Sunday Schools

Our first weekly feature on the blog was "Money Mondays."  Every Monday, we take a look at the financial implications of the OBU-BGCO relationship and reveal what a raw deal it is for all involved.

The newest weekly feature will be "Sunday Schools."  Beginning next week, we will look at other Baptist colleges and universities that have severed ties with their increasingly fundamentalist state conventions.  From big name schools like Baylor, all the way to relatively more obscure schools like Stetson (in my native Florida, and my grandfather's alma mater), we will look at the how these Baptist institutions have altered the terms of their relationships with their state conventions.

Just last week, I first heard the story of how William Jewell College in Liberty, Missouri gained independence from the Missouri Baptist state convention.  It's a pretty inspiring tale, and so I might begin with William Jewell next week.  This will require a lot of research on my part, and it's a near certainty that some of our readers know these stories intimately from their own experience.  So if you are particularly knowledgeable in the institutional history of a Baptist school that split from its state convention, please let me know.  I would love for you to write a guest post for this blog.

Until next week, just bear in mind that many Baptist colleges have been where we are: handicapped by an ever more fundamentalist state convention and beholden to the convention's finances.  Even though some of the splits were very contentious and all were painful in some way, without exception the schools and the Baptist state conventions are much better off without each other today.  So it will be with OBU and the BGCO.  But we have to spread the word.  Please share this blog with all your non-fundamentalist friends, classmates, and fellow alumni.  Beginning next spring, we will make our voices heard.