought to resolve the fate of the Carver School endowment funds with the seminary. Eventually, both sides agreed to binding mediation, according to multiple sources familiar with the proceedings.
___The funds in question originated as part of the WMU Training School, which was founded in Louisville in 1907. At that time, women were not allowed to enroll as students at the seminary. In 1952, the training school was renamed Carver School of Missions and Social Work. Then in 1963, by action of messengers to the SBC annual meeting, the Carver School was merged into Southern Seminary. The two schools already shared adjoining property and had a close relationship.
___In 1984, Southern Seminary made the Carver School of Church Social Work one of four schools operating under the seminary umbrella, putting it on equal status with the schools of theology, Christian education and church music. The Carver School received accreditation for its master of social work degree, making it the first and only accredited degree of its type in the nation.
___With the 1963 merger, the seminary became provisional beneficiary of several endowment funds related to the Carver School. These included a general endowment fund, the Margaret M. Norton Fund, the William Owen Carver Fund and nine scholarship funds.
___At that time, WMU took action to direct the Southern Baptist Foundation, which held the funds, to make Southern Seminary the recipient of earnings "provided that the seminary uses such income in conformity with the requirements of the trust agreement."
___The trust agreement carried this stipulation: "Whenever the Southern Baptist Convention ... shall cease to conduct a school ... for uses and purposes as set forth in said Article 2 of the Articles of Incorporation of the Carver School of Missions and Social Work as quoted above, the trust shall terminate and the corpus shall be returned to the Woman's Missionary Union, auxiliary to the Southern Baptist Convention, or its legal successor in interest."
___In addition to the endowment funds, WMU also gave to Southern Seminary real estate valued at $799,500 at the time of the 1963 merger. That property, which today houses the seminary's new Boyce Bible College, reportedly was not part of what WMU asked to have returned.
___With additional reporting by Bob Allen of ABP
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