September 11, 2000

BGCT study committee proposes
changes in SBC seminary, institution funding
___By Mark Wingfield
___Managing Editor
___DALLAS--The movement to dramatically reduce the amount of money flowing from Texas to the Southern Baptist Convention gained steam when a key committee went a step beyond reducing seminary funding and also voted to completely defund the SBC Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission and nearly defund the SBC Executive Committee.
___ The Administrative Committee of the Baptist General Convention of Texas unanimously approved the budget changes for calendar year 2001 during a Sept. 13 meeting in Dallas. To become effective, the budget proposal must be ratified by the convention's Executive Board Sept. 26 and then by convention messengers Oct. 30-31.
___ Morris Chapman, a former Texas pastor who is president of the SBC Executive

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Committee in Nashville, Tenn., is urging Texas conservatives to turn out in force at the BGCT annual session in Corpus Christi to defeat the proposed budget. However, some of the state's most conservative churches already have left the BGCT to form another state convention.
___ Supporters of the budget changes likewise are urging Texas Baptists to attend the convention session, virtually ensuring a larger-than-normal turnout. Convention planners estimate more than 6,000 messengers could register for the historic meeting, which presents SBC conservatives with their most serious funding challenge since they gained control of the denomination in 1990.
___ Although conservatives now control the SBC and have removed moderates from any form of leadership, the BGCT has steadfastly resisted the conservative tide and has remained under the direction of moderates and centrists.
___ The fissure between the state and national conventions reached a peak this summer when the SBC revised its doctrinal statement, the Baptist Faith & Message, removing references to Jesus Christ as the criterion by which Scripture is to be interpreted and declaring the document an instrument of doctrinal accountability which denominational employees must sign without question.
___ During its Sept. 13 meeting, the BGCT Administrative Committee voted to amend the worlwide missions portion of the Texas Cooperative Program to:
___ Reduce the amount of funding for the SBC Executive Committee to $10,000 from $706,000. The Executive Committee is the SBC's main administrative office and is responsible for setting policies, distributing Cooperative Program money and running a national news service known as Baptist Press.
___ Completely eliminate $345,000 in funding for the SBC Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, based in Nashville and headed by former Texan Richard Land. Texas Baptists have been critical of the ERLC for its advocacy against church-state separation and its perceived dalliance with partisan politics.
___ Reduce funding for the SBC's six seminaries from $5.3 million this year to a maximum of $1 million next year. That $1 million would be distributed based on the number of Texas students enrolled at each school.
___ A "Texas student" would be defined as someone who has been a member for the previous two years of a church that financially supports the BGCT. Students attending college outside Texas would be eligible based upon membership in a BGCT-supporting church prior to entering college.
___ The net effect of this change would be a virtual defunding of five of the six SBC schools, which currently receive anywhere from $443,000 to $1.5 million annually from the BGCT. Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, based in Fort Worth, would get the largest share of the $1 million pool because it currently enrolls about 1,400 of the estimated 1,600 Texas students attending SBC seminaries.
___ Even so, Southwestern's funding could be reduced from $1.5 million to an estimated $875,000 in 2001.
___ Texas churches still would be able to designate funds through the BGCT to all SBC causes, including the seminaries, if they desire. However, designated funding from Texas churches to the seminaries would be counted toward the cap of $1 million given to the SBC schools collectively. Once the $1 million total has been reached, designated gifts to the SBC seminaries would still be sent there, but no more undesignated Cooperative Program money from Texas would go there.
___ The Texas proposals do not alter distributions to the SBC's International Mission Board or North American Mission Board, which will continue to receive about $12 million and $5.6 million respectively from the BGCT next year.
___ More than $5 million to be diverted from the SBC next year will be redirected to fund what both committees called "Texas missions priorities."
___ The $4.3 million balance of the seminary money will be given to three BGCT schools--Truett Seminary at Baylor University, Logsdon School of Theology at Hardin-Simmons University and Hispanic Baptist Theological School.
___ The $1.1 million diverted from the SBC Executive Committee and ERLC will be divided three ways--50 percent to strengthen Hispanic ministries and church starting in Texas, 25 percent to strengthen Texas human welfare ministries such as adoption and childcare, and 25 percent to the Texas Christian Life Commission to produce church resource materials and address ethical issues such as poverty and pornography.
___ The changes in seminary funding were recommended by a 16-member theological education study committee chaired by Robert Campbell, pastor of Westbury Baptist Church in Houston.
___ The committee spent six months conducting detailed research, including on-site visits to the six SBC seminaries and extensive dialogues with the president, administrators and some trustees of each school. The committee initially asked the SBC seminary presidents to meet with them in Dallas, but the presidents spoke as a group to decline that invitation.
___ "We did not appoint the committee nor ask for it, and we are not directly accountable to state convention committees anyway," the committee was told in a July 27 letter from Paige Patterson, president of Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in North Carolina.
___ So, over a period of about two weeks, the Texas committee undertook a whirlwind tour of the SBC seminaries, which are scattered from the West Coast to the East Coast.
___ As a result of this research, the committee cited a number of concerns:
___ Creedalism. The committee specifically cited changes in the Baptist Faith & Message and the way adherence to those changes is being enforced at the SBC schools. "During interviews with the administration and trustees of the six SBC seminaries, it was clearly stated that no faculty member could call into question any portion of the 2000 Baptist Faith & Message for any reason at any time. Thus the 2000 Baptist Faith & Message is elevated to inerrant status."
___ The report cites comments New Orleans Seminary President Chuck Kelley made at a faculty meeting this July when asked by a faculty member how to respond if a student were to ask an individual professor what he or she believes.
___ "That is irrelevant," Kelley told the faculty, according to documentation in the committee's report. "It doesn't matter what I believe; this is the SBC statement of faith."
___ Further, Campbell said, Kelley told at least some members of his faculty that no faculty member would be allowed to question the Baptist Faith & Message anywhere at any time, not even in private conversation at an off-campus party.
___ Further, the report notes, four of the SBC seminary presidents told the Texas committee they believe the 1963 version of the Baptist Faith & Message is a "neo-orthodox document."
___ "We had never heard that before," Campbell said. "This is an alarming description."
___ Campbell said the committee responded by asking: "Do you know who you're calling neo-orthodox? All the presidents of the state conventions."
___ The 1963 Baptist Faith & Message committee was comprised of the presidents of the state Baptist conventions, with Southern Baptist statesman Herschel Hobbs of Oklahoma as chairman.
___ The seminary presidents responded that Hobbs was "duped" by neo-orthodox individuals who heavily influenced the 1963 document, Campbell said.
___ Financial irregularities. "BGCT-related churches are spending a disproportionate amount of money on seminary education in the six SBC seminaries as compared with the amount spent on seminary education within BGCT-supported seminaries."
___ Specifically, the report notes, 93.3 percent of all BGCT funding for theological education has been going to the SBC seminaries, while 6.3 percent has gone to the BGCT-related seminaries. "Put another way, this is $14.90 to be split among six SBC seminaries and $1 to be split between the two BGCT seminaries."
___ Further, "funds received by the six SBC seminaries are not always used for graduate theological education," the committee found. "Cooperative Program funds are being used for some undergraduate baccalaureate degrees (university and college-level classes) and to provide 'free' education to non-Southern Baptist students from other denominational or religious groups."
___ Faculty purges and replacements. "Most Southern Baptists are well aware of the purging of faculty or administrators who refuse to go along with the ideas and philosophies of the new SBC president and trustees," the committee noted. "While the committee knows that faculty members can be terminated, the process by which some were dismissed or contracts were not renewed violates both due process and common decency."
___ Further, at least three of the six seminaries have experienced "significant faculty turnover," the committee reported. For example, at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky., 66.6 percent of the theology faculty has been hired since 1993, the year Al Mohler became president. That does not account for other faculty members who were hired since 1993 and subsequently have left. At Southeastern Seminary, 88 percent of the theology faculty is new since 1992. And at Southwestern Seminary, 37.5 percent of the theology faculty is new since 1995, the year after Russell Dilday was fired as president.
___ "One has to wonder why there is such a large turnover," the committee noted. "According to the presidents of Southeastern and Southern, it was because of retirements and normal attrition. The seminaries used to have many long-term faculty members. This is no longer the case. Why are faculty members leaving? Many times, faculty members are voluntarily leaving or retiring because they do not agree with the new philosophies or theologies of the current presidents and trustees."
___ On a related issue, "a large number of new faculty members are being employed in the six SBC seminaries who lack background or experience in Baptist life," the report says.
___ "Some SBC seminaries have an inordinately large number of teachers who have no degree from any Southern Baptist or state Baptist convention-owned college or univerity," the report explains. "Schools like Bob Jones University, Criswell College, Liberty University and Mid-America Seminary may have some Baptist connections, but those connections represent very narrow viewpoints. They do not represent widespread Southern Baptist or statewide Baptist thought.
___ "For instance, Southern Seminary had 15 out of 51 teachers in its 1999 faculty that did not have degrees from traditional Baptist schools. This is 29 percent of the faculty. Twelve of the 15 have been hired since Albert Mohler Jr. became president. In an Aug. 11, 2000, Baptist Press release, Mohler hired four new faculty members--three in the seminary and one in the undergraduate school. Only one out of the four had any educational degree from a Southern Baptist seminary or state Baptist-owned college or university."
___Trustee interference. "The style of seminary governance has significantly changed in the last decade," the committee said, citing examples of trustees becoming involved in directing classroom content and teaching.
___ Further, the selection of seminary trustees "has been narrowed to no longer represent the broad spectrum of Southern Baptist thought and belief. Consequently, current SBC seminary trustee boards almost exclusively reflect the narrow attitude of doctrinaire Fundamentalism."
___ Texans appointed to serve on SBC seminary boards often are those who are "openly hostile" to the BGCT, the committee added.
___ Enrollment. "Enrollment in graduate-level theological education has plummeted in most of the SBC seminaries in the last decade," the report says. "At the same time, some SBC seminaries have inflated their enrollment figures by including undergraduate college and university-level degree programs. Cooperative Program dollars that were originally intended by most Southern Baptist churches for graduate theological education are now being used to fund these competitive and redundant undergraduate programs."
___ Further, the reporting of some enrollment figures at SBC seminaries is "confusing and misleading," the report adds.
___ The committee asserts that enrollment at Midwestern Seminary in Kansas City, Mo., was misrepresented during the recent presidency of Mark Coppenger, resulting in an overpayment of Cooperative Program funds totaling $300,000. "The funds were not returned," the report adds.
___ Also, Southwestern Seminary "misreported their enrollment in 1997 and 1998," the report says. "The correction of those figures appeared to give a serious decline of students in 1999."
___ After doing its work, the committee struggled with a desire to treat some of the SBC seminaries differently than others--Southwestern, for example, because of its location and Texas heritage--but finally realized it could not do so, Campbell said.
___ And besides, the six SBC seminary presidents specifically asked the committee to treat all the schools the same, he added. "The six seminaries chose to stand as one. That was their choice."
___ Leaders from more than one seminary begged the committee not to give their school more favorable treatment than other SBC schools, he said, explaining that the result would be to hurt those schools rather than help them.
___ The process was painful for committee members, particularly those who are graduates of Southwestern or have known of its historic ties to the BGCT, Campbell said.
___ In the end, however, "Southwestern should be treated equally because the things we found are equally true," he said.
___ Southwestern is "a changed school," Campbell said. "The Southwestern I was trained in does not exist anymore.
___ "Are there still some good professors there? Absolutely. Are they as free as they used to be? No."
___ The hard truth, Campbell said, is that Southwestern's faculty members "can't criticize the Baptist Faith & Message. If I can't criticize this man-made document, I've made this document inerrant. That's creedal. And that's a big thing for us."

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