Trustees at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky, have approved new faculty-hiring guidelines that were worked out in a compromise with faculty following their adoption of a more restrictive employment policy last fall.
At their September 1990 meeting, the trustees voted to use criteria established in a 1986 report of the Southern Baptist Peace Committee as conditions for the hiring, promotion, or granting of tenure to members of the faculty (CT, Nov. 5, 1990, p. 74). Among other things, that document prescribed belief in the Bible as “true without any mixture of errors,” including acceptance of Adam and Eve as actual persons, biblical miracles as supernatural events, and scriptural accounts as historically accurate.
The faculty subsequently voted unanimously to ask the trustees to rescind their action, saying it misused the Peace Committee report and introduced “ambiguity and confusion” into the seminary’s instructional process. The Association of Theological Schools said it would send a team to visit the campus this spring to investigate the effects of recent trustee actions.
Balanced Representation
Seven faculty members and seven trustees then worked out a compromise that was adopted by the faculty on March 28. The trustees approved the new “covenant” agreement on April 9 by a vote of 49 to 7. Under the new policy, the seminary will seek “balanced representation” on the faculty through “intentional employment of conservative evangelical scholars for future openings.” It said this will remain an employment guideline until trustees, administration, and faculty determine that the seminary has achieved faculty balance.
In a statement on Scripture, the covenant says the Bible is “true and reliable in all the matters it addresses, whatever the subject matter” and that the Bible serves as the “ultimate standard of authority for God’s people, transcending both temporal and cultural contexts.”
Wayne Allen, chairman of the board’s executive committee, said that the covenant could help “avoid a head-on collision” between the faculty and the trustees. “I feel that we are headed for some very troubled days that could affect the vitality and life of this institution if everybody isn’t willing to make some concessions,” he said.
Two weeks after the compromise was announced, three widely known faculty members said they planned to leave at the end of the school year, in part because of the tensions at Southern.
New Testament professor Alan Culpepper, who has been on Southern’s faculty since 1974, will teach next year at Baylor University. Andrew Lester, a widely published professor of psychology of religion and a faculty member since 1977, will move to Brite Divinity School at Texas Christian University. Karen Smith, assistant professor of church history, who began teaching at Southern in 1986, will join the faculty of South Wales Baptist College and the University of Wales in Cardiff.
