Virginia threatens Averett’s funding_120803

Posted: 12/05/03

Virginia threatens Averett's funding

By Robert Dilday

Virginia Religious Herald

RICHMOND, Va. (ABP)–As expected, Virginia Baptists have taken action that could end their 144-year-old tie to Averett University unless a conflict over homosexuality and biblical authority is resolved.

Meeting Nov. 13-14 in Richmond, Va., messengers to the Baptist General Association of Virginia annual meeting escrowed more than $350,000 they would have contributed to the Danville, Va., school next year.

But messengers enhanced their relationship with the John Leland Center for Theological Studies based in Falls Church, Va., increasing their allocation by 300 percent and moving it from a world-missions budget to the Virginia portion of the budget.

Messengers also cut by 40 percent funds to the Center for Baptist Heritage and Studies, created four years ago when the BGAV ended its ties to the University of Richmond.

The $14.3 million BGAV budget adopted for 2004 is $700,000 less than the current $15 million budget.

For the first time in more than a decade, messengers elected as president a pastor whose church contributes to national mission causes primarily through the Southern Baptist Convention. Don Davidson, pastor of Mount Hermon Baptist Church in Danville, was elected without opposition.

Since BGAV officers have been successfully nominated for many years by a network of moderate pastors, the election was widely seen as a signal that churches sympathetic to the SBC are welcome in BGAV life.

The vote to escrow Averett's allocation was recommended by the BGAV budget committee and passed decisively.

But the university attracted the ire of some Virginia Baptists in August when John Laughlin, chair of its religion department, wrote an article in a newspaper endorsing the recent action of the Episcopal Church to ordain an openly homosexual bishop and criticizing a literal method of interpreting the Bible.

Also, in September, John Shelby Spong, a controversial retired Episcopal bishop, lectured on Averett's campus, reportedly saying that the God who is revealed in a literal reading of Scripture is “immoral” and “unbelievable.”

Averett President Richard Pfau read portions of a resolution adopted Oct. 24 by the school's board of trustees, expressing regret at “any perception that Averett University has diverged from its commitment to being Virginia's flagship Christian university.”