Save OBU

My OBU Story, Part II: Travelers on a Journey

2012-03-09T07:22:00.001-06:00

“We are trav’lerson a journey, fellow pilgrims on the road;

We are here tohelp each other walk the mile and bear the load.”

—“The ServantSong,”

The Baptist Hymnal(1991), no. 613

In the summer of 2004, I returnedto East Texas. I was twenty yearsold and two years into my OBU education. A semester before, I switched from a major in Applied Youth Ministry toa double-major in Philosophy and Religion. East Texas had changed little, but I had changed in ways Iwas only beginning to understand—without the tools to negotiate the difference.

I returned home to make peace withthat good ol’-time religion, but peace was not to be found. After a summerunder the tutelage of the pastor of my youth, I left his church more confusedand disenchanted than ever. As Idrove through the empty land of southeastern Oklahoma, its loneliness echoed inmy heart. Frustrated and weary, Iquit. Finding God only in theclassroom, I resolved to make my studies my religion.

Like all religion majors, I wasrequired to take Baptist History and Theology, and I was registered for thefall of that year. No longerbelieving that I was a Baptist, my only concern was that my distaste would notaffect my grade point average. Instead, I discovered that I had become more of a Baptist than I everrealized.

Presented with a series of Baptistdistinctives on the first day of class, I was incredulous. Historic Baptist commitments to freedomof religious expression, the separation of church and state, the freedom of theconscience, and healthy suspicion of religious and political authority wereunknown to me. I was used topastors drumming from the pulpit for the invasion of Iraq. I was used to having petitions to congressmen readyfor my signature in the foyer after Sunday sermons. I was used to hearing that the Lord’s supper was closed andthat the consciences of church members should submit to their pastor’sauthority.

Yet my incredulity concerningBaptist history soon turned to interest. Interest became fascination, and fascination passion. Here was a world unknown to me, aheritage I had not known to claim. Like the junction of great rivers, Baptist history is broad withtributaries and eddying currents aplenty. As these streams merge into one, with all their conflict andparticularity, a common identity flows forward. I poured myself into these waters.

Soon,I realized that the guidance of the philosophy and religion department towardradical honesty in biblical and philosophical inquiry connected me to thehistoric principles of the Baptist tradition. I began to understand that the school’s commitment toliberal arts flowed out of the foundational Baptist doctrine of the priesthoodof all believers. Just as all mustrespond to God with no mediator save Christ, so all must respond to God’struth. This rock is the foundationupon which OBU empowered young minds.

Western Civ, Sociology, Psychology,Epistemology, Baptist History and Theology, Ancient Philosophy and Aesthetics,Greek and Hebrew—all these courses became a means of grace, a way of knowing aGod that I loved but did not understand. In the words of Clement of Alexandria, the patron saint of the Christianliberal arts tradition:

“Icall him truly learned who brings everything to bear on the truth; so that fromgeometry, music, grammar, and philosophy itself, he culls what is useful andguards the faith against assault. And he who brings everything to bear on a right life …this man is anexperienced searcher after truth.”

AtOBU I learned both to be a disciple of Christ and a Baptist. I would be remissnot to mention the role that the local church played in the formation of myBaptist identity, but that is a story unto itself. As a traveler on the road of discipleship, I have found myidentity. I am Baptist, and whatis more Baptist than the honest, radical search for God’s truth?

Editor's Note: This beautiful testimony is a sequel to Clayton's previous post. Other diaries in the My OBU Story series can be found here and here. If you would like to have your OBU story considered for publication here, you can email us. We can provide a template or, if you like, you can submit your entry in essay form.

My OBU Story: Clayton Mauritzen

2012-03-08T08:23:00.002-06:00

“All truth is God’s truth, wherever it be found.”

—Arthur Holmes

My OBU story began as so many others before and after—with Welcome Week. I wore the beanie, I played games like the second coming of Falls Creek, and I was given a slim, purple book. I am ashamed to admit that, even to this day, I did not actually read the purple book. Even so, Arthur Holmes’ The Idea of a Christian College laid the foundation for my story at Bison Hill.

I was raised in East Texas as an active member of a Southern Baptist church. In our family, there was no clear line between religion and daily life. I was saved at the age of six, praying with my mother in my parents’ bedroom. We went to church twice on Sundays and on Wednesday evenings, and we spent our summers in the church daycare or the youth group. By the time I was in fourth grade, I could find any verse in the Bible in ten seconds or less, and I read the Bible cover to cover before high school graduation.

I came to Oklahoma Baptist University safe and comfortable in my faith. And why not? I had already mastered the fundamental truths of Christianity. Yet, before I left East Texas, my pastor admonished me from the pulpit one Sunday evening not to lose my faith at OBU. The thought was absurd, of course. OBU was a safe place. My professors might teach me little I did not already know, but I could trust them not to lead me astray.

So when I was told during Welcome Week that “all truth is God’s truth, wherever it be found,” I believed it. Suddenly, my mind opened. I remember walking through the midday August heat, the phrase “all truth is God’s truth” breaking through my mind like waves upon a rocky coast. Suddenly, the classes that I believed were merely a series of hoops on the way to a degree became vital to my awakening as a Christian: Sociology, philosophy, Spanish, psychology, history, and literature became integral to my faith, but I was naïvely unafraid of the challenges that they would bring—unable to leave discussions and lectures in the classroom. As I learned, the cocksure boy became the eager student. If I were to know God, then I would need to integrate my faith with learning.

Until the winter break of my sophomore year, I believed that these two could coexist. Then my faith in the institution of the church began to falter. I switched from majoring in Applied Youth Ministry to both Philosophy and Religion.

My memories of the months and semesters that followed are ones of highs and lows. My classes introduced me to the Bible and to critical thought, as if for the first time. They exhilarated and excited me, and my mind let go of childlike trust. I began to question the fundamentals my pastor admonished so fervently even as I held on to God’s truth wherever I found it.

I remember the darkness the most. The island of my former faith was assailed by a hurricane of new learning, and my relationship with God changed. I remember wandering the sidewalks at one or two o’clock in the morning, restless and unable to sleep. I remember shouting at God in the cold, dark rain. I remember how palpable the mist was, how it shrouded the world in the eerie half-light of the streetlamps. I remember searching for meaning as I attempted to reorient my life around a God I no longer understood. As the floodwaters rose, my house, built upon sand, collapsed.

But my OBU story does not end there: Just as the gospels would end prematurely with Jesus on the cross, so it would to leave me on sidewalks at midnight. Many shy away from tales of fear and doubt, but these are the very essence of Christ at work within us. At times the narrow road descends into darkness, seeming never to rise again. One of the hallmarks of early Baptist thought was the radical notion that all believers—anyone who trusted Jesus—were priests. No one could mediate faith save Christ. Following Jesus on the road of discipleship is not about the destination—it is about the journey.

Had my professors forced me into a narrow understanding of God—whether liberal or conservative—I would have left Christianity. Rather, they gave me tools for the road of discipleship. All of my life since OBU—seminary, working with homeless persons, and finally teaching in public education—has been a desire to love a God that I do not understand. Because they taught me that all truth is God’s truth, wherever it is found, I am still on the road, following Jesus to Jerusalem. My journey led back to a faith that belongs to me instead of another.

OBU has been more to me than an education. Through my struggles, it has been a revelation.

Progress Report on Save OBU Updates and Changes

2012-03-07T10:45:00.000-06:00

So much has been happening at Save OBU, it's hard to keep track of it all. About two weeks ago, I announced some changes to the blog designed to give voice to a new generation of OBU alumni. Today I'll briefly report on some new initiatives and lay out a sketch of our vision going forward into the spring.

New Contributing Editor

After researching and writing 72 blog posts and generating more than 12,000 pageviews on the website, I invited Veronica Pistone ('11) to join me as a Contributing Editor. Already, Veronica has impressed our readers with her knowledge, insight, and clarity. She has not shied away from difficult topics, and her commitment to Baptist freedom and her love of OBU shines through in every post.

Veronica receiving an award for outstanding academic

achievement from SCS Dean Mark McClellan in 2011

Guest Bloggers

On Sunday, we ran our first in a series of occasional guest blog posts. Caitlin Dacus ('11) shared an informative and passionately written essay on early Baptist hero John Leland. Her connections to OBU's current situation show how far our alma mater has fallen. Tomorrow and Friday, I am pleased to welcome Clayton Mauritzen ('06) as he shares his OBU story. Look for more guest posts in the weeks and months to come. If you have a perspective or story and would like to be considered for publication here, be sure to email us at SaveOBU@gmail.com. Remember, our focus is on protecting academic freedom at OBU and advocating for independence from the BGCO.

Spotlight on Recent OBU Disasters

In giving voice to a younger generation of OBU alumni, we are hearing from people who had a front row seat for the Norman-Whitlock administration's authoritarianism, new fundamentalist-inspired direction, and assaults on Baptist freedom. If you missed it last week, take a look at our three part series on administration at OBU.

A Broad View of Evangelical Academia

Initially, I invested a lot of time in learning about other Southern Baptist colleges that parted company with their state conventions. As inspiring as those stories are, OBU's situation is unique in that the convention literally owns the university. The BGCO has OBU in a legal straitjacket from which we cannot easily escape. That's why they are able to advocate for a fundamentalist agenda with such impunity -- we really have no recourse (which is why our protests must be loud, passionate, and unyielding). For now, we just have to hope and pray that current leaders will not do any more damage to OBU and its reputation than they already have.

But it occurs to me that while many Baptist schools were fighting battles from which Joe Ingram, Bill Tanner, and Bob Agee wisely and deftly shielded OBU during the Fundamentalist Takeover era, OBU quietly established itself as one of the premier evangelical colleges in the U.S. Sadly, we are losing ground to other fine colleges like Wheaton, Gordon, Biola, and Whitworth -- institutions that do not have to kowtow to fundamentalists like OBU unfortunately does. Some are suggesting that we are witnessing an "evangelical renaissance" in academia. Not only is OBU not taking part, we are actually regressing. In fact, we just received word that Wheaton hired an outstanding young New Testament professor that OBU passed over for a job in 2009 in spite of her being unanimously recommended by the search committee.

Next Steps

Now that I have help with the daily blogging duties, I am going to start assembling an advisory board for Save OBU. I'm looking for a handful of people with ties to SBC churches (both BGCO and CBFO) in Oklahoma.

Then, we'll work on compiling a dossier of issues that we can submit to OBU trustees later this spring.

One idea that seems fun and might be effective is to hold a Save OBU rally in Shawnee sometime this year or next.

And we'll begin investigating the politics and processes involved in trustee selection. With luck and extensive planning, we'll be able to influence trustee election at the BGCO meeting in November. Given all the student, faculty, alumni, and retired faculty protests, Anthony Jordan is not going to let any non-fundamentalists on the Board from now on. We need to make sure OBU continues to have good trustees who understand Baptist freedom, academic freedom, and the importance of not ruining an institution's hard-earned and well-deserved reputation for excellence just to satisfy a few Baptist power brokers in OKC and Nashville.

A Word of Thanks
We have received invaluable support and encouragement from Bill Jones ('73) of Texas Baptists Committed. Bill featured Save OBU on the TBC blog yesterday and we really appreciate all he's done.

And, of course, thank to all of you for your kind words and assistance in spreading the word.

God bless OBU!

OBU's Potential

2012-03-06T07:00:00.000-06:00

A lot of time is spent on this blog dogging the way things are. And that's true and good because you have to see that there's a problem before you might be willing to find a solution. I think we can all agree there is indeed a problem.

But is it a lost cause? Why are we fighting for OBU, besides the fact that a part of our hearts still probably calls it home?

Jacob mentioned an article on Saturday that I want to take a moment to again consider the import. The article he wrote on mentions a sort-of new scene in higher education: an evangelical renaissance.

Now that I am at a mainline protestant seminary, I am all the more aware of my evangelical tradition. Sometimes, it's easy to forget some of the positives. But I am proud of my Baptist self-identification and believe that it is as a Baptist I have things to bring to the theological discussion table.

Let us not forget what we have to offer. Evangelicals take the bible very seriously. Evangelicalism holds the individual to be of infinite value to God. Evangelicals honor deeply the spiritual aspects of faith.

I sense there is a movement of those who are coming of age in the evangelical churches and realizing that our tradition is deeper than the well from which we currently drink. There is a sense that perhaps we should follow our mainline brothers and sisters into concern for justice issues and leave our parents and their moral majority behind. But there is also a recognition that we cannot simply sell our birthright.

A change is coming. And if you look at what kind of students are coming out of OBU, you will see it.

The potential for our university is to foster this movement, to mold students who give it wings. We are already bringing forth those who say, "You know what, maybe being Baptist isn't about denying women a place in ministry or hating homosexuals. Maybe it is about something bigger."

It's not that the answers changed, the debate is over, and the Bible lost. It's that the questions are changing and our tradition is being reclaimed.

There is a movement stirring in the hearts of young evangelicals who believe that their voices have value in the academic and theological conversation. They do not wish to abandon their roots, but to determine what exactly their tradition means for them. Movements always begin within the academy.

The time is coming when evangelicals might again be taken seriously by the world.

As an "unapologetically Baptist" Liberal Arts University, OBU stands at the cusp of the birth of this movement. If we continue to take seriously the quality of education, academic freedom, and all of the good things on which we claim to stand, we can grow into our potential-- the potential to be a part of the voice of the new evangelicalism.

Maybe this is a little abstract-- after all, I do spend most of my time talking to graduate school professors. But, I hope you can see where I am coming from, and maybe even seeds of these thoughts in your own life-- especially if you, too, are a product of OBU.

There is the chance that real, Evangelical, academic, light could shine from Bison hill-- and perhaps that it already does.

But it seems that there are some who are so attached to the old ways that they do not understand or desire this light. It scares them. It means their tradition is changing. And change is never good. The SBC has decided on what side they stand. That is why we must stand and support our University. To lose that voice would be to lose a treasure for both our own tradition and the others with whom we would interact.

A Look from the Other Side

2012-03-05T05:00:00.000-06:00

Imagine: a professor has just left (to teach at Oxford, no less) and now that professor must be replaced. You have two candidates. Candidate A obviously has the more impressive resume, including an M.Div. and Ph.D. from Princeton. Accordingly, the faculty committee recommends candidate A, unanimously.

But here’s the problem: the position is to teach theology. Candidate B is a man and also supports your fundamentalist agenda more closely so you must choose him because you are both trying to make the faculty more conservative and your theological imagination does not have room for a woman to teach the scriptures.

That’s exactly what happened with a recent hire at OBU. Obviously, this makes me angry. It makes me angry that faculty recommendations are so easily ignored. It makes me angry that interviewees are being discriminated against because of gender. It makes me angry that better professors are being rejected for less qualified professors.

But maybe I am not the one receiving the worst end of this deal.

What must it feel like to come on campus to start a new job, knowing you are not the one that your colleagues wanted?

Surely, if I know that the recommendation was unanimous for another, he knows. And, after all, you apply for a job you are qualified for, you hope you get the job, you get the job, you take it. You don’t think, “Wait! There is another who is better than I! Take her instead!” Academic jobs are few and far spread these days.

So what does it feel like to embody all of the tensions in your new workplace? Is it fair to walk into work everyday knowing that you are being compared to another who honestly may or may not have done a better job, but in the collective minds of those who surround you would’ve taught perfectly?

The new professor is not a bad guy and not a terrible professor. Obviously, he’s a little reformed for my taste and teaches from a pretty conservative bias. But don’t we all teach from our biases? These are forgivable because he is able to see that there are views besides his own which are viable. He’s downgraded the Greek textbook, which is frustrating, but it’s got to be hard to follow someone who left for Oxford. And he was always pretty nice to me, so I feel like I have to give him the benefit of the doubt.

But for many with ties to OBU, he will always be, at best, second choice. As I met many moderate alumni and supporters when I moved to Texas, the question they always asked was, “What do you know about this guy from Liberty?”

It’s got to be a hard place to be. I know when he came many upperclassmen felt they shouldn’t like him on principle. Surely we are not alone. And frankly, that is unfair all the way around-- for us, for the one who was passed over, for the faculty, and especially for the one who was hired.

When appeasing the BGCO hurts the Academy, we all suffer.

The [Forgotten] Rights of Conscience Inalienable

2012-03-04T11:54:00.000-06:00

EarlyBaptist leader Reverend John Leland (1754-1841) was a key figure in laying thefoundation of the four distinctively Baptist freedoms which Veronica recountedin the February 27 blog post. In many of Leland’s writings, especially his 1791work, The Rights of ConscienceInalienable, he labored toestablish specifically the 3rd and 4th freedoms listed: Church Freedom (freedomof local churches to govern themselves) and Religious Freedom (belief in theseparation of church and state).

Leland and other Baptistministers of this time worked tirelessly with founding fathers such as JamesMadison to ensure the inclusion of the Bill of Rights in the Constitution andwere not satisfied with weak provisions early its construction for theseparation of church and state because they feared, justifiably, thatgovernment would eventually enact laws in preference to a certain faith,regardless of whether or not that faith was Baptist. Leland was not content unlessit was guaranteed that, as Leland stated, “Pagan, Turk, Jew or Christian” wouldbe eligible for any office or government position. (The Rights of Conscience Inalienable)

Rev. Leland is a valuable figurefor all of us to remember. His attitude toward the rights of individualconscience was nothing short of magnanimous. He was the sort of man who courageously wrote:“So when one creed or church prevails over another, being armed with (a coat ofmail) law and sword, truth gets no honor by the victory. Whereas if all standupon one footing, being equally protected by law as citizens (not as saints)and one prevails over another by cool investigation and fair argument, thentruth gains honor, and men more firmly believe it than if it was made anessential article of salvation by law.” (Rights)

He embodied such a spirit and principle offreedom throughout his life, extending this attitude to religious freedoms aswell as civic freedoms. The principles Rev. Leland held are based in confidencethat truth will win out – therefore in the early Baptist’s convictions, there is no room for fear of intellectualfreedom and no room for the exercise of authoritarianism to affect ideologicalor theological homogeneity. This principle of trust in freedom defines theideal for a Christian academic institution such as OBU. John Leland was aminister who was confident in the truth of the gospel, as much as he wasconfident that this gospel required of civil and religious institutions notmerely the respect of individual conscience, but the seamless protection thereof.

Lelandwrites in The Rights of ConscienceInalienable: “It would be sinful for a man to surrender that to man whichis to be kept sacred for God. A man’s mind should be always open to conviction,and an honest man will receive that doctrine which appears the bestdemonstrated.”

Suchprinciples have been forgotten by powerbrokers who are now manhandling OBU andwho have affected the fundamentalist takeover of many an academic and religiousinstitution. This forgotten spirit offreedom honors and protects the rights of individual conscience – abeautiful principle by which to construct and operate any Christian university.

Duringthe years of my life and studies at OBU since the arrival of PresidentWhitlock, the phrase “unashamedly Baptist” was used frequently by himself andProvost Norman when addressing the student body and during various occasions ofimport. No phrase struck me as more ironically used than at this particular timefor OBU. These past three years in particular for my alma mater have beendevastating. OBU has lost more than two outstanding, passionate, caringprofessors due to the ideological culling this administration has executed. Theshame that comes from these decisions – along with others which Save OBU hasbegun to recount – burns deeply in my heart and in the hearts of many in theOBU community.

Just like theforgetful servant of Jesus’ parable in Matthew 18, many fundamentalistpower-holders forgot the grace shown Baptist tradition when founders such asLeland took a stand for individual liberty. Insteadof honoring freedom of conscience, they have taken their liberties and, findingpower, have turned around and denied those very freedoms to other Baptists,extending this denial now to the faculty and institution of OBU. The allureof power for some elites has co-opted the very core of the Baptist distinctiveof freedom of conscience.

Each erapresents its unique temptations and difficulties. We can look back to Lelandfor an example of principled devotion to individual freedom because of the gospel. It is thisprinciple which we must remember today and apply in our struggle to preservethe honest, conscientious pursuit of truth through educational excellence atOBU.

Honest pursuitof knowledge, especially at a distinctively Christian university, comes fromthe right to pursue a free conscience. Without this right, genuine and healthyIntegration of Faith and Learning cannotoccur.

We can lookbackward to remember figures such as John Leland as both inspiration andvalidation for our cause to save OBU. And when we do, Lord willing, save OBU,one more step will be taken to preserve Baptist life from authoritarianism thatfears freedom and denies the rights of individual conscience – an attitudedebilitating not only for OBU, but for the cause of the Kingdom of God intoday’s world. May OBU continue to yield educated individuals who remember therights of individual conscience and who are critically engaged and relevantmembers of their faith, civic, and academic communities.

Leland’s Self-Written Epitaph:

“Here lies the body ofJohn Leland, who labored 67 years to promote piety and vindicate the civil andreligious rights of all men.” (Scarberry 733)

Works Consulted:

“Baptist Patriots.” http://www.mainstreambaptists.org/mbn/Patriots.htm

Leland, John. “The Rightsof Conscience Inalienable.” 1791. http://classicliberal.tripod.com/misc/conscience.html

Scarberry, Mark S. (April 2009)."John Leland and James Madison: Religious Influence on the Ratification ofthe Constitution and on the Proposal of the Bill of Rights." Penn StateLaw Review 113 (3): 733-800

“The Writings of John Leland,”ed. L.F. Greene. New York: Arno Press,1969.

About Caitlin: I graduated from OBU in May, 2011. I lived on campus all four years and loved my time OBU. I remember Bison Hill affectionately, though still with a taste of bitterness left by the destructive decisions made in my years there. Anthropology was my major and my minor was in religion.

An Evangelical Renaissance in Academe?

2012-03-03T23:37:00.000-06:00

Several of our readers pointed us to an essay that appeared last week on the Inside Higher Ed blog. The essay pointed out the need for evangelical scholars to reclaim Christian thought from fundamentalism. I commend the entire piece for your consideration, but want to comment on some of the relevant points in light of OBU's history and present problems.

The context of this essay is the opening of a new Center for Christian Thought at Biola University in California. The authors, Gordon College Professors Thomas Albert Howard and Karl W. Giberson, explore some of the reasons why serious Christian engagement with philosophy and culture at a conservative evangelical institution might be problematic (or at least difficult) in light of the fundamentalist resurgence of the past 30 years.

Howard and Giberson tell a story that is familiar to those of us who have studied, lived, and worked in the 20th century's Christian war between modernists and fundamentalists. But today's OBU students may not realize that there is a noble Christian academic tradition outside of fundamentalism.

Stung by ridicule after the Scopes trial, Fundamentalists retreated to the sidelines of American culture. There they nurtured a parallel universe of publishing houses, magazines, journals, radio stations, and, not least, colleges and universities to combat the threat of secularism from without and the threat of theological modernism from within.

Fundamentalists carried into exile many core tenets of Christian orthodoxy -- the Trinity, the Incarnation, the Atonement -- shared by Catholic and Orthodox Christians as well. But they also carried dubious novelties, such as newfangled teachings on biblical inerrancy and speculations about the End Times. What is more, they became pointedly hostile toward American culture and disengaged from serious intellectual pursuits, convinced that Christianity was almost exclusively about “the world to come,” with only negligible concern for the here-and-now.

For OBU, at least, we can see the fault lines forming. Will we continue to be a locus for serious, honest, and searching Christian engagement with the scientific, economic, political, philosophical, artistic, and ethical concerns of the modern world? Or are we we retreating into the "parallel universe" of fundamentalism to "combat the threat of secularism without and the threat of theological modernism from within?"

The administration's moves over the past two years seem to be a headlong descent into that parallel universe: turning our bookstore into a purveyor of fundamentalist pulp, firing conservative-to-moderate evangelicals who do not toe the party line, welcoming new faculty on the basis of doctrinal agreement rather than academic merit, and cozying up to the fundamentalists who run the BGCO and the SBC. In the religion department alone, this fundamentalist "parallel universe" exists in the apologetics/"worldview" curriculum and the professional societies new faculty belong to.

This parallel universe attempts to imitate academic rigor and respectability, but the fundamentalist attachments are so bizarre and anti-intellectual as to make the whole enterprise suspect. Back to the new Biola center:

But beyond the problem of Mr. Worldly Wiseman is the problem of Biola itself. The problem of Biola, however, is not the problem of Biola alone; it is shared by a number of the more than 115 evangelical schools in the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities (CCCU), the largest umbrella network of evangelical institutions of higher learning. The problem is, quite simply, lingering attachment to some of the more dubious certainties and habits derived from Fundamentalism and hardened by the Fundamentalist-Modernist controversies of the 20th century.

I'm glad Howard and Giberson pointed out the CCCU (Council for ~~Conservative~~ Christian College and Universities), of which OBU is a member. As badly as the D.C.-based CCCU wants to seem like a uniquely faithful coalition of colleges, the evidence seems to suggest it is just another part of the parallel universe. It's not a total joke/sham like the Association for Biblical Higher Education (ABHE), which "accredits" fundamentalist Bible academies that could never attain accreditation through an actual accrediting body. But the CCCU just isn't as special as it thinks it is. And frankly, I'm not sure why OBU (or any college) is a member. The CCCU does provide one service you'll be pleased to learn about: Supposedly whenever Dr. Norman actually has to undergo a performance evaluation that includes input from faculty, Dr. Whitlock has proposed to use an instrument developed by the CCCU. Isn't that reassuring?

We've entered a new world at OBU -- one in which you can't even find the classics of the Christian faith (or any decent new research, either) in the college bookstore, but you can find reassurance in apologetics and "worldview" classes. While plenty of other conservative Christian colleges are also facing hostile takeovers, some are not. Some are continuing ahead on the path of enlightened Christian liberal arts education -- the path we would still be on if not for the fact that our leaders have to appease the BGCO. As schools like Gordon, Wheaton, Biola, Whitworth, and others forge on, OBU and other Southern Baptist schools have to fight against our fundamentalist overlords. (True fact: Wheaton just hired an amazing professor OBU rejected in order to hire someone from Liberty University. I'm sorry, but whoever made that decision has absolutely no business in Christian higher education.)

What is more, many old-guard defenders of the status quo, convinced that the residue of fundamentalism is simply “what the Bible plainly teaches,” are not in short supply among donors, board members and vocal alumni. They would likely perceive some changes such as admitting Catholic faculty, constructively engaging evolution, or modifying statements of faith away from simplistic biblicism as greasing the slippery slope toward perdition.

As fundamentalism faded from view in the middle of the last century, OBU built a proud reputation for an academically rigorous, unapologetically Christian, and unashamedly Baptist brand of higher education. Yet today, resurgent fundamentalists seem intent on destroying everything we built. And unless we stand up and fight, they will win.

What Makes a Good Administrator? (Part 3)

2012-03-01T07:00:00.000-06:00

Maybe these posts would be better called, “What Went Wrong.” But, I’ve already titled the first one and Jacob wrote the second one, so this is where it stays. My hope in this mini-series is to chronicle the changes I witnessed as a student at OBU which have brought us towards the current situation.

My intention for this second post was to catalog the ways that the administration ran afoul of the current students/recent alumni. But another underlying assumption at OBU is that the faculty and students are in cahoots. Really, if the faculty had loved the new administration the students would have trusted them. So before we can say what went wrong with students, we must explore what went wrong with the faculty.

Many people think that firing a beloved professor was the first misstep. But it actually started much earlier than that.

One of Whitlock’s first actions as president was to hire the new dean of the (then) School of Christian Service. Now, there had been two front runners for this position which had been reviewed by the faculty committee.

The first was a man who seemed a little reformed, but overall a nice guy who would make a competent administrator.

The second was a man who, frankly, scared the committee. He seemed like a fundamentalist with a heavy agenda looking for a power trip. The entire committee reviewed him saying something to the effect of, “I don’t trust him at all,” or “He kind of gives me the creeps.” Of course, I’m sure they were professional. But I do know that the person on the committee who was responsible for delivering the findings of the committee to the president toned down their words a little bit because he knew that Whitlock and this man were very good friends.

In fact, they were old friends from college... and in their time at the BCM, this man had been responsible for David Whitlock’s conversion experience.

So, it’s impressive to me that a faculty committee could review the president’s best friend and still give a terrible review. Did they know? I don’t know. Maybe they didn’t. But if they did, it shows they really did not like this candidate.

A meeting was scheduled to announce something to the whole school.

At that meeting when the new dean was announced, it came at no surprise to the faculty. And, I will agree-- he’s a pretty good administrator.

But in that same meeting it was announced that this man whom the faculty has not liked one bit, this man who had made them nervous, this man who seemed like he had an agenda before anything else, this man, Stan Norman, was going to be the new provost.

Remember that guy y’all thought was crazy?

He’s your new boss. Oh, and we’re basically demoting one of your favorite female administrators, who has dedicated her life to OBU, in order to create this position for him. (Perhaps more on this later.) And, he doesn’t have to go through any sort of reviews where you get to contribute feedback.

I suppose it makes sense that Norman would be a provost, with his PhD in education administration systematic theology (Southwestern, post-takeover, no less!). Also, the OBU website has done a great job of covering over the fact that he has usually only spent 2-3 years at several institutions (although it looks like he did teach at a post-takeover NOBTS for about 7), by saying first that he has 13 years of experience total.

Understandably, the faculty was quite upset. They have been growing more and more upset ever since. And it turns out their first impressions were right on target.

Since coming to OBU, Stan Norman has been a micromanager. He has instituted a wildly invasive, fundamentalist-litmus-test of hiring questions. It makes sense; I don’t want anyone mowing the grass at OBU who is an egalitarian. He has intervened in students’ discipline.

Best of all? Somehow, magically, since he has been at OBU the Christian History professor was fired without due process guaranteed in his contract. Luckily, Dr. Norman was prepared to start teaching Baptist history and make his own book the textbook. (Talk about ~~ideological motivation~~ coincidence.)

Of course, it is reasonable for a new president to bring in some of his own people. But it’s a little strange to bring in only one person-- especially when that person is greatly disliked. Not to mention that when the first attempt to get him into the University went sour, (remember, a university is not a business-- you can’t just do whatever you want like you’re a CEO) the president found a pretty sneaky way to force his friend’s presence to the very top and give him even more power.

Sounds to me like someone’s loyalties lie outside of our beloved school.

What Makes a Good Administrator? (Part 2)

2012-02-29T06:37:00.000-06:00

Yesterday, we began a brief series on university administration as a window into why things have gone somewhat poorly for President Whitlock and why the BGCO is a central, if largely unseen, villan in this drama. If students' interests are ignored, faculty's rights and norms are violated, and alumni's concerns are cast aside in order to kowtow to the BGCO, it's a recipe for -- well, for the situation we currently have.

Today, I want to follow up by revisiting the presidency of Dr. Bob Agee. We've already talked about Baptist academic legends like James Ralph Scales and Grady Cothen. But Bob Agee deserves credit for providing exemplary leadership at OBU during a difficult time in Baptist life. Yesterday, we noted that a university president is like a translator, understanding the language of students, faculty, donors, alumni, and trustees. Agee spoke all those languages masterfully.

When Agee came to Bison Hill, he immediately took it upon himself to forge relationships with as many Oklahoma Baptist congregations as he could. He accepted invitations to preach in churches large and small. Some pastors and congregations were afraid that OBU was too liberal. Agee, who preached in 40-50 churches a year throughout most of his tenure, skillfully defused the paranoid and baseless fears about theological liberalism at OBU and, in the process, put forward a warm and caring persona for Oklahoma clergy and laypeople to associate with OBU.

The 43-year old president found faculty morale to be low when he arrived in 1983 (though nowhere close to how low it is today). He forged personal relationships with faculty and made three brilliant appointments to the position of chief academic officer (Shirley Jones, Pat Taylor, and Joe Bob Weaver, respectively). These gifted leaders each earned and sustained the faculty's trust and confidence.

Significantly, President Agee kept OBU safe from the denomination's Fundamentalist Takeover even as he maintained good relations with the increasingly fundamentalist BGCO. Though the BGCO's subsidy (as a percentage of OBU's budget) was cut in half over Agee's tenure (a fact we will revisit later), Agee managed the university's relationship to the convention skillfully. He befriended Rev. Joe L. Ingram, who was BGCO executive director from 1971-1986. It was Agee who announced with pride that OBU would name the religion department in Ingram's honor. (Sadly, fundamentalists later formally censured Ingram months before his death for "consorting with moderates.") Agee also worked well with Ingram's successor, Rev. Dr. Bill Tanner, a former OBU president. By the time the Rev. Dr. Anthony Jordan took over the BGCO in 1996, it seems the young gun (Jordan) had to defer to the elder statesman (Agee) somewhat. Obviously, in time Jordan would learn to work behind the scenes to wield power in OBU governance and affairs.

President Whitlock owes his election, in large part, to two traits he possesses (along with Agee) that his predecessor (Rev. Dr. Mark Brister) lacked: a background higher education administration and a natural ease with Oklahoma's Baptist clergy and laypeople. Yet for all his considerable talents, we must hope that Whitlock will be willing to learn from Agee's example.

Faculty are the heart and soul of the institution. Their judgment and autonomy in academic matters are sacrosanct. If you lose them, you've already lost. For better or worse, there was not quite enough faculty support to take the extreme and unprecedented measure of a no-confidence vote in President Whitlock after the botched dismissals. But the fact that such an option was even on the table last fall shows just how bad things are.
Students and alumni must feel valued. They are the ones who made a hundred thousand dollar investment in OBU. Their opinions matter, their passion is real, and the consequences of their dissatisfaction on OBU's future growth and development cannot be underestimated.
As for the BGCO, well, for now we may be stuck in this bad institutional arrangement. But let us not forget that without the BGCO, none of these problems would even exist. Wise presidents know that there is ample political support on Bison Hill and among alumni and trustees. If you stand strong for academic freedom and a rigorous liberal arts education, we've got your back. Anthony Jordan is not your boss. And if a few Oklahoma Baptist clergy and laypeople don't like it, you have two options. You can, like Agee, summon all your warmth and charm and go town to town assuaging these people's concerns. Or you can essentially blow them off. Less than two cents on their offering plate dollar ends up at OBU anyway. If they kick us out of the convention, all the better: all these problems disappear, you have student/faculty/alumni support, and you go down in history as a true OBU hero. Either way, OBU presidents have all learned how to deal with the BGCO. If you're seen as the convention's puppet, you lose.

Tomorrow, we take a look an administrative appointment that has had very negative consequences for OBU and has put the president in quite a bind as he struggles to win back lost confidence while stubbornly refusing to even acknowledge any of the problems this problematic appointment has created.

What Makes a Good Administrator? (Part 1)

2012-02-28T07:00:00.000-06:00

Let me shoot straight. I am, clearly, no expert on higher education and student affairs. But I have learned vicariously through the first semester and a half of a HESA program thanks to my wonderful fiance.

So, consider this the first of a little series of posts discussing why things have gone so poorly at OBU for the new president, and why, I suspect, the BGCO plays a role in this drama.

First let me tell you a story. (And I promise it has a point!)

Dr. Robert Sloan was the president of Baylor University about 10 years ago. One of the things he did in his time there was implement the “2012 plan.” (Sound familiar?) This plan was one for great growth for Baylor, etc. But one of the things included in the plan was a hefty tuition increase (something around 27.5% the first year).

Obviously, students and faculty went nuts.

Long story short, the faculty gave Sloan a vote of no confidence (basically a death-note for any president) and he left shortly after.

Here’s the kicker. 10 years later, no part of the 2012 plan has been changed. And Baylor is doing very well. Turns out, Sloan had some pretty great ideas and Baylor is benefitting from them.

So what’s the moral of this story?

The job of an administrator is not to make good decisions. The job of the administrator is to bring together the different parts and voices of his/her institution and to help them to work towards the goal of university prosperity.

As one great OBU administrator explained to me, the administrator’s job is to be a translator. Faculty, staff, donors, students, alumni, and trustees all speak different languages. The administrator’s goal is to speak to each of them and get them all on the same page so that the university can move forward.

The problem is that current OBU administration speaks only one language: BGCO. As long as the BGCO controls the trustees, they will be able to put in administrators whose loyalties do not lie with the University, but with the BGCO.

A college/university is already a complex place. It is not a business. You cannot just fire people who you are unhappy with. (Though it seems current OBU administration has tried.) Your product is students, something you cannot commodify. The faculty is its own brand of monster. Donors and alumni will add yet another set of competing goals for an institution with limited resources.

As long as the loyalty of OBU administrators lies with the BGCO they cannot speak all the languages necessary to do great things for OBU. Even if the administration is making great decisions-- it doesn’t matter.

Honestly, I don’t know enough to know whether The 2020 Plan is a good thing. But I can tell you this: few on that campus trust the administration right now, so it doesn’t matter if their plans are good or bad.

Look for my next post on where the administration is going wrong with current students and recent alumni.

Some Historical Background

2012-02-27T07:00:00.000-06:00

This blog advocates for a split between the BGCO and OBU.

Allow me to present a little history lesson (and a bit of personal story) to explain why.

When I came to OBU I considered myself non-denominational. Now, I happily identify as a Baptist. I know what you’re thinking, “Veronica. Wouldn’t your experience with the ultra-conservative SBC be something that would turn you away from Baptist life?”

The answer is yes.

BUT! My last semester at OBU, two things happened. I decided to go to a Disciples of Christ seminary and I took an internship at a Baptist church in Dallas. This, of course, brought the denominational question back into my life, though I had spent the last four years thinking, “Well if this is Baptist, then certainly not that.” Yet here I was, looking towards a different kind of Baptist church that stood for all the things I thought were important in faith.

So I asked the most important question yet, “What does it mean to be a Baptist?”

To be a Baptist, historically, means to affirm four freedoms.

Bible Freedom-- the freedom of each person to interpret the Bible
Soul Freedom-- the freedom of each person to determine the content of their faith
Church Freedom-- freedom of local churches to govern themselves
Religious Freedom-- belief in the separation of church and state

Thus to be a Baptist is to affirm the infinite worth of the individual. We affirm that every person is capable and responsible to make decisions and that collective bodies are to be independent. We believe that no one holds the entire picture of exactly who God is and each person has something to contribute.

Now, this sounds like the perfect tradition for a university. And, indeed, our Baptist forerunners in Oklahoma did not want an indoctrinating Bible college, but a freedom encouraging, mind growing, liberal arts university. It is perfectly within the Baptist tradition to encourage our young to think on their own, and, as responsible Christians, to give them the tools to blossom and come into their own potential.

But in the 1980’s everything changed. I could go into all the philosophical reasons why I think this change occurred, but for our purposes that is neither here nor there. It is only important that it did indeed happen.

In the 1980’s there was a leadership change and suddenly everyone in charge of the SBC was a fundamentalist. That is when the SBC started doing things like boycotting disney and kicking out all the professors from their seminaries who thought women were ok to teach.

Here is the key. As a Baptist, I feel, of course, that my more moderate ways adhere closer to our historical roots. But, I also know that it is not my job to decide if the fundamentalists are right or wrong. If that’s what they want, let them do it. I believe they are free and capable to make that decision.

Here is the rub. Part of the fundamentalist agenda is to deny the freedom of the individual and crusade for their own understanding of the Bible. From here has flown the many problems of my precious university. This is why professors are being fired for disagreeing with a literalistic interpretation of the Bible. This is why OBU is no longer hiring the promising academics the faculty prefer, but those who support the new fundamentalist agenda.

The problem is not that some people are fundamentalists. The problem is that there seems to be no room for cooperation and dissent within this newly fundamentalist organization.

OBU is always going to be conservative. (It’s in the middle of Oklahoma, for goodness' sake.) This is not an argument to stop being Baptist or evangelical. That voice is an important voice in academia and ought not be stifled.

But in order to really be a liberal arts university, there must be freedom of thought, freedom of speech, academic freedom, and, above all, the freedom of the individual must be affirmed. These are Baptist values, but they are not fundamentalist values. OBU and the BGCO are heading in different directions-- and it is time they were parted. Neither party has much to gain from being tied to the other.

For more information on the history of the recent changes within the SBC, check out the links on the right side of the page, especially the video made by our friends at the Texas Baptist committed.

My OBU Story: Veronica Pistone

2012-02-26T08:37:00.000-06:00

Dear Friends, please allow me to introduce myself.

My name is Veronica Pistone. I am a May 2011 OBU graduate and current seminarian at Brite Divinity School. After taking time to consider Jacob's invitation to become a contributing editor I have decided to add my voice to Save OBU-- and I’d like to use my first post to tell you why.

OBU represents, for me, maybe the best four years of my life. At OBU I learned to think, I met my best friends, I fell in love with my future husband. It was a place where I blossomed academically and socially-- and regardless of devastating changes which began in my final years there, I still think of it fondly.

I hope that many of you think the same way.

I came to OBU a 17-year-old who knew everything. (Didn’t we all?) I came because I wanted to study religion and the program was incredibly viable academically. I grew up evangelical, I wanted to get far away from my home-- but not too far-- OBU seemed like an ideal choice. Add a little scholarship money and I packed my bags and headed to Shawnee.

Some things I did not know about OBU as a high schooler turned out to be my favorite things.

1. Small school size meant an incredible faculty who were seriously interested in students. OBU’s best asset is that their world class faculty genuinely means it when they say, “Come by my office.” Where else are there scholars as accomplished who are actually interested in not only my grade in their class, but also what I am learning and how my life philosophy is developing? As a student, I felt sincerely respected and encouraged by all of my professors.

2. Liberal arts curriculum opened my eyes to the possibilities of the world. OBU trained me to believe that this style of education was going to make me fully human, and I still believe it. Some of my favorite memories include my time in Civ-- still the class which stands as the reason I consider myself an educated individual.

3. My final, and maybe most important point-- my bachelor education has well-beyond prepared me for success anywhere in my field. After studying religion at OBU, I was able to skip almost all of the introductory classes at my seminary. Fellow students ask all the time, “Again, where did you go to undergrad?” I was a biblical languages major and left being able to translate on par with (if not better than) many of the doctoral students in my classes.

I don’t say this to say I’m awesome at what I do. I say this because OBU’s program was top notch. I speak of my department because that’s what I know. But I know many others’ stories are the same as mine.

OBU is a treasure. No one would expect an institution quite as beautiful in the middle of nowhere, bible belt. But there is and it’s near and dear to my heart.

Now, there comes a time when places of your past cease to be the same and it’s time to mourn and move on. Possibly that’s what is happening at OBU. But, to me, this feels less like a death and more like a murder. Desiring to be a good alumna, it is my duty to at least mace the killer on the way down if I can do nothing else.

This is important to me because future generations of evangelicals are being robbed of the opportunity to blossom into people whose voice is respected in both the Christian and the academic world. And that is something worth fighting for.

I love OBU. I hope this reminds you of some of the reasons you do too. We cannot let our beloved ship go down without at least bailing water like crazy. In future posts, I will explain further why I think my beloved institution is in danger. But for now, this is who I am and I stand in solidarity with anyone looking to save OBU. I hope you will stand with me.

2010 Walk-- courtesy OBU facebook

Save OBU Updates and Changes

2012-02-25T15:24:00.000-06:00

Happy Saturday, everyone. Our movement continues to gain strength every day. When the blog first started, I posted a lot of weekly updates and recaps. But then we got so busy collecting new information and addressing problems at OBU that I didn't take time to give general updates and recaps. We continue to receive new information all the time -- some of it good, but a lot of it very bad. We will soon have details to report on the dumbing down and watering down of certain curriculum areas. But for now, let's focus on some very exciting changes and new directions.

From the very beginning, I have been clear about seeking to recruit leaders for our effort. At first, I was concerned with getting some help for the blog. That is now happening, as I'll explain in a moment. Next, I'll be working on assembling an advisory board for Save OBU. These two developments will help bolster our credibility and ensure that we are not perceived to be just one blogger, but rather an organized movement.

New Contributing Editor -- Veronica Pistone ('11)
Today, I am pleased to announce that Veronica Pistone is joining me as a Contributing Editor for the Save OBU blog. In addition to posting regularly, she will provide significant editorial direction for the blog and our Facebook page. I will continue to post here, as well as manage our Twitter presence and advertising.

Veronica brings a great deal to our effort, including:

Female perspective
Recent student perspective
Young alumni/ae perspective
Dozens of personal relationships with relevant people
Hundreds of personal relationships with students and young alumni
Former "Bursting the Bubble" columnist for The Bison
Significant inside knowledge of the religion/philosophy department, both in terms of faculty and administration
Baptist by choice, not by birth
And, perhaps she is the BGCO's worst nightmare of all: an award-winning female religion major whose OBU degree prepared her to study for the ministry at a very fine (non-SBC) seminary

Look for Veronica's inaugural blog post tomorrow, and keep an eye on her contributions as we move forward. She has a wealth of information to share, as well as an unyielding passion for our mission of separating OBU from the Baptist General Convention of Oklahoma. I enthusiastically welcome her to the Save OBU blog.

Guest Blog Posts
We are arranging for several friends of the movement to write guest blog posts in the coming weeks. Two are OBU alumni, and one is involved with a simliar effort at another SBC college. More details to tome!

Site Stats
I hesitate to brag too much here, lest our opponents realize just how fast and wide our message is spreading. But know this: we are reaching literally dozens of new people every single day, and our traffic is growing at a very rapid rate.

As we move forward together, I want to thank each of you for your love of OBU, your kind words, and your support. I have enjoyed leading this movement, and I will of course continue to be a leader. But this was never my effort. It has always been and will always be about giving voice to the hundreds if not thousands of OBU constituents who share the concerns we talk about here. We are making significant strides toward doing just that, and I look forward to the months to come.

-Jacob

Faculty Friday: OBU an Indoctrination Station?

2012-02-24T13:30:00.000-06:00

One of the most surprising, frequent, and outrageous claims our critics make is that OBU's professors are too liberal and that they are seducing students away from their faith commitments with the allure of worldly knowledge.

When this preposterous idea stopped being funny, I realized that it's actually pretty sad, paranoid, and frankly a big part of what enabled and sustains the new status quo at OBU. Forget the fact that OBU professors would be seen as conservatives (or even extreme conservatives) on any state or most nonsectarian private university campus. Forget the fact that almost every OBU graduate credits one or more of their professors with strengthening their religious faith. Forget the fact that OBU professors go out of their way to try not to offend, shock, startle, or oppose the many avowedly fundamentalist 18 year olds who appear in their classrooms each August, but rather nurture them in the pursuit of knowledge and truth.

The bizarre thing here is that someone, somewhere, is giving people the idea that OBU has liberal professors. And that professors somehow separate students from their religious beliefs. And the people pushing these falsehoods have been so successful at promoting these lies and irrational fears that there is enough cover for administrators to now actually hire and fire based on ideology/doctrine rather than achievement. In any normal world, administrators who acted so brazenly, irresponsibly, and unethically would be laughed out of town. Instead, they are rewarded with pats on the back from their Baptist Building buddies.

I decided to do some digging. Who is planting the fear in people's minds that professors are leading young people away from the Right? Turns out it's a pretty common delusion. To cite just one example, here is a column from the Rev. Dr. Albert Mohler. Al Mohler is the man Southern Baptist Theological Seminary's newly fundamentalist Board of Trustees elected president in 1993 at the ripe old age of 33. Fundamentalists gained control of the Board in 1990, gave students permission to tape professors' lectures, and eventually became so hostile to longtime Baptist educational administrator Rev. Dr. Roy Honeycutt that he finally resigned.

Playing to fundamentalist fears, Mohler sounds the alarm on professors' sinister agenda:

They see their role as political and ideological, and they define their teaching role in these terms. Their agenda is nothing less than to separate students from their Christian beliefs and their intellectual and moral commitments.

Mohler goes on to explain that "a good many of these professors deny this agenda, but from time to time the mask is removed." He cites as evidence one professor who wrote an opinion column suggesting that students should spend as many years in school as possible in order to gain exposure "to the world outside their own, and to moral ideas not exclusively derived from their parents' religion." Another faculty member suggested elsewhere (in the context of comparing demographic trends in "red" vs. "blue" states) that even if conservatives have more children earlier in life, many of those children will pursue higher education in "blue" areas.

Watch how Mohler takes one flippant comment from one professor and ascribes it to pretty much the entire academic community:

“The children of red states will seek a higher education,” [the professor] explains, “and that education will very often happen in blue states or blue islands in red states. For the foreseeable future, loyal dittoheads will continue to drop off their children at the dorms. After a teary-eyed hug, Mom and Dad will drive their SUV off toward the nearest gas station, leaving their beloved progeny behind.”

Then what? He proudly claims: “And then they are all mine.”

And then they are all mine. That’s right, a significant number of professors are happy to have parents spend 18 years raising children, only to drop them off on the campus and head back home. These professors are confident that the four or so years of the college experience will be ample time to separate students from the beliefs, convictions, moral commitments, and faith of their parents.

Mohler isn't talking primarily here about Christian universities, but I've heard people express the same or even more paranoid concerns about sending young people to OBU. The truth is, now that Mohler and people of his ilk control what remains of "Christian" higher education, we have some even greater concerns (that are based on actual evidence) to worry about. I couldn't help but think of OBU when I read Mohler's conclusion:

But [students] should not be subjected to the ideological indoctrination and intellectual condescension that is found in far too many classrooms and on far too many campuses. If nothing else, these remarkable statements of professorial intention should awaken both students and parents to what passes for education within much of higher education. The open hostility and contempt toward Christianity and Christian convictions is truly horrifying.

Yet here we are, faced with a university run by people who seem intent on indoctrinating to the greatest degree possible, hold increasingly blatant contempt for (or at least badly misunderstand) academic freedom (and, ironically, other Baptist freedoms as well), and frankly seem to want to step in where parents and churches have failed and make students more fundamentalist, not less.

While OBU faculty continue to do the very fine job they've done for all these years, they are under increasing scrutiny and pressure from the BGCO-controlled administration. While I'm sure it's tempting for Mohler and others to peddle their baseless fear-mongering, the truth is that the tables have finally turned. If fundamentalist college administrators think what happens in an alarming number of college classrooms has been debased, the need to look in the mirror. There's indoctrination, condescension, and contempt all right. But it's coming from the young fundamentalists, not the aging moderates. And administrators cannot escape the fact that this time, they're the ones who caused it.

Wiki Wars

2012-02-23T16:34:00.001-06:00

Last September, I noticed that the OBU Wikipedia page made no reference to the numerous controversies on campus and neglected to mention any of the many tensions its relationship to the BGCO has created over the years. I made some edits that were fairly opinionated. As is the practice on Wikipedia, another user changed the phrasing of some of the content I added to make it more objective.

A few months later, however, someone deleted my "Controversies" section altogether. In spite of the fact that my assertions were well-documented, this person deleted the content purely on the grounds that s/he did not agree. A longtime Wikipedia editor who has no connection to OBU but who looks after some of the entries that are relevant to the Shawnee community reverted the entry back.

Then, sometime after the OBU blog first appeared, an OBU administrator logged on and deleted the controversies section as well as a very accurate section that "gave an inaccurate presentation of OBU ownership." I haven't become enough of a Wikipedia expert to find out how to revert this. Luckily, another Wikipedia editor restored some of the original text.

But I was pleased that the Wikipedia community reverted part of the original "Controversies" section. Today I added some more text to that section. Out of pure weariness, I decided not to talk about the most egregious things OBU administrators have done, such as dismiss two professors who they viewed as too moderate without honoring their rights under the Faculty Handbook. I also didn't get into the problem of the university hiring professors over the objections of faculty search committee recommendations. The main issue here is that, while faculty have told me about these problems, I don't have any hard evidence or documentation.

That's why today I'm asking people to keep an important issue in mind. We need documentation whenever possible. I have not reported anything on this blog that isn't true. But I would love to share more if I had hard evidence. It turns out that the Save OBU blog has really only begun to scratch the surface of the administration's unprecedented lurch toward fundamentalism. What we really need are emails, documents, or any other sources that present undeniable evidence that the administration is pursuing the BGCO's fundamentalist agenda.

The administration is not eager to leave a paper trail. But evidence must exist, and we need it. A lot of the damage is done behind closed doors. Fortunately for us (but tragically), many faculty, students, and alumni do not trust the administration to do the right thing for OBU. And thankfully, a lot of people have been willing to provide information so that we can get the word out to people who love OBU and hate to see it go down this road.

I marshaled all the restraint I could in presenting the Wikipedia material objectively. But if we could actually document everything the administration has done and put it in the public record, it would be an insurmountable embarrassment for them. I don't know what will happen in the Wiki wars. Maybe OBU administrators will log on and delete the "Controversies" section to keep the public in the dark about the truth: that they have obviously and deliberately parted company with OBU's great liberal arts tradition and taken us down an unprecedented, dangerous, and very sad new path. Or maybe people will edit the page to list problems and bad changes (that they can document) that I don't even know about yet.

Still, we're in luck. The truth is on our side.

OBU's Wikipedia page is here.

Deal of the Century: A Free College Campus

2012-02-22T10:56:00.000-06:00

Attention BGCO leaders and your little cadre of OBU fundamentalists, have I got a deal for you!

A religion wire service is reporting that the answer to all our prayers may be at hand. You can get what you've always wanted, an exclusively conservative and avowedly fundamentalist college. And we can get what we want: an OBU that prizes academic freedom and operates free from fundamentalist meddling as it continues to provide a uniquely balanced, moderate Christian liberal arts education as it has for decades. From the article:

NORTHFIELD, Mass. -- Jerry Pattengale's cell phone won't stop ringing as he leads a secretive group of four wide-eyed college administrators around a majestic campus built in 1879 by legendary evangelist D.L. Moody.

Calls and visitors are pouring in for one reason: the billionaire Oklahoma family that owns the 217-acre site and its 43 buildings aims to give it away to a Christian institution. Free. No charge. Just take it.

The Gren family (of Hobby Lobby fame) is soliciting new proposals after last year's effort to establish "C.S. Lewis College" failed. All the Greens require are "an orthodox Christian faith and the financial wherewithal to pull it off."

Now, hear me out.

You wouldn't have to pretend to care about academic freedom anymore. You could write your own Faculty Handbook from scratch, and hire and fire at will based on adherence to your preferred doctrines. There woud be no pesky moderates. I'm sure Tree of Life would be happy to run your bookstore. Your indoctrination operation would be so thorough that none of your eager young preacher boys would dare consider furthering their theological education at Baylor, Princeton, Duke, or Harvard as recent OBU grads have done.

You have a tremendous advantage over the other applicants: money! Lots of it! You announced just last week that you were able to increase your 2012 budget by more than $1 million because your revenues were higher than projected. I'm sure we can get the lawyers to work out some kind of deal whereby OBU can elect its own trustees and you can elect all the trustees for the new college. We get the Bison Hill campus and you can keep your $2.5 million annual subsidy for the rest of time. Send that money up to Northfield, MA and get your new ~~SBC~~ Great Commission Baptist college up and running.

Aside from the distinction of being the first GCB college, you would also have the advantage of doing something else you like: going into apostate parts of the country and converting all those heathen damned. Right now the focus is on Colorado with its dirty hippies. But just think how many more lost and liberal people there are in New England. Even Mr. Green acknowledges, "While the Northeast has become very secular, we feel like it needs to reconsider the roots that this country was founded upon and that D.L. Moody taught."

I can't speak for them, but I'd even be willing to be that once you got this thing started, the Greens would be around to make sure the coffers stayed full. It's the best win-win I can think of. We'll stay in Shawnee, doing what we've been doing for generations without the roadblocks you've set in our way in the past 18-24 months. And you can go enact your vision somewhere else. No one will try to stop you, or even complain.

We'll even throw in a couple or three administrators to sweeten the deal.

OBU Students/Parents Weighing Transfer

2012-02-21T08:57:00.000-06:00

If the OBU administration was serious about the widespread concern, sadness, and anger its personnel and policy changes have caused in the past two years, it would, at a minimum, acknowledge mistakes in the forced dismissal debacles and appoint a chief academic officer the university community could actually trust to do the right thing.

Continuing to ignore student, faculty, and alumni concerns will have increasing consequences. Consider this letter we received from an Oklahoma couple who graduated from OBU in the late '80s and whose child is a current underclassman at OBU:

I am concerned about the route the university is taking, to a point where we will make a decision as to whether she will return next fall.

Our child has not been brought up in a conservative household and consequently holds rather liberal social values. My husband and I thought OBU is a good place for her because of the lack of a partying atmosphere. It was also very academic in nature, emphasizing the need to study and LEARN. We both felt we had a good, well-rounded liberal arts education, and assumed she would receive the same.

Her [subject area redacted] professor last semester had a decidedly socially conservative slant (which is fine) and led discussion accordingly (which is not). My daughter felt intimidated if she spoke up with a different opinion. She even felt her grade might be in jeopardy. When I learned about your blog and Facebook page, I asked her about it. She knew about it, but didn’t want to “like” the page for fear she would get in trouble (her words).

I grew up in [name of BGCO church redacted], and my mother still attends there. My mother is very concerned about her church’s direction now. It has caused her and some of her friends, who have been lifelong members, a great deal of disappointment and disillusionment.

How many of these kinds of stories will OBU administrators have to hear before they start paying attention? Or, should I say, how much revenue will they have to lose (knowing that the BGCO's subsidy accounts for an ever-decreasing proportion of OBU's annual operating budget)?

The concerned parent goes on to say that her mother's pastor, who is not a fundamentalist but who knows how to play nice with the Baptist Building boys, is under scrutiny from the BGCO for his church not sending many students to OBU. We know the BGCO has a ton of pastors who advise youth in their congregations against OBU because they think it's too liberal. But could it be the case that the BGCO also has pastors who can't in good conscience recommend OBU because it is becoming too fundamentalist?

Here at Save OBU, we struggled with how to advise prospective students. Many of our supporters categorically refuse to recommend OBU to young people in their spheres of influence. But as a community, we settled on a middle ground, providing relevant facts for prospective students in their families to consider while also highlighting the benefits of an OBU education.

As for prospective transfers, I can say (speaking only for myself) I hope this young woman and her parents can find enough confidence in OBU's direction to justify staying. But I certainly understand their concerns. And I fear that this situation will have to play out in many more students' lives before top leadership realizes they have a problem.

Money Monday: OBU - The Baptist Building's Newest Tenant

2012-02-20T15:50:00.000-06:00

Well here's an interesting little gem several of you sent in.

OBU announced this morning that it will relocate its graduate school in May. The university had leased space in a building downtown, but is now moving to the BGCO headquarters at 3800 N. May Avenue. After a 5+ year run downtown, it looks like OBU and the convention worked out a win-win to move OBU's graduate programs to the mother ship.

Now, ordinarily, this administrative decision is not something we would have an opinion about, since it apparently has nothing to do with any of Save OBU's concerns and it may, in fact, be a great idea. But given the recent unprecedented changes in OBU's academic affairs, this move has struck many people as disconcerting just in the few hours since the news was announced.

I don't really know the details of the BGCO's recent tenants or the amount of office space it occupies. But it seems reasonable to assume that OBU will pay a much lower rent since a) the new location is not in downtown and b) the new landlord pays no property taxes whereas the present landlord presumably does. So OBU's graduate programs can save on overhead and the BGCO gets a large new tenant.

Why, then, does this rub so many of us the wrong way? Probably because we are already highly suspicious of the BGCO's interference in OBU affairs. So much about OBU's governance and administration since even before the current president's election smacks of BGCO meddling. It's difficult to demonstrate clear and direct orders from the convention to University administrators, but we're working on it. And even without evidence of direct interference, we can still see that the BGCO's agenda to transform OBU is being enacted, incrementally but deliberately.

Think of all that has happened:

President Brister's complaint that "Anthony thinks he's my boss"
The presidential search committee's concerns about OBU sending too many of its graduates to moderate seminaries and too few to BGCO pulpits
The president's plan to remake the School of Christian service
The strained relations with Oklahoma City, First and Shawnee, First (two CBFO churches that the BGCO can't stand)
The demotion of a moderate female administrator
The creation of the provost position for a fundamentalist enforcer
The dismissal of two religion professors in spite of tenure considerations and against Faculty Handbook policies
The gutting of the philosophy curriculum in favor of "Christian apologetics"
The early retirements of many moderate professors
The installation of an avowedly fundamentalist bookstore that refuses to sell mainstream books
The new practice of ignoring faculty search committee recommendations in hiring
Refusing to admit mistakes in the forced dismissal debacles
Dismissing student, faculty, and alumni protests and continuing to remake OBU in the BGCO's image

At the moment, we are only able to connect a few of these concerns directly back to the BGCO. We continue to document conversations and events, and are working tirelessly to paint a more vivid picture of BCGO meddling. But make no mistake: BGCO power brokers are overjoyed about every item on the above list and more. In their minds, President Whitlock is God's man for this hour. And Provost Norman is a godsend because they can get their dirty work done without even having to ask! He's enough of a true believe that he does all this stuff without having to be told!

So when OBU moves a new and growing part of its operation into the BGCO's own headquarters, it is clearly symbolic of a new dynamic that they love and we are rightly suspicious about. How wonderful it would be if the landlord-tenant dynamic was the extent of OBU's relationship to the BGCO!

What's in a Name (Change)?

2012-02-19T23:16:00.000-06:00

It's come close to happening a few times over the years, but we may have reached a tipping point. Last year, messengers to the Southern Baptist Convention gave denominational leaders approval to begin considering a name change for the convention. Emotions on both sides run high, but a lot of people are open to the idea. The issue is certain to come up at the SBC's Executive Committee meetings this week:

On Monday (Feb. 20), Southern Baptist Convention President Bryant Wright is expected to give his recommendation on a possible name change to the denomination's top leaders. That recommendation is likely to be debated at the Southern Baptists' annual convention in June in New Orleans.

Like many issues that are peripheral or unrelated to academic freedom at OBU, Save OBU has no compelling reason to take a position on this matter. But it is worth pausing for a moment to consider what an institution's name means and what associations it carries.

Southern Baptist Convention
There are apparently two main arguments for changing the name of the SBC. The first has to do with the role of slavery in the convention's formation in 1845 and the notion that "Southern" somehow brings to mind an association with a racist past. Along these lines, proponents of a name change point to statistics showing that 44% of people have a negative view of Southern Baptists (according to a LifeWay study quoted in the linked article above). The second reason for a change has less to do with public relations and more to do with the reality that Southern Baptists are increasing their presence in areas outside the Old Confederacy. If you are planting churches in the West and Northeast, the reasoning goes, why call them "Southern" Baptist? (Though Baptists' foothold in the South is obviously the only region where they are dominant, as the figure shows.)

Another story, though one less talked about in the media and discourse I've read, is the decline of denominationalism overall and particularly the decline of denominational loyalties among the young. Overwhelmingly, people are not nearly as likely to identify with a denomination than their parents were. Anecdotally, when you see churches being built in the middle class white exurbs, they are almost never have denominational identifiers on their signs and buildings, even if they are affiliated with a denomination. Instead, you see "The Rock Church," "Living Vine Church," "River of Life Community," etc.

If I had to bet, I think I'd bet on a name change. To what, though? From my perspective, I wish they would choose a name that helps distinguish who the convention is now that it has taken over every institution, board, and agency and purged/marginalized all moderates and what few liberals there ever were. Probably the "Conservative Baptist Convention" would be the most accurate. Such a name would help imply their victory in the Fundamentalist Takeover as well as their new place as the religious wing of the Republican Party. If you read what Baptist leaders taught and believed about the separation of church and state 30 or 40 years ago, you would not believe that today's leaders are in the same denomination.

I'm just sad that, whatever the SBC does, the Nashville boys will get to claim the name "Baptist" -- a label they have dragged through the mud of fundamentalism and secular politics for a generation to the point that nearly a majority of Americans have an unfavorable view of a word that used to be synonymous with soul freedom, liberty of the conscience, and separation of church and state.

Oklahoma Baptist University
One of the tricky things about the Save OBU effort is that our mission is a little more difficult because OBU has "Oklahoma" and "Baptist" in its name. For one thing, unlike Furman, Stetson, and Jewell, we can't start with a discussion about academic freedom or whether the school and the convention can even be partners in the same mission. Before we even get to that point, we have to deal with the objection, "It's Oklahoma Baptist University," by which our critics mean to imply that the BGCO should be able to do whatever it wants, no matter how perilously its vision for OBU encroaches on academic freedom.

So, for better or worse, before we can even have a substantive debate about the merits of disaffiliation, we have to have a debate about what it means to be Baptist. When you are eager to argue for disaffiliation, that discussion can feel like a distraction. But the truth is, we welcome that debate. We welcome the opportunity to discuss all the Baptist distinctives we stand for. Because whenever we have that discussion, it becomes easier, not harder, for us to show that it is the SBC and the BGCO that moved away from those distinctives. We have remained true to them all along.

While they are glad to have OBU in their portfolio because it represents and reinforces that they own us, we are proud to be OBU because we have been living by and fighting for the best of the Baptist tradition all along. We are the descendants of a great generation of OBU administrators, teachers, and students who built a proud name in Christian higher education. They are the descendants of a Takeover faction that booed Herschel Hobbs at the SBC, purged and marginalized anyone who dared to disagree with them, sold out for a pittance to the religious right, ran our agencies and institutions into the ground, and created a P.R. emergency for a denomination that nearly half of Americans view unfavorably.

The BGCO may own the buildings and grounds. But it absolutely does not own what it means to be Baptist. It turned away from that legacy years ago. And that is why we will win.

Faculty Friday: Church Affiliation Politics, Part I

2012-02-17T19:38:00.000-06:00

Given how far the SBC has drifted from its moorings since the Fundamentalist Takeover, it should come as no surprise that many of the people who work in Baptist higher education do not worship in Southern Baptist churches. But in OBU's recent slide toward fundamentalism, it appears that administrators are intent on turning the OBU faculty into an insular, exclusive club that keeps moderates out whenever possible and marginalized in any case.

OBU used to hire professors from across the various Protestant denominational families. Though the SBC has always claimed the largest slice of OBU professors' church affiliations, many of us have had OBU professors who were Presbyterians, Episcopalians, Lutherans, and United Methodists. They participated actively in their congregations in Shawnee and elsewhere. They added valuable diversity and expertise, especially in courses like Western Civ where figures like John Calvin, Martin Luther, and John Wesley loomed large. To the extent that mainline Protestants are still allowed to teach in OBU classrooms, they are undoubtedly adding immeasurably to students' learning and providing wonderful examples of how to maintain a fearless, intellectually honest faith that can withstand even the most rigorous intellectual scrutiny.

OBU administrators are intent on bringing those days to an end. In the September 28, 2011 edition of The Bison, one retiring professor lamented that she would never even be hired today. When I first read her statement, I found it absolutely tragic given her decades of distinguished service to OBU. But only after consulting with other current faculty did I realize that denominational politics might be the reason why longtime professors believe they would not be hired under the present administration.

After consulting with current faculty, it's clear that the retiring professor was likely referring to the provost's declaration last year that OBU would no longer hire professors who are members of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), and the Episcopal Church, ostensibly because these denominations recognize a difference of opinion on gays' and lesbians' rights in society and their place in the life and ministry of the church. Evidently, this new standard was used to eliminate a member of a local church of one of these traditions from consideration for an adjunct position at OBU.

One faculty member explains,

Later, under questioning, the provost backtracked, saying he didn't know how that rumor (of a new standard) got started, and that OBU would continue to consider good candidates who happened to be of one of those denominations, although he might well ask them why they "stayed" in the denomination. We will reserve judgement until we see how he recommends concerning current candidates for faculty positions.

Incidentally, an administrator was quoted in the 9/28/11 Bison article trying to spin the new exclusionary preferences, but basically affirming that prospective hires will be evaluated through these new doctrinal and ideological frameworks.

To my knowledge, religion faculty has always been exclusively Southern Baptist. This made sense back when Southern Baptist academics were uniformly supportive of academic freedom. Hiring Southern Baptist pastor-theologians as religion professors meant bringing aboard thoughtful moderates who had received first-rate theological educations. If we are still hiring only Southern Baptists even after the Fundamentalist Takeover, we are tragically limiting our options to a narrow subset of men who received subpar theological educations at the SBC seminaries.

In the weeks and months to come, we will explore OBU's long and complicated relationship with some of the Baptist churches in Shawnee, two of which are significantly affiliated with the Cooperating Baptist Fellowship of Oklahoma.

For now, I simply must respond to this outrageous idea that non-Southern Baptists should have to justify to Stan Norman why they stayed in their denomination. He truly seems to enjoy being the enforcer, arbiter, and judge. Frankly, given how far they have fallen from what they used to stand for, I think it's the Southern Baptists who should have to justify why they've "stayed." Until OBU has a chief academic officer who understands this, OBU's descent into fundamentalism will continue apace.

Friday, February 17: Be a Bison Day

2012-02-16T18:00:00.000-06:00

Like many of us did a few years (or a few decades...) ago, hundreds of prospective OBU students will convene on Bison Hill tomorrow for the university's most significant event for high school students considering OBU. Some will be seniors who are 100% sure they are going to OBU. Others are testing the waters. All will get to attend a class, eat in the cafeteria, tour the dorms, and get a feel for OBU's compulsory chapel.

But, whether you first set foot on Bison Hill in 2009 or 1959, you went to a very different Oklahoma Baptist University than the students who will enroll in 2012. Since 2009, we know that

Two professors were unethically forced out of their positions and denied rights guaranteed under the Faculty Handbook. OBU's reputation has suffered, and the university is extremely lucky it avoided a lawsuit.
A normal bookstore has been replaced by a fundamentalist one, constituting a de facto censorship of mainstream books. (There are also plans afoot to use a textbook fee to force students to patronize this new bookstore rather than price-shopping and buying books online or elsewhere. All students and parents need to raise holy hell if this insane policy is enacted.)
Administrators have intervened in curriculum matters.
The philosophy department has been gutted to accomodate Christian apologetics
Faculty morale has sunk to an all-time low.
When interviews are conducted to fill faculty vacancies, the administration has ignored search committee recommendations and hired people who the committees simply did not want, further exacerbating tensions.
Protests from students, faculty, alumni, and retired faculty have not resulted in a single apology or policy reversal, signaling a dangerous deafness to stakeholders whose disillusionment is at an all-time high. Even more alarming, these significant protests have been apparently viewed more as P.R. crises than as serious concerns from people whose affection for OBU will long outlast the tenure of any one president or administrator.

Here at Save OBU, we have not yet called for our supporters to advise prospective students against attending or withdraw their financial support (though untold hundreds if not thousands of alumni are already doing these things). Instead, we settled on being a source of information for prospective students and their families. They don't need us to urge a boycott. But they do need to know the facts about what has been happening -- facts that OBU is keen to hide. Our open letter to prospective students reviews the pros and cons of attending OBU at a time like this.

It is in all our interests that the brightest and most capable students continue to enroll at OBU. But the OBU that earned a solid reputation for excellence in Christian higher education over the decades is increasingly not the OBU of today. Administrators and backers laud OBU's great heritage even as they have sometimes worked to undermine it.

Sadly, OBU's owner/operator, the Baptist General Convention of Oklahoma, has drifted far from the ideals of OBU's liberal arts tradition. The BGCO is frankly no longer an honest partner in the task of higher education -- a task that requires academic freedom, open inquiry, and Baptist hallmarks like the priesthood of the believer, soul competency, and the liberty of the conscience. Unfortunately, the Christian intellectual's conscience is no longer free in Southern Baptist life today.

Rather than set OBU free to continue the mission the BGCO abandoned as it became anti-intellectual and fundamentalist over the past 30 years, the BGCO is clinging ever more tightly to OBU. Even as its annual subsidy continues to cover less and less of OBU's annual budget, the BGCO's influence in OBU personnel and policy decisions is stronger than ever, and that influence is taking a toll.

Quietly, there is a war brewing between the OBU that has always existed and the OBU the BGCO desires to create. It's a battle that some OBU administrators would rather you not see, because they themselves are waging it. It happens in small increments and over a long period of time. It's often covert, under the radar, and off the front pages. But prospective students should be warned: At the current rate, the quality of the faculty and the rigor of your academic program is certain to decline (along with OBU's reputation) during your college years unless we can reverse many of the negative changes described above.

If you decide to attend OBU, we urge you to join with the faculty, students, and alumni who are pressing hard to oppose administrative actions that are taking OBU in the wrong direction. We are here for you, and we welcome your support. Should you have any questions, you can contact us at SaveOBU@gmail.com

OBU Welcomes Guest Lecturers It Would Never Hire

2012-02-15T23:15:00.000-06:00

When I was a student at OBU from 1999 to 2002, the guest speakers who occasionally visited our campus greatly enhanced my intellectual horizons. Phyllis Trible of Wake Forest Divinity School headlined a particularly memorable academic conference in 2000 or 2001. The annual Schusterman Lecture in Jewish History and Culture was inaugurated my freshman year. I got to participate in discussions with noted scholars such as Jacob Neusner, William Scott Green, and Judith Baskin. On a personal note, I had breakfast one morning at the (then new) Cracker Barrel with Professor Green. With great interest and patience, he helped introduce me to the world of non-fundamentalist academia -- a world that has given me many years of challenges, joy, and a true sense of vocation. I have always been grateful that OBU afforded students such opportunities.

Especially contrasted with how little we got out of the unending stream of fundamentalist ministers that OBU trotted into Raley Chapel week after week, it was always a joy to experience guest speakers who nurtured and honored the life of the mind as opposed to fearing and denigrating it.

Given the recent obvious and extreme crackdown on academic freedom at OBU, I was pleasantly surprised to learn that some of these events still take place. Considering the administration's unprecedented lurch toward fundamentalism, it takes more courage than ever for faculty to sponsor and endorse these valuable events.

Just last week, OBU welcomed two notable guests -- historian Philip Jenkins and journalist David Shipler. Credit where credit is due: I salute OBU administrators for not cracking down on these vital learning opportunities that so richly elevate and bolster the university's intellectual community.

I do not know definitively, but I assume these two particular guests are godless liberals who will soon burn in the fiery pits of Hell for all eternity. I find it interesting that while OBU values their distinctive scholarly and professional accomplishments enough to welcome them onto our campus, neither of these speakers -- in spite of their impeccable credentials -- could ever get hired to teach at today's OBU.

It makes me wonder what point there is in bringing them to campus at all. It seems to send a very mixed message to students and the broader Oklahoma Baptist constituency. Are students supposed to admire them? Witness to them? Pity them for being hell-bound? I also wonder if most Oklahoma Baptists know or care that OBU continues to privilege worldly knowledge and experience by exposing students to experts and scholars "outside the fold." It seems strange that the university says to students, "We want you to listen to these people -- they are some of the best experts in their fields, but we would never allow them to be your professors. We care less about expertise than we do about total agreement with a narrow set of doctrinal beliefs."

For now, I suppose it is enough to be grateful that these exciting and valuable learning opportunities still exist, even as learning is slowly but deliberately stifled in OBU classrooms through losing mostly moderate professors and gaining mostly fundamentalist ones, not to mention administrative meddling in curriculum decisions. Still, the broader disconnect that these kinds of events represent is worth considering.

Trustees Force Administrative Change (But Not at OBU , Sorry to Say)

2012-02-14T16:56:00.000-06:00

Hope that headline didn't get your hopes up too much.

But it is worth noting that trustees of another Baptist institution, in this case Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, assertively intervened and forced the president's resignation last week. The Rev. Dr. Phil Roberts resigned last Friday ahead of a specially-called trustee meeting to deal with questions about his leadership. Every indication is that this guy was simply not a competent administrator. He went through 11 financial officers in his 11 years at the helm of MBTS. He was evidently a notorious micromanager, used funds for ostensibly personal uses, and got the seminary involved in an expensive building program.

The last two presidential tenures have been disastrous, and MBTS is surely an attractive target for the SBC's badly-needed seminary contraction effort. I don't know enough to know whether MBTS differs in any substantial way from the other seminaries. Therefore it's safe to assume that it is a thoroughly fundamentalist institution. Unlike Southern and Southwestern, which used to actually be decent seminaries before the fundamentalists came in and absolutely destroyed them, I don't know if MBTS ever had pre-Takeover any "glory days," since it was only founded in 1957. It might have been a fledgling institution all along. They force faculty to sign the 2000 Baptist Faith and Message, and every indication is that MBTS, like the other SBC seminaries, turned their backs on academic freedom, open inquiry, soul competency, and the liberty of the conscience long ago. Creedalism and fundamentalism seem to be the order of the day.

MBTS is not really any concern of ours. But it is heartening to know that even a SBC-elected fundamentalist board of trustees was willing to force some changes when they were truly necessary. Too often, cults of personality form around these leaders and the trustees are nothing more than a rubber stamp. Fortunately, that is NOT true in our case. Not all of our trustees are fundamentalists, and many of them surely have a loyalty to OBU's heritage and future that exceeds their loyalty to any one president (or convention leader who might influence their standing in BGCO circles).

Now we desperately need to engage OBU's trustees and demonstrate the urgent need for them to direct administrators to restore academic freedom, professors' right to teach, and students' right to learn. Like other Southern Baptist institution boards, OBU's trustees frequently cast unanimous votes to do whatever the administration wants. But eventually, we need some trustees to stand up and advocate for the heritage, reputation, and tradition that recent administrative actions have badly tarnished. We need them to know it's okay to oppose Baptist Building elites. Like the MBTS trustess who refused to allow the status quo to drag their institution down, we need OBU trustees to act by whatever means necessary to protect academic freedom at OBU and reverse the fundamentalist tide that is so dramatically deteriorating the quality of OBU's academic program.

Money Monday: The Truth Behind the Faculty/Staff Phase of the Capital Campaign

2012-02-13T21:32:00.000-06:00

A few weeks ago, we took a broad look at the Vision for a New Century campaign, OBU's ambitious $67 million capital campaign currently underway. Thanks to a very solid effort from the fundraisers and, of course, the generous donors, the campaign seems to be off to a good start.

Last Friday, in fact, OBU hosted a reception for the faculty in celebration of its "goal-topping success" in the faculty/staff phase of the campaign. The employee phase of any campaign is critical. In fact, it's a key metric that prospective donors monitor to assess institutional unity, buy-in, and cohesion.

If you look at the wide gulf the OBU administration has placed between itself and the faculty through its unwise and unethical actions, "cohesion" is probably the last word that comes to mind. Yet the capital campaign will continue apace, claiming (correctly) that the faculty/staff phase exceeded its goal.

There's only one problem.

The truth is that very little of that amount actually came from faculty. This is why, to my knowledge, none of the campaign's literature distinguishes between contributions from professors and contributions from administrators. The fact is that nearly 75% of the faculty/staff goal was pledged by administrators before the faculty was even approached. Now, I'm don't which administrators are independently wealthy or exceedingly generous. But someone dug deep because they knew that many professors could not support this campaign in good conscience, given their many grievances.

Celebrating the faculty/staff phase's "goal-topping success" badly obscures the fact that one or a handful of administrators contributed an outsized proportion relative to what faculty/staff pledged.

It's not technically dishonest, but it does cover over the fact that the administration had to dig very deep to avoid a disappointing end to a phase of the campaign where OBU's greatest asset -- its faculty -- largely declined to participate due to its lack of confidence in the administration and the increasingly fundamentalist direction of the university. Administrators and fundraisers will say to prospective donors in subsequent phases, "We exceeded our goal in the faculty/staff phase of the campaign." And that is true. It's also true that there is a serious difference between campaigns that receive modest but broad support from everyone and campaigns that depend almost exclusively on one or a handful of huge donors (think Ron Paul vs. Newt Gingrich). The differences in enthusiasm, commitment, etc. are unmistakable.

The question prospective donors should be asking administrators is, "Why do OBU professors, by and large, have so little confidence in the current administration?" Of course, no administrator wants to answer that question, and certainly not in the context of soliciting major donors. But it is a question that we here at Save OBU will be happy to answer until OBU is forever free of fundamentalist encroachment.

Sunday School - Reassessing Institutional Parallels

2012-02-12T12:56:00.000-06:00

As many of our readers know, we began with the intention of blogging on Sundays about other Baptist schools that parted company with their increasingly fundamentalist and anti-intellectual state conventions. So far, we've profiled William Jewell College (MO), Stetson University (FL), and Furman University (SC).

Sunday School Blogging - Not as Helpful or Relevant
Last week, we looked at the planned takeover of a struggling, unaccredited college in Montana. It's too soon to say whether this is a good idea or not. And while Save OBU is committed to not taking positions on every minute matter in OBU governance and administration, we are at least open to the possibility that this could be a smart, effective partnership. Our concern, as ever, is that we need to take care to maintain the quality and integrity of OBU's liberal arts education on Bison Hill. In recent years, that heritage has been deliberately eroded and administrators seem deaf and frankly indifferent to the concerns of students, faculty, retired faculty, alumni, and friends. So it occurs to us that new graduate programs, athletic teams, and far-flung satellite campuses may be a distraction from the very urgent business of protecting academic freedom, a rigorous curriculum, and maintaining the best possible faculty. To the hardworking professors and tuition-paying students who see OBU's great liberal arts tradition being threatened by fundamentalist encroachment, focusing so much attention on peripheral matters seems not only offensive, but unwise. It's like building a new room onto the side of your house while the kitchen is on fire.

Anyway, there are many other schools whose stories we need to hear. But at the moment, it's not really worth 1/7 of this blog's space. The amount of research required is substantial, and I frankly don't think it's the best use of my time. Furthermore, since we usually talk about faculty on Friday, students on Saturday, and money on Monday, it would be better if we could have a day in the midst of those regular features to talk about any pressing issues that arise.

Baptist Hospital: The Key to OBU's Path to Freedom from the BGCO?
Furthermore, OBU's legal entanglement with the BGCO is different from other Baptist schools'. It will not be nearly as easy for us to escape the BGCO's stranglehold. We can't just vote the fundamentalists out. They own us. They literally own the buildings and grounds. They can legally do whatever they want. Whoever controls the BGCO controls OBU -- it's as simple as that. When Mark Brister complained, "Anthony think he's my boss," he hit on the biggest problem OBU faces. While it is not technically true, it is practically true. When we had BGCO leaders like Joe Ingram who believed in academic freedom, the legal arrangement was not problematic. Revs. Ingram and Tanner and Presidents Hall and Agee wisely kept OBU off the battlefield as fundamentalists waged war on the SBC in the 1980s. Now, the fundamentalists are having their moment, and it's reflected in every hiring decision, every forced dismissal, and every curricular intervention.

So the uniqueness of our relationship to the state convention makes comparison to other schools mostly irrelevant. What we need, truly, are experts on institutional disaffiliation. The best parallel I can think of is the old Baptist hospital system. My plea is this: if you know anyone who was involved in BGCO politics when it separated from the Baptist hospital system (I think this was in the early or mid 1980s but I truly don't know), please have them contact me. Our path to freedom will be more like the hospital's and less like Wake Forest's, Stetson's, or Mercer's. We need to know every little detail of that separation.

Moving Forward
Moving forward, we need to distinguish between short-term and long-term aims. Our immediate concern is to repair the utterly broken relationship between the OBU faculty (particularly senior faculty) and the administration. We absolutely must see some evidence -- and soon -- that student protests, Faculty Council resolutions, alumni petitions, and widespread dissatisfaction have any effect whatsoever on administrators, or if they are truly just doing the fundamentalists' bidding. Fortunately, our persistence and collective pressure finally seem to be paying off. Now that students, faculty, retired faculty, and alumni are all well aware of each other's positions, experiences, and expectations, it seems a near certainty that OBU will have to, at a minimum, apologize to the faculty and students for its shameful treatment of two excellent professors and find the provost a position elsewhere in fundamentalist higher education for which he is better suited. Then, the fireworks over who gets to choose his successor can begin in earnest.

This issue will have to be settled soon, because with the president scheduled to be out of the country for six weeks this spring when interviews and decisions regarding new faculty take place, faculty and students are horrified at the prospect that Dr. Norman will get to oversee that process, ignore search committee recommendations again, and bring in a handful of eager young fundamentalist professors to further erode OBU's academic rigor and quality, even over the strident objections of students and faculty. Such a scenario is unthinkable.

Longer term, we will seek changes to the trustee selection process, on OBU's end and on the BGCO's end as well. In order to accomplish this, we may have to start a widespread conversation in Oklahoma Baptist life about what OBU and the convention actually offer each other (hint: not much). BGCO power brokers are happiest when OK Baptists don't think much about the fact that OBU has a strong moderating effect on students' views and that we send a relatively large number of ministry graduates to moderate seminaries and a relatively small number of them to OK Baptist pulpits. But we'll probably have to have an extended public debate about these and related issues in the months and years to come. So be it, it's long overdue.

Student Saturday: Journalism at OBU

2012-02-11T16:52:00.000-06:00

Our many new readers won't know that a few weeks ago, we talked about the pathetic state of journalism in the post-Takeover SBC. Since the fundamentalists turned Baptist Press into a propaganda machine in the 1990s, the state Baptist papers have also lost editorial independence and become little more than the P.R. arm of their fundamentalist state conventions.

I planned to extend the analysis to OBU, where there have been problems with a free press in the past. Given how rapidly the BGCO's fundamentalist agenda for OBU has accelerated in other areas recently, I expected to write a post eviscerating OBU administrators for censoring The Bison and stifling student journalism on campus.

Today, I'm happy to report that I was wrong. Student journalism is alive and well at OBU. There have been a couple of dramatic side stories on this subject, but in general, OBU journalism is performing a vital community service.

Some Unhappy History
Without going to some rather unfortunate details, it is widely known that Mark Brister did not endear himself to student journalism advisors during his tenure. I suppose it's water under the bridge at this point, though the consequences of Brister's struggles in this area were quite negative.

I seem to recall that an outstanding and very well-loved English professor/journalism advisor somehow ran afoul of President Brister, though I do not know the details of that story.

Sometime in the early/mid-2000s, Brister wanted to set up a review committee, ostensibly to check the student newspaper for errors in grammar, mechanics, and fact. Unsurprisingly, members of the publications board, a dean, a divisional head, and his own P.R. man convinced him this was a terrible idea.

But when a professional association called College Media Advisors got wind of the situation, it pressed the university for more information. Dr. Brister chose to ignore that body, and OBU was subsequently censured. Later, Interim President John Parrish came to understand the significance of this censure, particularly for journalism students' and graduates' professional prospects. Thus, he successfully sought to have OBU's censure lifted, on the grounds that the administration had changed.

Recent Developments
As I said before, I fully expected there to be some kind of active censorship regime in place. But I have been assured that no such thing is currently happening. So, credit where credit is due: Kudos to OBU administrators for allowing and supporting editorial autonomy on a campus whose state convention and national denomination quashed true journalism many years ago in favor of propaganda.

Rest assured, even many longtime faculty agree that The Bison has printed quite diverse articles and opinion over the past few years. And, with all due respect to OBU journalism students through the ages, one faculty member even reports that The Bison "is about as healthy as it's ever been, and better edited than in years past." The paper courageously covered last fall's alumni petition, which undoubtedly brought a great deal of attention to an issue the administration prefers people did not know about. I was also quite impressed by a story in September about two longtime professors who announced their retirements. The professors, whose anger about all the recent disastrous changes is typical, were given quite a lot of latitude to express their frustration in the article. If you follow the student newspaper's Facebook page, you can view many recent issues online. So don't take my word for it, see for yourself.

This is not to say The Bison couldn't do a better job covering vital campus news. To my knowledge, there was nothing about last summer's forced faculty dismissal or about the Faculty Council's protests to the administration (or the faculty's unprecedented low morale under the current administration). I can only speculate about the reasons for these omissions. Anyone who has been on such an authoritarian and conformist campus for very long knows that self-constraint becomes almost second nature. Perhaps the student editor(s) and faculty advisor assumed they should leave these issues alone.

The Customers Always Write?
One thing a casual observer will immediately notice about The Bison is how few students and faculty write letters to the editor or guest op-eds about controversial topics. I assume this is due to the afore-mentioned restraint that typically overwhelms people on campuses like OBU. But there have been (at least) two fairly distressing happenings related to student opinions. Neither episode reflects negatively on the very fine work OBU student journalists and their advisor are doing.

In one case, a student submitted a satirical advertisement making fun of the fact that OBU made a self-conscious decision to fire a very fine, moderate Christian philosopher and hire a down-the-line conservative with a specialty in "Christian apologetics." (The ad can be seen at the bottom of this post.) Evidently, after the papers were printed and distributed around campus, they were quickly confiscated. After a social media firestorm ensued, the papers were returned to their distribution points. To be honest, I do not know who ordered the papers to be pulled and my sources give conflicting accounts. I also don't know if the author of the satirical ad was harassed for expressing his/her opinion.

In another episode, a student penned a thoughtful, passionate op-ed about the recent disastrous changes recently enacted at OBU and asked the student paper to investigate them more fully. The papers were printed and distributed before Fall Free Days. The following week, an administrator called the writer into his office and caused quite a scene. Maybe we'll tell more of that story another time. But any time an experienced university administrator, after having 3 or 4 days to "sleep on it," loses his composure and abandons his professionalism in trying to intimidate and silence a college student, it begs serious questions about his judgment.

Conclusion
OBU student journalists are doing an admirable job. There is no formal censorship regime. A commendable diversity of articles and opinion fill the pages of The Bison.

Many OBU insiders (students, faculty, etc.) agree with this assessment. But I must call it a tentative conclusion because enough people have expressed doubt that I cannot honestly say that my account represents a unanimous consensus. I realize that some of you will be disappointed that I have praised the administration for simply not standing in the way of students' rights (under the Green Book and the First Amendment). If more facts emerge, I will be happy to adjust this conclusion as necessary.

Disclaimer
In preparing this commentary on student journalism, I consulted faculty as well as Bison staffers (current and former). I did not reach out to any Bison editors or advisors, current or former. I truly do not want to cause trouble for any of you. I know some of our critics will be surprised to hear this, but I actually do take care to choose my words carefully. I have tried to be especially careful here. If I have missed the mark in any way, I invite any of you (friend or foe) to be in touch via email. SaveOBU@gmail.com is group's email account. My personal email account is visible at the bottom of this page, I believe.

Faculty Friday: The Long War

2012-02-10T20:55:00.000-06:00

On Fridays, we usually look at the recent changes at OBU through the lens of faculty. Perhaps since a number of faculty support us (quietly, from the sidelines) or perhaps since students and alumni have such great affection for OBU professors, these posts are among our most-read. I have linked to some previous Faculty Friday posts below.

Today, I just want to make a small point, but it has big implications that outlast our present concerns. Right now, the pace of negative changes seems to have slowed at OBU. A lot of the bad changes still have lingering adverse effects, of course, but there seem not to be a lot more of these changes on the immediate horizon. It was easy for the fundamentalist agenda to advance when protests were small and isolated. The bookstore stunt was pretty easy for them - it didn't generate a lot of criticism at all. Certain curriculum area decisions were small and localized enough that they only affected a small number of constituents, and so the protests were also localized. The actions that generated the most sustained criticism were, of course, the two badly-botched forced dismissals. But even then, the pushback was disparate enough and short-lived enough that administrators could go on with other parts of their agenda.

If they tried anything right now, however, the protest would be loud, widespread, and very public. So they have to lay low. And presumably wait for faculty, students, parents, and alumni to let their guard down. And when we do, and life goes on, and months or years pass, they can continue acting on other parts of their agenda. But if you really think that firing two professors and installing a crappy bookstore is the extent of the BGCO's design for OBU, you are badly mistaken.

Be warned: The moment they feel like they can get away with it, the agenda will advance. Not from President Whitlock, I predict. The near-unanimous consensus is that he is more interested in leading a great university than abetting the BGCO's wish to turn OBU into a fundamentalist preacher boy camp. Unfortunately, he probably had to wink-and-nod when BGCO leaders expressed their expectations in that area as a condition of supporting his election to the OBU presidency. Let's hope he uses his considerable administrative skill, business acumen, and personal warmth to advance OBU's mission.

Given how badly Dr. Norman's enforcer role has gone over and how painfully clear it is that he is just not a good match for OBU, it's obvious that the fundamentalists overreached. When a university's chief academic officer is afraid to say much in a meeting with faculty for fear that he'll be quoted out of context later (as recently happened), clearly the relationship is so broken that he needs to think about moving on. It's easier for one person to leave than 25 professors, though I wouldn't put it past some people to push for the latter. Hopefully he'll realize this of his own volition to avoid undermining Dr. Whitlock's presidency and to preserve his chances at becoming a senior administrator at a Bible college or "seminary" that wants a hatchet man. If he ever has to undergo any performance evaluation that involves faculty input (from which he has been thus far exempt), the results will be disastrous and might endanger his prospects at any reputable institution in the future.

But even if Dr. Whitlock acknowledges the mistakes that have been made (a little acknowledgement would go a long way) and even if Dr. Norman moves on (as seems increasingly likely because after all that's happened, his presence guarantees a poisonous relationship between the administration and the faculty), we won't be out of the woods -- not by a long shot. The search for a new chief academic officer will be an epic battle between a newly-emboldened senior faculty and a handful of BGCO elites who still unfortunately wield considerable influence with the president and the trustees.

For all these years, regular attrition was the BGCO's only hope for a fundamentalist faculty at OBU, and that strategy did not work very well for them. Now that the BGCO knows it can get administrators who are willing to use hiring, tenure, and dismissals as tools (one might say weapons) to create a fundamentalist faculty, they will not easily accept a competent, ethical chief academic officer. On the other hand, now that the OBU faculty have seen firsthand what one fundamentalist administrator can accomplish, they are not going to accept another hatchet man (or woman).

Thankfully, we have some great trustees who, though they are relatively deferential to the convention leadership that paved the way for their election, can be truly trusted to put OBU's true interests ahead of Baptist Building politics. This might result in some unpleasant Executive Committee meetings for a while while things get sorted out.

Yet even as Save OBU supporters will cheer if some of these bad changes are reversed, our victory will be small and short-lived. The trustee selection process is about to become exceedingly doctrinal, political, and against the spirit of all that is good and right (not unlike the OBU faculty hiring process of late...) After this epic battle and this tumultuous year, do you really think Anthony Jordan is going to allow moderates (or members of CBFO churches, or people wary of hardball tactics) to be elected to the Board of Trustees ever again?!? Of course not. We're likely to see Fundamentalist Takeover-style boards of trustees like the ones that destroyed the SBC seminaries in the early 1990s. That's why we must also strategize in the months to come about how best to protect OBU's interests in the trustee selection process for the next several years as the thornier legal and financial issues of OBU-BGCO separation get worked out. We need every thoughtful, ethical person of conscience we can get.

As we look past some important coming victories (acknowledgement of mistakes in handling the two dismissals, Dr. Norman's likely departure, etc.), we must also realize that the cards are stacked against us in the long run. The reason? Because the BGCO owns and controls OBU. I hate to bring this up over and over again, but this bad relationship is truly the cause of our problems. And ending that relationship is the only necessary and sufficient condition to ensure a bright future for OBU.

Those of us who champion academic freedom, open inquiry, and a rigorous liberal arts curriculum have suffered some painful defeats (though none of us has suffered as badly as our two dear professors/colleagues who were forced out of their positions in truly shameful ways). But the fundamentalists overreached, and we're due a victory or two.

As long as the BGCO controls OBU, we may actually win a battle, but make no mistake: We will lose the war.

Past Faculty Friday Posts:
Why Turnover Matters
Firing Professors a Favored Tactic among SBC Fundamentalists
Open Hostility on Bison Hill
Games Administrators Play

How to Fight the Man

2012-02-10T00:51:00.000-06:00

The other day, one of our astute young alumnae sent along a recent David Brooks column that has interesting implications for the growing Save OBU movement.

Brooks noted that the Jefferson Bethke, the creator of a viral YouTube video, backed down immediately when challenged about the accuracy and implications of what he suggested. To this dynamic, Brooks commented:

Bethke responded in a way that was humble, earnest and gracious, and that generally spoke well of his character. He also basically folded.

[...]

Bethke’s passionate polemic and subsequent retreat are symptomatic of a lot of the protest cries we hear these days. This seems to be a moment when many people — in religion, economics and politics — are disgusted by current institutions, but then they are vague about what sorts of institutions should replace them.

This seems to be a moment of fervent protest movements that are ultimately vague and ineffectual.

Fortunately, this is not a problem in our case. Rather than grasping in the dark for something novel, we already have a set of time-honored guiding principles on which we are building our alternative to the unacceptable status quo. Thus we have already avoided what Brooks thinks causes nascent social movements to sputter. As for why so many would-be reformers fail, Brooks points to their lack of grounding in a historical-intellectual tradition:

My own theory revolves around a single bad idea. For generations people have been told: Think for yourself; come up with your own independent worldview. Unless your name is Nietzsche, that’s probably a bad idea. Very few people have the genius or time to come up with a comprehensive and rigorous worldview.

If you go out there armed only with your own observations and sentiments, you will surely find yourself on very weak ground. You’ll lack the arguments, convictions and the coherent view of reality that you’ll need when challenged by a self-confident opposition. This is more or less what happened to Jefferson Bethke.

The paradox of reform movements is that, if you want to defy authority, you probably shouldn’t think entirely for yourself. You should attach yourself to a counter-tradition and school of thought that has been developed over the centuries and that seems true.

Obviously, it's not enough to merely bemoan a disappointing present reality. We can't just wring our hands over our litany of grievances. Our disapproval alone is no match for the powerful men who wrought these disastrous changes. We will continue to, in Brooks's words, "attach [ourselves] to a counter-tradition and school of thought." For us, that means a deep, abiding, and searching Christian faith first and foremost. It also means reverence for and fidelity to ideals that have been cast aside such as academic freedom, open inquiry, and a fearless quest for a faith that can withstand even the most rigorous intellectual scrutiny. We, not they, are the true bearers of a unique Baptist heritage that prizes soul freedom, liberty of the conscience, priesthood of the believer, separation of church and state, and all the old Southern Baptist distinctives that the fundamentalists cast aside. Frankly, they are the ones who came to power on very weak ground and who failed to attach themselves to a coherent school of thought. We carry the legacies of Herschel Hobbs, Grady Cothen, and Joe Ingram with us as we protest. They have cast these visionaries aside or, worse, misappropriated their great names.

Brooks concludes:

Most professors would like their students to be more rebellious and argumentative. But rebellion without a rigorous alternative vision is just a feeble spasm.

If I could offer advice to a young rebel, it would be to rummage the past for a body of thought that helps you understand and address the shortcomings you see. Give yourself a label. If your college hasn’t provided you with a good knowledge of countercultural viewpoints — ranging from Thoreau to Maritain — then your college has failed you and you should try to remedy that ignorance.

Effective rebellion isn’t just expressing your personal feelings. It means replacing one set of authorities and institutions with a better set of authorities and institutions. Authorities and institutions don’t repress the passions of the heart, the way some young people now suppose. They give them focus and a means to turn passion into change.

The institution we seek to replace is, ultimately, the Baptist General Convention of Oklahoma. For decades, it gave OBU a firm grounding, a significant financial leg up, and countless opportunities for reciprocal service, mission, and ministry. It didn't merely tolerate leaders like Porter Routh, Herschel Hobbs, and Joe Ingram -- it gave us these heroes. It didn't just allow academic freedom at OBU -- it expected and demanded it.

Sadly, those days are over. A new generation of leaders controls the BGCO. This generation may talk about mutuality, but ultimately it seeks control. It has moved so dramatically away from the values that created and sustained OBU's vibrant academic community that it is really no longer an honest partner in our mission. We don't need the BGCO's rapidly dwindling financial commitment just so we can be its theological playground where they tinker with personnel and policies until OBU becomes an unrecognizable shell of its former self.

We are not a groundless, directionless movement. We don't have to grasp in the dark for something to replace BGCO control. We simply stand by the cherished values and ideals they abandoned. While it may surprise those who believe all progress is future-oriented, our grounding is actually in the past. Our critics naively ask, "Why should OBU change to accomodate your preferences?" Our answer must be unwavering: OUR preferences have not changed. Our alternative institutions and authorities are rooted in the past. THEY are the ones who changed. And in changing with the ever more fundamentalist direction of the SBC, they have stolen something very dear to us. We will not let it go without a fight.

In fact, we will win. Not today or tomorrow. But eventually. People who have something stolen from them are formidable. They don't just give up one day and stop seeking that which was taken from them by force and by guile. We will not withdraw our protest -- we will not rest -- until our cherished values are restored. We are not asking for change at all. But we are insisting that the fact that they changed does not mean they can rob us of what we cherish. We're just demanding the return of something that was stolen from us -- something near and dear to our hearts.

Brooks advises the young (and the young at heart) on "how to fight the man." His advice is wise, and we are already heeding it. Like so many reform movements grounded in faith and with the truth on their side, all we really need to do is remain faithful and vigilant. As Archbishop Tutu used to say to those who oppressed him unrighteously, "You may have all this power, but you have already lost. Come join the winning side!" We extend that same invitation to OBU administrators, trustees, and anyone caught between the BGCO power brokers and our vast community. Come, join the winning side!

Happy Founders' Day!

2012-02-08T14:01:00.000-06:00

Happy Founders' Day, everyone.

Today we celebrate the visionary Oklahoma Baptists who bequeathed our beloved OBU, as well as the men and women who have sustained it over all these years. This year, we find ourselves in the midst of an ongoing -- but unusually active -- debate about who the true bearers and keepers of that age-old vision really are. Maybe a brief reflection on OBU's Founders' Day Chapel and what it represents can shed some light.

In OBU's chapel service this morning, students forced to gather for worship heard from a distinguished alumnus and legendary Southern Baptist pastor, the Rev. John Bisagno. He was most famously the pastor of FBC Houston, which grew to 25,000 under his leadership. Less known is the fact that he was the first in a string of pastors from First Southern Del City who become prominent post-Takeover SBC figures. Rev. Bisagno was by all accounts a creative and adaptive pastor, and has remained active in retirement. OBU is right to give such a distinguished alumnus a platform from which to speak, and to hire him for its summer Pastors School.

What's less-known and mostly forgotten about Rev. Bisagno, though, is that he ended up playing a pivotal role in cementing the Fundamentalist Takeover of the SBC. Takeover architects Paul Pressler and Paige Patterson knew it would only take 10 years of electing fundamentalist presidents to fully remake the SBC in their image. By 1990, the transformation was all but complete. As messengers prepared to assemble in New Orleans, moderates and traditional Baptists needed a miracle. Unfortunately, it was not to come. Rev. John Bisagno, who by most accounts had remained relatively neutral in the controversy that was tearing the SBC apart, announced his support for fundamentalist pastor Rev. Morris Chapman for the SBC presidency. Chapman was elected with 57% of the vote, and the fundamentalists' decade old dream was cemented. The victorious fundamentalists arrived by limousine to celebrate:

Following their massive and rather final defeat of the moderates, Paige Patterson and others went to the Café Du Monde in the French Quarter to celebrate their victory. Patterson and Pressler were given framed certificates honoring their achievements. The Convention parliamentarian, supposedly neutral and from another denomination, was present for the celebration, and even called it to order! When his presence at this meeting was challenged as inappropriate, he first explained that he was “just passing by, picking up an order of doughnuts.” When the challengers pointed out that the parliamentarian had actually been seen arriving at Café Du Monde in a limousine with the Convention president, he amended his story to say that he was on “24 hour call” and therefore obliged to accompany the President wherever he went. When one messenger tried to tell the story of what he had seen at Café Du Monde to the Convention the following day, he was deterred. Twice the President refused to recognize him and twice his microphone was turned off.^{^[122]} Such abuse of the chair was common all during the Takeover.

I wonder if John Bisagno was present for the celebration. Within a few years, the SBC seminaries, boards, and agencies became fundamentalist and millions of faithful Baptists were left in a denomination they no longer recognized. Of course, no one can argue that Rev. Bisagno caused the Takeover. But when he had an opportunity to slow its progress, he cast his lot with the fundamentalists.

Somehow I doubt he told that story in his talk (well he's male so I guess we can call it a sermon) today. But to the victors go the spoils, I guess, and OBU has done a marvelous job of using the Raley Chapel pulpit to give a platform to fundamentalist leaders and sympathizers. We are not suggesting that fundamentalists not be invited to speak, but it would be nice to get some acknowledgement that their views are hardly representative of the student body and represent only a tiny fraction of the faculty.

The fundamentalists' march continued from the national level to the state conventions. In Oklahoma, they marginalized moderates in every possible way. OBU, however, remained an elusive takeover target. Even after electing Rev. Dr. Mark Brister to the OBU presidency in 1998, fundamentalists knew they had their work cut out for them. Brister, who had been an up-and-coming leader in the SBC's conservative resurgence, turned out to be a bit harder to control than the BGCO elites had anticipated.

But make no mistake, the BGCO has been cheering loudly for the very same changes we have been protesting. In President Whitlock, the BGCO thinks they finally have their man. And, obviously, preliminary evidence suggests they may be right. Dr. Whitlock knows what the BGCO expected of him, but he knew he had to do it in a "winsome" way. So when the winsome Whitlock brought on Stan Norman to do most of his dirty work for him, it seemed like the perfect plan.

Unfortunately for them, the vast OBU community was not willing to lay down and die so easily. Hopefully, the trustees will not lay down easily, either. Post-Takeover, institution boards have mostly rubber-stamped what the fundamentalist administrators wanted all along. Yet we have seen that some Baptist schools refused to let the fundamentalists destroy their institutions. And even now, trustees at one Baptist seminary are flexing their muscle (over managerial incompetence rather than ideology, apparently).

I'm sure that many fundamentalists see a direct line from OBU's founders to the Fundamentalist Takeover to the present-day erosion of academic freedom and hostility toward faculty. We see a different story. OBU founders built an institution that two generations of capable and visionary leaders molded into a proud liberal arts university. Academic freedom and open inquiry were cherished values. Baptist distinctives like soul competency, liberty of the conscience, and priesthood of the believer ruled the day.

We did not stray from our moorings. Rather, the ground was pulled out from under us by fundamentalists who feared anything they could not control. They launched slanderous personal attacks against Baptist academics. They ridiculed and questioned the deep and abiding faith of people they did not even know (as some commenters on our Facebook page have recently done to us). And they used the politics of fear and division to make themselves powerful and wealthy. That Takeover movement, from which OBU was largely insulated for 20 years because of capable and devoted professors, administrators, and trustees, has now arrived on Bison Hill.

If we do nothing, if we remain silent, the radical transformation of OBU will continue apace. We may lose this battle even in spite of our protests. But we need to raise our voices, claim our rightful places as stakeholders in OBU's future, and stand firmly for the values that are presently threatened. Who knows which professor will be forced out next? Who knows what book will be tossed out of the curriculum? Who knows what student or staff member will face retaliation for protesting?

Our little movement has grown quickly, and already we are having an impact. The principals now now that the opposition is larger, better informed, and more vocal than they had anticipated. Ideally, we will gain enough strength that administrators will realize they are better off siding with us than siding with the fundamentalists. But in the meantime, it seems likely to me that we have them in a difficult position, probably facing pressure from both sides. We can't offer them the same huge salaries, generous pensions, fancy retirement dinners, and plush post-retirement positions that the BGCO elites can offer them in return for their loyalty. But fortunately we can offer them something more meaningful: being on the right side of history, standing for truth and justice over politics and power, championing the values that made OBU great, and holding fast to the vision and mission of OBU's founding.

God bless OBU!

P.S. If there is a recording of the OBU Chorale's performance today, I'd love to hear it!

Money Monday: BGCO's OBU Subsidy Drops as Its Influence Skyrockets

2012-02-06T20:56:00.000-06:00

On Mondays, we usually look at the financial implications of the OBU-BGCO relationship. In light of last week's trustee meeting, a bizarre disparity deserves our attention: Even as the BGCO's fundamentalist influence on Bison Hill is felt more and more acutely, the convention's annual subsidy continues to decline. When you measure the subsidy as a percentage of OBU's operating budget, the BGCO's declining investment is pretty stunning.

In the 2009-10 academic year, the BGCO contributed $2.8 million toward an annual budget of $41 million, a subsidy of 6.8%. Last week, OBU trustees approved a $53.1 million budget for 2012-13. Assuming the BGCO continues to fund OBU at the current level of $2.5 million per year (a 11% decline in real dollars from 2009-10 to 2011-12), the convention's subsidy will only cover 4.7% of OBU's budget next year.

That's a 30% decline in just 3 or 4 years.

One might think that if the BGCO is investing so much less in OBU that the university would gain autonomy over its own affairs. But in the twisted world of Baptist power politics, logic is nowhere to be found. Instead of reasonable steps that might accompany such a precipitous decline in convention support such as allowing OBU to elect some of its own trustees, the BGCO has only tightened its grip on OBU.

Indeed, BGCO elites realized a part of their long-awaited dream in 2010 and 2011, when OBU administrators forced out two impeccably qualified professors who would not kowtow to today's increasingly fundamentalist Baptist party line. With new administrators who seem happy to wage war on academic freedom of their own initiative (forcing out professors, using tenure as a weapon, ignoring faculty search committee recommendations, disregarding Faculty Handbook policies, gutting core curriculum areas, censoring course materials, renaming academic divisions after people who be appalled at these disastrous changes, etc.), BGCO power brokers don't even have to nudge them or remind them who's boss like they did under previous administrations.

Once again: The current arrangement is a great deal for the BGCO power brokers, for whom a fundamentalist OBU has long been the elusive jewel in their crown. It's a bad deal for Oklahoma Baptists, who fund Falls Creek, collegiate ministries, and evangelism at lower levels to make room for annual institutional welfare checks to OBU (which has an endowment of $80 million and raises 95% of its revenue on its own).

And, as we have repeatedly documented here, it is a horrible deal for OBU. Once again: If OBU had autonomy and independence from the BGCO, literally none of the problems we've chronicled would exist. None of them. Maybe we couldn't afford to bail out failing fundamentalist Bible academies, but we would get by just fine.

Sunday School: Yellowstone Baptist College

2012-02-05T14:10:00.000-06:00

On Sundays, we often take a look at Baptist schools that have flourished after splitting from their fundamentalist-controlled state conventions. Already, we've profiled William Jewell College (MO), Stetson University (FL), and Furman University (SC). In the weeks to come, we'll take a look at Mercer and Wake Forest.

Today we take a break from the usual Sunday routine and investigate an altogether different phenomenon. At last week's Board of Trustees meeting, OBU announced that it is probably going to take over a struggling college in Montana. Please excuse me if this is common knowledge or has been in the works for a long time. Friday was the first I had heard of it. The relevant text from OBU's press release states:

Trustees also unanimously approved “exploration of the viability of Yellowstone Baptist College becoming an extension of OBU.”

In his state-of-the-university report, OBU President David W. Whitlock told board members the university has been asked to consider administrative operation of the private college in Billings, Mont. Affiliated with the Montana Baptist Convention, Yellowstone Baptist College opened in 1974. The college has had a cooperating relationship with OBU since 1993, when the Yellowstone began offering OBU’s college-level Ministry Training Institute courses on its campus.

“We have continued to partner with them and provide support in offering a regionally accredited degree program,” Whitlock said. “As they look at the need to expand their course offerings, particularly in areas like business and education, and as they look at requirements for accreditation as a self-standing institution they realize they have a long road ahead unless they merge and become a part of the Oklahoma Baptist University system.”

With the trustees’ vote to explore the relationship, OBU will hire the consulting firm of Allen, Stewart and Agee to investigate the possible merger of educational entities.

“The consulting group has agreed to assign former OBU President Bob Agee to visit YBC with OBU administrators in February and consider whether or not to move forward with this,” Whitlock said. “There are a lot of wonderful opportunities for us to expand the mission of Christian higher education in the northwest United States.”

Whitlock told the trustees that if the schools enter into the agreement, the Montana college will be governed by the OBU board.

“There are some marvelous advantages” for OBU faculty and students to utilize Yellowstone Baptist College facilities for summer programs, Whitlock said.

So, it looks like A) YBC is eventually going to close unless we rescue them and B) the decision has pretty much already been made. At this point, I wouldn't look to the consulting company to dissuade OBU from this venture. Its principal, former OBU President Bob Agee, was instrumental in paving the way for David Whitlock to become president of OBU (a political thriller for another day). His fine work in and writing about Christian higher education notwithstanding, many OBU faculty suspect Dr. Agee's involvement in convincing the BGCO that Dr. Whitlock could be counted on to advance a fundamentalist agenda at OBU is evidence that Agee is more comfortable with fundamentalism than we previously supposed.

As with the football program and expanding graduate programs, Save OBU is inclined to not take positions issues that are peripheral to our primary concern of protecting academic freedom and OBU's great liberal arts tradition. We are less interested in debating the pros and cons of rescuing an unaccredited fundamentalist Bible academy than in making sure OBU never becomes one.

YBC looks to be a an unaccredited, fundamentalist Bible academy. Not only is YBC unable to attain accreditation through mainstream accrediting bodies, it is not even a full member of the Association for Biblical Higher Education, a sham organization that "accredits" fundamentalist dumps and degree mills. If you think OBU is authoritarian, check out YBC's Code of Student Conduct. Also, like so many other Baptist colleges, YBC has turned its back on Baptist distinctives like liberty of the conscience and soul competency, having embraced creedalism through enforcing a "community covenant" that all faculty and students must sign.

My belief is that there are good reasons why these kinds of places go bankrupt. All YBC has going for it is its location in a spectacularly beautiful part of the country. (The campus itself is not so spectacular, as you can see.) It would be a neat place for summer programs, though. Couple that with OBU's sense that we can capitalize on the relative sparseness of Christian colleges in the Mountain West, and apparently we now have an attractive takeover target.

Again, our only concern is with OBU's fledgling commitment to academic freedom, open inquiry, and true liberal arts education. Given the horrible problems we've had maintaining those commitments lately, a lot of these peripheral issues like football programs, graduate degrees, and extension campuses seem like distractions from a mission OBU seems to be turning its back on. Given that YBC is already pretty far along the path administrators' seem so determined to take OBU down, we can't help but fear this takeover might be used as a chance to impose YBC norms on OBU rather than the other way around. And that would be truly disastrous.

Right now, confidence in OBU administration is at a low ebb, to put it mildly. The thought that we are going to consider "administrative operation" of a financially troubled, unaccredited college seems troubling. It makes me wonder if, even after everything students, alumni, and faculty have done to register their lack of confidence in current leaders' stewardship of our beloved OBU, they still aren't listening and don't realize just how widespread the discontent has become. Sure, the students and faculty in Billings, MT might be comfortable with the "new" OBU. But there are a lot of people on Bison Hill and around the world who want to see some acknowledgement that things have gotten off track and who need some reasons to believe things will be better from now on. Thus far, things seem to be getting worse, not better. And the YBC takeover cannot and will not change that widely-held perception.

All it tells me is that if we're so flush with cash that we can afford to bail out a failing college a thousand miles away, we truly don't need the BGCO's money. And we obviously don't need the horrendous strings attached to their annual institutional welfare check. Without those strings, literally none of the problems we've raised on this blog would exist. None.

Student Saturday: Prospective Student Edition

2012-02-04T19:16:00.000-06:00

Today was OBU's Winter Preview Day. In the spirit of that event, Save OBU is pleased to offer some information and perspectives for prospective students and their families to consider.

We have had a lot of internal discussions about how best to approach this topic. One the one hand, many of us are so angry about the recent disastrous changes at OBU that we are hesitant to recommend it to anyone. On the other hand, some of us fear that if we actively drive the best and brightest students away from OBU, the dumbing down will move from the bookstore into the classrooms, and OBU's transformation into a fundamentalist Bible academy will only accelerate.

After consulting with many Save OBU supporters and OBU stakeholders, I am releasing our open letter to prospective students and their families. While a full-scale boycott might be more dramatic and effective, there is enough disagreement in our ranks that we are instead going to provide some information and trust prospective students and their parents consider to it in their prayers, discussions, and deliberations about the once-in-a-lifetime, $100,000 investment they are considering.

Dear Prospective OBU Students and Families,

As a diverse coalition of OBU students, staff, and alumni, we are grateful for your interest in Oklahoma Baptist University. We're biased, of course, but over the years we have found OBU to be a great place to work, study, and live. Our wellspring of affection for OBU is so deep, in fact, that we are grieving over recent changes -- some subtle, some dramatic -- that have deteriorated the quality and integrity of OBU's academic program.

This website lays our objections to some of the policy and personnel changes that are leading OBU away from its proud liberal arts tradition. We invite you to explore the site and email us with any questions you may have. Specifically, we are concerned about the following:

Dismissing well-loved and highly effective faculty members without just cause, but rather for ideological reasons
Remaking the faculty by replacing aging moderates almost exclusively with younger conservatives and fundamentalists who adhere to the ever-more extreme Southern Baptist party line
Disregarding faculty norms, ignoring faculty search committee recommendations, and creating an unsustainably contentious and hostile dynamic between faculty and administrators
Gutting curriculum areas like philosophy, a core discipline in the liberal arts which is being replaced by "Christian apologetics," a Sunday school-like field that spoon-feeds answers rather than engages tough questions
Censoring academic materials by contracting with a fundamentalist bookstore, thus denying the OBU community access to mainstream boks in the natural and social sciences, history, literature, the arts, philosophy, and non-fundamentalist theology

The effects of these changes are inescapable, and they have had a deleterious effect on academic quality and campus morale. A group of students produced a newsletter to protest these actions, but were essentially ignored. One student who expressed his opinion in the student newspaper was actually brought into the president's office and verbally assaulted! Last fall, hundreds of alumni signed a petition protesting the negative changes. The Faculty Council has passed resolutions expressing opposition to administrators' violations of Faculty Handbook policies, but so far have been ignored.

With the weight of all these problems heavy on our hearts, we can offer only a qualified endorsement of OBU to prospective students at this time. We wish this were not the case, as there are so many redeeming qualities about OBU, not least of which is a still-outstanding faculty compared to many peer institutions. Even as OBU boasts expanding graduate programs, strong enrollment and even a new football team, it is struggling to maintain a robust commitment to what has long been its bread-and-butter: a rigorous, balanced, and moderate Christian liberal arts education. OBU's reputation is suffering, too. In only two years, it has dropped from #109 to #299 in the Forbes college rankings. Other Baptist colleges that have been taken over by fundamentalists have experienced dramatic faculty morale problems and have even struggled to maintain accreditation. OBU is still a long way from mass firings or being stripped of accreditation, but the sad truth is that all these recent changes have hurt our reputation. Until we see a change in administrative leadership (at this point, we're seeking a change in direction more than a change in personnel), we believe OBU is on the wrong path.

Given the high cost of the investment you are considering, we feel an obligation to alert you to these issues. The most academically talented students seeking a distinctively Christian higher education should also consider Wheaton, Calvin, William Jewell, and Whitworth. Colleges operated by the Baptist General Convention of Texas are easy to get into (except Baylor) and have been generally free of the fundamentalist influences that have recently deteriorated OBU's academic program. Oklahoma City University is, of course, more urban. It is also not nearly as conservative.

Please continue to keep OBU under consideration. In spite of the problems noted above, Bison Hill remains a truly special place. Yes, it's true that it has a policy of forced chapel attendance and forbids men and women from socializing in each other's dormitories. It is a very authoritarian institution and prizes conformity. But you will find professors who genuinely care about your intellectual and spiritual growth. You will find a community that truly nurtures your development as a person. And, though Shawnee is a small city compared to some of your hometowns, you will be surprised how much fun you will have there with your new friends. Should you decide to pursue medical, law, divinity, or other graduate degrees, you will find that OBU prepares you well. Professors have a demonstrated commitment to individual students' success. Even though two great professors were forced out and treated shamefully, literally dozens of amazing professors remain at OBU.

We suspect that OBU's admissions office will not bring any of these issues to your attention. However, we do urge you to let the university know that you, too, are concerned about the issues raised here and that they weigh heavily on your decision. In addition to alumni, Save OBU counts many, many current students and OBU parents among its strongest supporters. Should you decide on OBU (and we hope you will), we are especially eager to welcome you into our movement.

Our Very Best Wishes,
Save OBU

A Reply to Our (Sometimes Insulting) Critics

2012-02-02T13:16:00.000-06:00

Since Save OBU appeared on the scene late last year, some people have taken to defending OBU's descent into fundamentalism. For many, it is a matter of conviction -- the more fundamentalist the better, they say. For others, it is simply their job (an unenviable one if you ask me) to assure people that the recent devastating changes are nothing to worry about -- Keep sending us your children and your money. Never mind that we use hiring and tenure decisions to keep moderates out and fundamentalists in, never mind that we turned our bookstore into a Christian kitch emporium, never mind that we routinely ignore faculty norms and policies, never mind that the provost has seemingly unchecked authority to intervene in curriculum matters and does not have to undergo any job evaluations, etc.

The criticism typically takes one or more of these forms:

"The new profs are great."
I'm sure they are, literally each and every one of them. That doesn't mean there aren't serious problems with the hiring process. The fact remains that recent hires emerged from an unfair and unethical selection process. They were, in most cases, not the search committee's first (or even second or third) choice. And the recent changes sent a clear signal to future prospective professors: Unless you're a fundamentalist, don't bother. You're not going to fit in here. There is also a troubling dynamic emerging between the senior faculty (who are appalled at the recent changes) and some junior faculty who have to support the administration because they are not tenured yet (not that it matters anymore, apparently) and who owe their positions at least as much to their ideology as to their qualifications.

The kinds of professors who made OBU great are not only not being hired today, they are not even applying. Sadly, I have heard from several Christian academics who could not recommend OBU to friends and colleagues seeking faculty positions. Many fine candidates were aghast at how awful the ~~fundamentalist litmus test~~ interview with the provost was. Unless we repair the damage to our reputation these awful H.R. problems have caused, our faculty will look less and less like a balanced, moderate liberal arts college and more and more like a marginally-accredited fundamentalist Bible academy. Turnover matters.

Also, just because "the new profs are great," please remember: the old profs were great, too. Time will tell, but I wouldn't just flippantly assume that the new people will be as great as the legendary teachers who influenced generations of OBU students. We find it absolutely tragic -- I cannot think of a better word -- that most of the now-retired faculty and a majority of the senior faculty would never even be considered for positions at OBU under the current regime. That speaks volumes. And the implication that these devoted and outstanding educators are not Christian, or are not Christian enough, or are not the right kind of Christian is beyond insulting.

The university is committed to "the gospel" and "biblical standards."
OBU has always been committed to these things. The problem with raising these issues in response to Save OBU's concerns is twofold. First, it implies that previous generations of administrators, faculty, and students were not committed, or were insufficiently committed, to the gospel and biblical standards. These changes (which Presidents Raley, Scales, Cothen, Tanner, Hall, Agee, and probably even Brister would have abhorred) are truly unprecedented. If administrators are undertaking them because the gospel requires it, then I guess that means all our great past presidents failed to meet biblical standards. OBU must have been a liberal haven for secularists. Do you really want to say that? Of course not, because it's a ridiculous thing to say. OBU faculty nurtured a faith in students that could withstand the most rigorous intellectual scrutiny. We didn't need "apologetics" classes. The whole academic experience was both an act of faith and a vigorous defense of it. The second problem with bringing up "the gospel" and "biblical standards" in the context of defending the recent changes at OBU is that it implies that, somehow, fidelity to Scripture demands that we violate personnel policies and disrupt extremely capable and well-loved professors' careers because we disagree with them. I'm sorry, but I'm offended that people would try to cloak these changes in righteousness. They are about ideology and power -- pure and simple. Some of the bad changes, like the bookstore, might be described as unfortunate mistakes. But not sins or crimes. With respect to the faculty dismissals, though, our position is clear and indisputable: those two men were treated absolutely shamefully. At a minimum, they are owed an apology. To imply that the treatment they received was somehow derived from adherence to biblical standards is frankly appalling.

OBU was neither unrighteous nor devoid of concern for the gospel before the fundamentalists came in and started ruining things.

A Concern about Facts/Opinions/Speculation
We do a lot of speculating about what is behind the recent changes and what further disasters may await us if no one intervenes. Naturally, our commentary is filled with opinions. But with regard to facts, our record is solid. No one has accused of us of saying anything that is not true. I hope our opinions are correct and our speculation is well-informed and prescient. But we are not peddling falsehoods. And we certainly have no ill will. Toward anyone. Again, an example will suffice: I was a little surprised when I began delving into OBU's affairs and realized that President Whitlock is not the villan here. I hadn't paid a lot of attention to OBU in the late 2000s. I thought maybe Dr. Whitlock came in with an extremist agenda. I quickly learned that is not the case. In fact, I am quite sympathetic to him because I feel the BGCO-OBU relationship has put him in an impossible position where he receiving intense pressure from both sides. A lot of Save OBU supporters are very angry at him for the fundamentalist-inspired changes and for letting Dr. Norman be the hatchet man, but I have cautioned many people not to blame the leader when the institutional arrangement is the real culprit. The same goes for Dr. Norman. There's a perfect position for him somewhere in fundamentalist academia. It's just obviously not at OBU.

And, of course, those of us within the Save OBU movement have engaged in thoughtful and deliberative discussions with one another about where the problems lie, what solutions may exist, and how to best support the university we all love so dearly. I'll share a personal example. I came to this movement very distressed about the unprecedented personnel and policy changes at my alma mater. I simply could not believe that OBU would cave on so many important issues without outside influence. In my mind, the only explanation was that the Baptist Building was calling the shots now. But as I have learned more facts and heard from dozens of faculty, students, etc., I have had to temper my view. It turns out that not everyone who laments these horrible changes believes they were Baptist Building directives. In fact, most faculty and concerned students believe the problem begins and ends in the provost's office. So rather than regarding the BGCO-elected trustees as puppets, we are looking to them as allies and fellow defenders of OBU's great liberal arts tradition.

While most people understand the gravity of these issues, some have asked why we're so upset. To them I would just submit that the changes we've documented are truly without precedent in OBU's proud history. We believe they are not only detrimental to OBU's long-term success, but also indicative of a strong and (possibly) coordinated effort to remake OBU into something it has never been and we never want to see.

We Give More to OBU than the BGCO Does!

2012-01-31T23:38:00.000-06:00

Our young movement has reached a significant milestone. Though we are a diverse coalition OBU stakeholders including alumni, parents, and retired faculty, some of our most passionate supporters are current OBU students.

The revenue paid to OBU by students who have expressed support for Save OBU now exceeds the BGCO's annual subsidy! That's right! We paid more to OBU this year than its owner/operator, the Baptist General Convention of Oklahoma.

Individually, students unfortunately didn't have any recourse against the recent disastrous changes at OBU (faculty dismissals, gutting core curriculum areas like philosophy, a fundamentalist litmus test for hiring, the bookstore, censorship of course materials, etc). Students also found that, while a needed step, anonymous protests were easily dismissed by the administration. Six weeks ago, students began emailing us saying they supported our mission but were afraid to "like" our Facebook page for fear that somehow they could get in trouble. But those fears quickly subsided. OBU students now know they are free to hold their own opinions about the university's relationship to the state convention. Thankfully, many dozens (soon to be hundreds) of courageous students have raised their voices in support of OBU distinctives like academic freedom, open inquiry, and liberty of the conscience -- distinctives that are being quietly but deliberately eroded. Individually and anonymously, students were easy to ignore. Collectively and publicly, however, they have ratcheted up the pressure on the administration to stop turning its back on OBU's liberal arts heritage.

It only takes 93 students to provide the same amount of annual revenue ($2,500,000.00) as the BGCO.

We easily have that many student supporters already, and that number will inevitably continue to grow as the word spreads.

In the weeks and months to come, we will be flexing our muscle in more significant ways. After all, we will provide OBU more revenue this year than Oklahoma's 700,000 Southern Baptists. We may not elect any trustees (yet), but we will have a seat at the table. The faculty (current and former) want the provost out, and since his fingerprints are all over the disastrous changes we oppose, it seems a near certainty that he will eventually move on. But make no mistake, our strong, principled, and public stand is a big part of what will give the president and trustees the cover they need to stop OBU's descent into fundamentalism, which will enrage the BGCO.

For now, let's celebrate how far we've come in such a short time! Thanks, OBU students, for your courageous, thoughtful, and prayerful support.

Money Monday: BGCO Evangelism Conference

2012-01-30T15:09:00.000-06:00

We've noted before that the BGCO spends less than one-tenth as much on "personal" and "ethnic" evangelism as it does on OBU. So today, as Oklahoma Baptist clergy, church staff, and laypeople gather in OKC for the State Evangelism Conference, we are asking people to consider how many more souls could be won for Christ if the BGCO invested heavily in evangelism rather than subsidizing a huge institution with its own $80 million endowment. Even when you include the BGCO's spending on "student evangelism," the convention still contributes six times more to OBU than it does to evangelism efforts.

Since Oklahoma Baptists are very serious about lostness, it seems that they should want to invest as heavily as possible in evangelism efforts. Instead, they send 18 cents on every Cooperative Program dollar to OBU, where 99% of students and 100% of faculty are already Christians!

Not only does OBU not save souls, even it is present form (descending headlong into fundamentalism), it still drives more young people away from literalism, strict orthodoxy, and fundamentalism than it indoctrinates. Empirical evidence shows that Baptists who attend Baptist colleges are more likely to identify as moderates and less likely to be fundamentalists than Baptists who attended secular universities.

Given the fact that hardly anyone who works in evangelism or collegiate ministries for the BGCO came from OBU, Oklahoma Baptists should ask themselves why they are throwing so much money at a school with such a moderating influence on students.

The State Evangelism Conference provides a great opportunity for Oklahoma Baptist clergy and laity to become informed and start a discussion about just how OBU fits into the convention's stated goals and purposes. They have long worried that OBU is "liberal." It's not. Given how dramatically the convention has moved toward fundamentalism in the past 25 years, it's easy to see why they might think that. But it's not easy to see why OBU is a good investment for the convention. Sure, it produces a lot of missionaries (who were called to missions at Falls Creek, not at OBU) and a few fundamentalist pastors. But mostly it produces graduates who leave OBU much more moderate than when they arrived.

OBU graduates will participate in soul winning ministries with or without the BGCO's annual institutional welfare check ($2,500,000.00) But imagine what more Oklahoma Baptist pastors, evangelists, clergy, and laypeople could do for the Kingdom with $2.5 million to invest in training, education, and equipping activities.

Ask yourself: Did any of the SEC '12 speakers besides the current BGCO president graduate from OBU? And while you're in OKC, ask the BGCO power brokers why six of your hard-earned offering plate dollars go to OBU for every one that goes toward student, ethnic, or personal evangelism.

Get updates from the conference here.

Faculty Friday: Games Administrators Play

2012-01-27T15:58:00.000-06:00

Note: I had intended to follow yesterday's post about how the fundamentalists destroyed journalism in the SBC with a post on censorship of student journalism at OBU. But like any good journalist, I need to do some fact-checking before I finish my report.

Since we've had hundreds of new readers in the past week, some people may not know that on Fridays, we usually focus on faculty-related issues at OBU and in SBC "academic" life more generally. Last week, we documented the administration's hostility toward faculty on Bison Hill. Previously, we looked at fundamentalists' penchant for unethical and unwarranted firings and how administrators can use faculty turnover to diminish an institution's academic strength and turn a moderate-to-conservative faculty into a fundamentalist one in just a few years.

Today, let's examine a new tactic administrators are trying to use in order to gain leverage over faculty and tip the balance of power in the fundamentalists' favor. We've already discussed how administrators have ignored faculty search committee recommendations and offered positions to candidates who were not our first or second (or even third or fourth) choices. In this way, OBU now shows a clear preference for fundamentalists in its hiring practices, as the provost's recent job interview questions obviously demonstrate.

But they are also using tenure ("senior faculty status" in OBU parlance) as a weapon in their war against moderate professors building a career at OBU. One current faculty member explains:

The administration's actions raise a red flag as to whether tenure and academic freedom are being consciously eroded to vest more power in administrators to change OBU from within. Along those lines, the administration is beginning to move away from granting continuing contracts for newly tenured faculty to more five-year contracts. The latter were rarely used before, only in those cases where the faculty member was deemed fit to join the senior faculty, but needed to improve in some way, usually related to classroom performance. Now it is being used for highly regarded candidates who receive a strong affirmation from the tenured faculty vote and have strong student evaluations.

The first ideologically-motivated firing was indicative of this changed outlook. The administration wanted the professor to accept a multi-year contract (rather than a continuing contract) but did not allow the professor to stand for tenure and would not guarantee the possibility of standing for tenure at the end of the multi-year contract. Unsurprisingly, denying someone the opportunity to stand for senior faculty status is itself a violation of the Faculty Handbook. So if anyone tells you that OBU parted ways with a wonderful, well-loved Christian philosopher over a "contractual dispute," that is a lie. He was treated in the most shameful and insulting manner possible. I know what you're thinking: It's getting difficult to actually keep track of all the violations and unethical actions administrators have taken against our beloved OBU faculty!

The current faculty member continues:

The standards in the Faculty Handbook, based on nationally accepted guidelines, are designed to protect academic freedom -- the integrity of the academic program, professors' right to teach and students' right to learn, according to the best standards of each discipline. In theory at least, once a professor is deemed integral to the academic community through the tenure (or senior faculty) process, he or she can only be removed for serious and demonstrated causes, such as incompetence, dereliction of duties, moral turpitude.

This standard was ignored in the case of the second faculty dismissal. While the faculty was justifiably outraged after the first dismissal, it was the second dismissal that truly rippled through the faculty. This collective outrage led to Faculty Council resolutions sent to the administration.

Fortunately for OBU (I guess), we have not suffered the kinds of consequences that typically accompany these kinds of actions. The first victim could have publicized his situation and brought widespread shame and embarrassment on OBU. The second victim could have gotten a sizable settlement (based on violation of legal guidelines set forth in chapter 2 of the Faculty Handbook). Not one but several attorneys with knowledge of the case believe that the second victim would have easily won a judgment against OBU in court, or at least a settlement out of court.

Obviously these two victims have much more integrity than they were shown by OBU administrators.

But the main point of today's Faculty Friday post is not actually about the two well-known dismissals. Rather, the point is that administrators are now open to using tenure as a weapon in an ideological war to make the OBU faculty more fundamentalist. Now that this practice has become widely known, there is a chance they will back down. But don't be surprised if fundamentalist professors are fast-tracked for tenure and continuing contracts (just like they are now fast-tracked for hiring against the professional judgment of their colleagues) and moderate professors are denied their right to stand for tenure and/or asked to agree to multi-year or annual contracts. The implications are huge. OBU could become a majority fundamentalist faculty relatively quickly. Of course, this would please BGCO elites (and at least one current administrator) to no end!

I truly hope that these unethical practices stop at once and that the two forced dismissals do not bring more shame and embarrassment on our alma mater (or harm our future application for re-accreditation). But what has happened is wrong. There is no way to spin it. It's just plain wrong. While Save OBU brings together a number of constituencies (parents, students, alumni, etc.), our most passionate concern is for OBU's greatest asset: its dedicated faculty. All the rest of us are free to raise our voices in protest against unjust actions and encroaching fundamentalism. But in the current climate, professors' voices are effectively silenced. We know many of them are cheering us on, albiet silently and anonymously, from the sidelines. But let it be known to everyone: Until academic freedom is fully restored at OBU and all threats against it are eliminated, we will not stop advocating tirelessly for our wonderful faculty.

SBC Uses "Journalism" as Propaganda

2012-01-26T15:26:00.000-06:00

The media play an important role in democratic societies. We depend on them to provide information that we could not gather on our own. They have immense power to help set agendas, determine the salience of issues, and form and reinforce our opinions. Baptists used to have a first-rate press office. But, as in so many other areas, after the Fundamentalist Takeover, the SBC's effort in this critical area deteriorated significantly.

Everyone should buy the Kindle edition of The Fundamentalist Takeover of the Southern Baptist Convention for 99 cents. The chapter on the Baptist Press is omitted from the new version, so I'll summarize the story of how Baptist Press was silenced by the fundamentalists. This is a story that must be told, repeated, and never forgotten. The chapter is quoted in its entirety at the conclusion of this post.

Baptist Press was a highly competent, professional, and cost-effective news organization. It provided reporting and photography to dozens of Baptist newspapers and received unanimous praise from Baptist journalism professors, other denominational media officials, and Baptist state newspapers. One person who did not appreciate Baptist Press, however, was Judge Paul Pressler. Pressler, as you know, was one of the two main co-conspirators (along with Rev. Paige Patterson) of the Fundamentalist Takeover. (You might have seen Pressler's name in the media lately because he hosted the meeting of conservative Christian leaders two weeks ago that endorsed Rick Santorum for the GOP presidential nomination.)

Pressler personally intervened and launched a crusade against Baptist Press. Its crime? Reporting honestly on the fundamentalists' takeover effort in the 1980s. Eventually, the SBC fired two senior editors in a closed-door Executive Committee meeting. In 1994, SBC President Ed Young (father of Ed Young, Jr. of fundamentalist sex manual fame) called for an end to investigative reporting by Christian editors and reporters.

Thus, in addition to a spate of independent Baptist papers run by Rev. Jerry Falwell and others, the official SBC communications channels became (and remain) committed to the fundamentalists' agenda. There is no free press in the Southern Baptist Convention. There is no free press in the BGCO. And, as we will see in our next post, there is no free press at OBU. We've said it before, but we must say it again in regard to journalism: Fundamentalist will not tolerate anything they cannot control.

Fortunately, Associated Baptist Press fills a much-needed void. We'll tell the ABP story another day.

For now, read the startling account of how fundamentalist leaders destroyed the Baptist Press:

The right of every Baptist to know is based on the equality of believers in Christ Jesus and upon the democratic nature of our church and denominational life. Every believer has a right to serve his or her God, his or her church, and his or her denomination intelligently. This can be done only as the right to know is respected. -- W.G. Stracener, editor of the Florida Baptist Witness from 1959-70

Baptist Press, the news service of the Southern Baptist Convention, provides daily releases, news features, and photographs to 37 Baptist papers, to other religious journals, and to the secular press. The press service is an arm fo the SBC Executive Committee.

A long-term participant in and observer of Baptist life has wisely stated, "The largest, most productive, and most cost-efficient communications effort of each and all the Baptist state conventions is the 37 state Baptist newspapers."

Almost without exception, Baptist Press consistently received the highest commendation from its many and varied constituencies. These included college and university journalism professors, religion writers and reporters from the secular media, public relations professionals, and denominational leaders.

Executive Committee trustee Paul Pressler was a notable exception to this generally positive evaluation. This powerful leader of the teakeover effort had been an intense critic of Baptist Press for many years. He was not pleased with former Baptist Press director W.C. Fields; nor was he pleased with Alvin C. "Al" Shackleford, the committed, capable, and experienced director of Baptist Press who took office in March 1987.

Periodically, Pressler expressed his negative evaluation of Baptist Press's work by letter to the staff or to other persons who might have influence with the staff. Often, he insisted that "public apology" be made to him for Baptist Press statements concerning himself or the takeover effort he was leading.

In an encounter with Shackleford during the May 1987 Conference on Biblical Inerrancy at Ridgecrest, North Carolina, Pressler angrily waved a Baptist Press news release at Shackleford's face that reported, in a thoroughly fair and professional way, what had been said at one of the sessions. As the two men stood in the Ridgecrest cafeteria line, Pressler demanded, "What are you going to do about this? I want to know what you're going to do about this."

In its February 1988 session, the SBC Executive Committee received the report and recommendations of a special committee that had been authorized at the 1987 SBC in St. Louis to evaluate Baptist Press. The Executive Committee took action "generally affirming" Baptist Press. Also during the February meeting, the Southern Baptist Press association, composed primarily of Baptist state paper editors, commended Baptist Press for "a fair, accurate, and comprehensive job of reporting events in Southern Baptist life."

Despite these affirmations, Pressler continued his determined effort to restrict the freedom of Baptist Press during a meeting of the Executive Committee during the June 1988 SBC. He chose that time because he knew that trustees elected during the SBC would be fundamentalists and would probably suport his effort. However, his motion to add restrictive guidelines to govern Baptist Press failed -- but only by a vote of 31-29.

Following those eventas at the 1988 SBC in San Antonio, Ed Briggs, president of the Religious Newswriters Association and religion editor of the Richmond Times-Dispatch, sent a strong letter to the chairman of the SBC Executive Committee. The members fo the Religious Newswriters Association cover religion for newpapers, news magazines, and wire services in the United States and Canada.

In his letter, subsequently published, Briggs expressed the praise of American newswriters in lavish terms: "Baptist Press enjoys high credibility, if not the highest, when compared to news operations of other American denominations."

Briggs also expressed the newswriters' uneasiness about the restrictive guidelines Pressler proposed in San Antonio. "We are concerned any time efforts are made to stifle freedom of expression and place restrictions and limitations on news organizations." The letter went on to invoke the example of "Baptist saints who faced jail rather than bow down to dictated religion."

An emasculated Baptist Press of managed and manipulated news would be an affront to all persons who believe in the competence fo the individual to deal directly with God, the priesthood of every believer, religious liberty, and local church autonomy. An emasculated Baptist Press would also mean that Southern Baptists would be far less likely to learn anything about their denomination's affairs -- except the things the controlling group wanted them to know.

Pressler and other fundamentalists continued to claim Baptist Press wrote stories which "persecuted" fundamentalists. Baptist Press reporters are hired by and can be fired by the persons and agencies about which they write. Pressure is, therefore, on reporters to write stories with a certain "spin" to reflect well on supervisors and their agencies. Only the most courageous reporters write the truth, good or bad, and they quickly become targets.

Finally, in June 1990, the administrative committee of the SBC Executive Council directed Executive Committee President Harold Bennett to ask for the resignations of Al Shackleford, 58, and Dan Martin, 52. They refused to resign and wrote a Baptist Press story on the request.

In response, the outraged officers of the SBC Executive Committee demanded a called meeting on July 17, 1990. The meeting cost a reported $45,500, including $500 for five armed guards from the Nashville Metro Police Department, who guarded the doors to the meeting room. The two embattled men were again asked to resign, and again they refused. As 200 concerned editors, agency personnel, pastors, lay persons, and others sang hymns outside the closed doors of the conference room, Shackleford and Martin were fired "effective immediately."

Of the firing, Don McGregor, editor of the Mississippi Baptist Record, wrote, "Today, we have seen the final destruction of freedom of the press among Southern Baptists... They were fired because the majority of SBC executive committee does not want a free-flowing, objective and accurate news service."

Immediately after the firing was announced, a Nashville attorney, who said he was speaking on behalf of "concerned editors, pastors, and laypersons," announced the formation of a new press service, to be called the Associated Baptist Press (ABP).

Dan Martin was named interim director with a launch date of September 1990. Don McGregor, who hard retired as editor of the Baptist Record, was named executive editor of ABP in March 1991. Greg Warner, associate editor of The Florida Baptist Witness, was named editor of ABP effective May 1, 1991. After several years as a freelance writer and pastor of a North Carolina church, Martin was named executive-director of Texans Who Care, a statewide anti-gambling coalition, in December 1992.

Ed Young, SBC president, in an address to the SBC Executive Committee in early 1994, called for an end of "investigative reporting" by Christian editors and reporters, saying they should major on the "fabulous things" that are happening in the kingdom. Jack E. Brymer, Sr., editor of the Florida Baptist Witness, responded that "As long as Baptist leaders continue the use of 'executive sessions' to cover up their actions, Baptist journalism will need more, not less, investigative reporting."

After Young's speech, the SBC Christian Life Commission (CLC) severely criticized the Biblical Recorder, the newsjournal of the Baptist State Convention of North Carolina, in a four-page letter mailed to 3,547 North Carolina pastors at a cost of about $1,300. Baptist Press reported the mailing was the first time a SBC agency had sent a letter to state pastors chiding a state agency.

The SBC Executive Committee began publishing SBC LIFE in 1993 to replace the Baptist Program, published since 1925. Since it is published by the Executive Committee, SBC LIFE, an official SBC publication, is a full-color public relations news journal with articles to promote the fundamentalist agenda and attack all opposing views within the SBC. In the June-July 1994 issue, editor Mark Coppenger blasted the CBF, Religious News Service, Christianity Today, Baptist Press, and Baptist state papers, with the exception of the Indiana Baptist, with what one Baptist state paper editor said was a "scissors and past tirade."

In December 1987, Jack U. Harwell, long-time editor of The Christian Index, state paper for Georgia, took early retirement in protest of a fundamentalist board of directors restricting editorial freedom. He was named editor of BAPTISTS TODAY in June 1988 and served in that position until his retirement at the end of 1997.

in September 1994, Jack Brymer, editor of Florida's state paper, The Baptist Witness, cited threats to his professional integrity before resigning in protest of continued attempts by the board of directors to restrict his editorial freedom. Among other things, the board was pressuring not to use news stories from Associated Baptist Press. Brymer was named to a newly created post of director of publications at Samford University in Alabama in September 1995.

The lesson here is that fundamentalist strength at the national and state levels has eliminated a free SBC press. SBC and most state convention media arms are now little more than propaganda machines. I hope the story of the destruction of true journalism in Southern Baptist life will inspire all of us, but especially journalism students at OBU. They need to know that before Baptist editors and reporters were P.R. hacks for the fundamentalists, there were actually courageous journalists who pursued and reported the truth without fear of recrimination. As we will see in the next post, fundamentalist tendencies in OBU's administration have been all to evident in their attempts to censor and control student journalism on Bison Hill.

OBU Chapel: Compulsory, Sexist, and Fundamentalist as Ever

2012-01-25T15:03:00.000-06:00

It's really beyond the scope of Save OBU to say much about OBU chapel services, especially since many of our supporters have not attended them in years. But insofar as chapel services reinforce OBU's descent into fundamentalism, we will make note of them. This especially important because we are trying to make the case that OBU's troubling trend is systemic and organized, and not just a result of one or two powerful men's personal preferences.

Until today, I had not heard the name Voddie Baucham in over a decade. But I am absolutely certain he spoke at chapel when I was at OBU. (Who could forget a name like Voddie?) Actually, as I've perused lists of recent and upcoming chapel speakers, it's amazing how much recycling goes on.

Now, I have always believed that making religious worship compulsory was bizarre and counter-productive. But as I experienced OBU as a student and then as an alum, I have come to realize that OBU is surprisingly authoritarian and somehow gets near-universal conformity with minimal questioning.

Why the fuss about today's chapel speaker, then? Because Voddie Baucham is not your typical Baptist minister. Instead of partnering with the mainstream Baptist General Convention of Texas, Baucham's congregation is part of the Southern Baptists of Texas Convention. Whereas fundamentalists succeeded in taking control of the BGCO and most other state conventions, they failed to take control of the BGCT. So they formed an alternative state convention, putting politics and fundamentalist dogma ahead of mission and ministry cooperation. Even now, the SBTC encourages "stealth" fundamentalist pastors to remake churches from within and endorses ethically dubious tactics to lure unsuspecting congregations away from the BGCT.

Thus OBU has given a platform to someone who openly loathes Southern Baptists' long history of mission and ministry cooperation in Texas and felt so strongly that the conservative BGCT was not conservative enough that he aligned with a controversial splinter group.

Here is Rev. Baucham on CNN in 2008 lamenting the fact that Sarah Palin left the kitchen to pursue a career of public service. You have to watch this (it starts about 1 minute into the video). It's pretty breathtaking. The anchor (who knows her Bible better than most) is truly taken aback.

Apologies to all if Rev. Baucham has miraculously moderated his extreme views in recent years and preached an inspiring sermon in Raley Chapel today. But somehow I doubt that's the case. It's just a shame that the Raley Chapel pulpit continues to be a platform for extremism, sexism, and fundamentalism.

How Do You Solve a Problem Like Stan Norman?

2012-01-24T22:37:00.000-06:00

I'm very grateful for all the support our fast-growing and far-reaching movement has received in just a few short weeks. However, it's going to take a long time -- years -- for the idea that OBU needs independence and autonomy from the BGCO to become the obvious way forward for each entity. I'm quite sure I can't keep up the daily blog postings for that long -- something my faithful Baptist Building readers are certainly grateful for. (Hi, guys!)

But, short of a self-perpetuating Board of Trustees, there is one solution that almost everyone I've talked to believes would solve all the problems brought on by fundamentalist encroachment at OBU over the past 18 months: Removing Dr. Stan Norman as chief academic officer. I'm skeptical, but many people strongly believe this.

I don't know if his position was just a consolation prize because Norman didn't get the SCS deanship, or why anyone but the most ardent fundamentalists ever thought he would be a good fit at OBU. But even for OBU's conservative tastes, I think it's safe to say that he overreached and mistook his hiring as a mandate to remake OBU into a fundamentalist Bible academy. Perhaps the president could send Dr. Norman on his way with a sterling recommendation, noting the provost's zeal and effectiveness at censoring course readings, ignoring Faculty Handbook policies, keeping female lay leaders in their place, spinning ideologically-motivated firings as contract-related resignations, and generally being Arbiter and Enforcer of Truth. As heartbreaking as it is, I'm sure there is a Southern Baptist college or "seminary" out there that is looking for a hatchet man.

As much as I hate to admit it, such a move would put Save OBU out of business and help restore thousands of people's lost faith in OBU. Students and faculty would immediately throw President Whitlock a ticker-tape parade on the Oval. And if Anthony Jordan didn't like it, this could be the moment Whitlock finally realizes, like Mark Brister finally did, that Anthony Jordan isn't his boss. The faculty, who are near the point of open rebellion because of administrators' incessant hostile actions, would finally have a champion. Students, too, would rally around their president. Dozens of retired faculty would withdraw their concerns, and nearly everyone who signed the alumni petition would be satisfied that their concerns were heard and acted upon.

Now, I coud be wrong, but I maintain that ultimately, nothing short of total independence from the BGCO will make these problems disappear forever. I believe that even if we get a chief academic officer that students and faculty can support, eventually fundamentalism will rear its ugly head in OBU's affairs and/or governance. Sure, we might enjoy a multi-year respite from the attacks on integrity, academic freedom, liberty of the conscience, and soul competency, but one day soon the fundamentalists would be back to do battle again. They will not tolerate anything they can't control. It's just their nature.

Still, given how many problems a personnel change in the provost's office would solve and the massive amount of confidence it would restore, it's hard to see the downside. Speaking just for myself, I don't think this solves the most pressing problem. But a lot of people believe it does.

Money Monday: The Cooperative Program and the Great Recession

2012-01-23T22:37:00.000-06:00

As everyone knows, the economic contraction that began in 2007 has been the worst in generations. Churches and denominations, like families and businesses, have been hit hard. Budgets have shrunk, contributions are down, and tough decisions have to be made.

The Georgia Baptist Convention, situated in a state with above average unemployment, has particularly struggled to fund ministry priorities and meet obligations to the SBC. Oklahoma's employment and housing valuation statistics are not as bad as most of the rest of the nation. Thus, the BGCO has had a somewhat easier time funding ministries and missions. Of course, state convention elites are under tremendous pressure from Nashville to fund the SBC at the highest possible level.

Yet whether states are struggling a lot or a little, Baptist leaders have thus far been unwilling to defund the colleges and universities they subsidize and control. We have already discussed how the BGCO's huge OBU subsidy cuts into what it can spend on evangelism and collegiate ministries at 35 other colleges in Oklahoma.

Baptist state conventions operate 51 colleges, most of which have endowments running into the tens and even hundreds of millions of dollars. These institutions raise, on average, close to 95% of their revenue on their own. Yet because the conventions contribute 5 or 6% and control the colleges through the trustee selection process, these schools are descending headlong into fundamentalism. OBU is not unique in this case. But fundamentalists will never relinquish control, no matter how small their contribution and no matter how bad the economy gets. In fact, they will only partner with organizations they can completely dominate and control. (Note the SBC's withdrawal from the Baptist World Alliance, the Baptist Joint Committee on Public Affairs, and other interdenominational and ecumenical arrangements since the Fundamentalist Takeover.)

Even though academic freedom, open inquiry, and the liberty of the conscience are now at odds with Baptist elites' agenda, they still pay the price to maintain control of these schools. Even though the economy is in a once-in-a-lifetime recession, they still happily throw millions and millions of dollars to institutions with eight and nine figure endowments. Even as ministry professionals at state convention offices are laid off and budgets are drastically cut, fundamentalist leaders are still happy to subsidize Baptist colleges with huge annual institutional welfare checks.

Why? Because it's a great deal for them. They get 100% of the power for providing only 6 or 7% of the revenue! Unfortunately, it's a horrible deal for everyone else, not least for the Baptist clergy and laypeople who care less about waging ideological warfare and more about impacting lostness. I would argue that Baptist elites' continued insistence on buying institutional power and control on the cheap calls into question their professed concern about lostness.

(These Baptist universities, where 99% of students and 100% of faculty are already Christians, may be [to varying degrees] good training grounds, but they are not impacting lostness and they certainly are not doing so efficiently. Here in Oklahoma, we already know that the robust Falls Creek program has much more to do with Oklahoma Baptists' contributions to the missionary ranks than OBU. It's also fascinating to note that most of the pastors who please the BGCO elites are state school grads who went to Southwestern Seminary. A startling proportion of OBU grads, on the other hand, went to moderate seminaries, are ministering outside Oklahoma, and/or comprise the moderate faction of Oklahoma Baptist life the BGCO leaders love to hate! It's also interesting to note how few BCM leaders statewide came from OBU.)

In these difficult times, you couldn't blame Baptist leaders for saying to the colleges: "Look, you guys are sitting on huge endowments. Our receipts are down. We need to significantly cut back on our subsidies to you." But instead, they are cutting staff, starving vital ministry areas, and doing whatever is necessary to keep institutional welfare flowing to the colleges. Just remember, it's not about ministry, friends. It's about control. And even in the worst economic climate since the Great Depression, the price is so cheap they just can't help themselves.

Sunday School: Things Can Get Worse

2012-01-22T10:24:00.000-06:00

A Word to New Visitors and Supporters
Welcome, friends! According to our internal analytics, there's a good chance you're new to the Save OBU website. In the past week, we have had hundreds of first-time visitors. Web traffic in Shawnee will spike dramatically as students return for the beginning of the spring semester on Monday. When we introduced Save OBU in December, students were studying for finals and most have been away from Bison Hill for the past 5 weeks. Unless the administration has blocked this website, students will have access to weeks' worth of information this blog has presented. Their legitimate questions and concerns have been rebuffed before, but a critical mass is building.

In the coming months, administrators will have to decide which vision of OBU they support and where their loyalties lie. They can cast their lots with the fundamentalists who control the BGCO (and the $2.5 million in annual funding they provide in exchange for dismissing moderate professors, gutting core curriculum areas, ignoring faculty norms, etc). Or, they can side with the students, parents, faculty, and alumni who believe in academic freedom, open inquiry, and OBU's proud liberal arts heritage. It is already becoming obvious that the two visions for OBU are not compatible. As Christ himself says, "No man can serve two masters" (Matt. 6:24). During that time, students can begin a real conversation on campus about the nature and future of OBU. We are confident they will conclude that all the recent negative changes are an affront to, not an embodiment of, OBU's true nature.

Sunday School Feature
In previous weeks, we have devoted Sundays to telling stories of some fine Baptist schools that have ended their relationships with their state conventions (William Jewell College, Stetson University, and Furman University). Without exception, these universities have flourished since they rid themselves of fundamentalist control. Likewise, the state conventions are much better off, being relieved of a significant financial burden and able to dramatically expand other, more fruitful, ministry and mission opportunities. The splits were painful, but they became necessary as the state conventions came under fundamentalist control over the past three decades.

For most of that time, OBU has managed to walk the fine line between the needs of its academic constituency and the demands of BGCO leaders. But in recent years, the fundamentalist elites began demanding radical changes on Bison Hill. Administrators can no longer protect each side's interests. It's not the administrators' faults. Rather, they are in an impossible situation. Ultimately, they will have to make a choice. If you've been paying even scant attention to the changes on Bison Hill these past two years, you probably believe they have already made the choice to side with the fundamentalists. But one of the reasons Save OBU exists is to publicly show administrators that students, parents, alumni, and faculty are ready to raise an army to support them if they courageously stand up to the BGCO's agenda.

In the three cases linked above, presidents and trustees sided with the schools' true constituencies (students, parents, alumni, faculty) and true values (academic freedom, soul competency, liberty of the conscience). They resisted the fundamentalists' agenda for their beloved institutions. There are other Baptist schools that have done likewise and achieved greatness (e.g. Mercer, Baylor, and Wake Forest).

But we need to realistically assess where we are in this fight. In addition to dreaming about what might be possible if we end fundamentalist control, we need to prepare for the nightmare of remaining under it. Frankly, the nightmare scenario seems more likely at this point.

This link lists the 56 Southern Baptist colleges. More precisely, 51 of them are affiliated with state conventions that maintain cooperative relationships with the SBC. Five of them are undergraduate programs at SBC seminaries. Fortunately, OBU is generally believed to be one of the best Baptist schools in America (though remember that many of the best schools have already left their state conventions). But many of the schools on it shows what a nightmare scenario might look like.

We've already looked briefly at the disastrous consequences of fundamentalism at Louisiana College and Shorter University. These schools have experienced faculty departures by the dozens, horrible governance problems, and financial difficulties. Continuing accreditation looks doubtful. We probably need to look more closely at these cases, as well as other avowedly fundamentalist schools. In addition, we need to examine the cases of schools where the academic constituency declined to fight (or fought unsuccessfully) against fundamentalist takeover factions.

For years, OBU was in the fortunate position of being able to maintain the status quo even in the throes of the Fundamentalist Takeover. But that is no longer possible. If we do nothing, the fundamentalists are going to lead OBU off a cliff. We will become another nominally-accredited fundamentalist Bible academy, one of many in Baptist life. If we fight, at least OBU has a chance to survive as a leading Christian liberal arts college. As one retired professor wisely noted, "We might lose this struggle, but it's not one I would want to lose easily."

Student Saturday: Bookstore Scavenger Hunt

2012-01-21T08:09:00.000-06:00

It is well known that OBU recently fired Barnes and Noble after many years of efficient and capable management of the bookstore. In its place, OBU contracted with Tree of Life, a company committed to censoring mainstream books and stocking books from (almost exclusively) fundamentalist publishing houses.

I'm not trying to suggest that I should be the final arbiter of what books Christian college students should have available to them. Rather, I have consulted with alumni and friends and compiled a list of books that you should expect to find in any college bookstore. The list includes some classics, some new volumes that should be of interest to people who are serious about the Bible, and titles that frequently appear on lists of "books that college students should read." Since OBU is still supposedly about diversity of thought and administrators claim not to be turning OBU into a fundamentalist Bible academy, we can assume these books and others like them should be readily available in the university bookstore. Right?

For each of the following 10 books that Tree of Life stocks, I will donate $10 to OBU. In addition, I will give $10 to the first student who posts a picture of the book to our Facebook page.

A Tale of Two Cities
Charles Dickens (1859)
The bestselling novel in the history of the world.

Confessions
Saint Augustine (AD 398)
The dominant thinker in Christian antiquity gives his personal narrative, which became a bedrock of Western literature.

The Pilgrim's Progress
John Bunyan (1678)
A foundational Protestant text, this was Charles Spurgeon's favorite book after the Bible.

Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies
Jared Diamond (New York: Norton, 2005)
An argument about how science and technology, not moral or genetic superiority, account for why some societies win and others lose.

Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything
Steven D. Lovett and Stephen J. Dubner (paperback ed. is from 2009)
Widely read and hugely influential book about some of life's unusual connections and causal relationships.

The Lost History of Christianity
Philip Jenkins (New York: HarperOne, 2009)
This prominent historian is speaking at OBU next month. Does Tree of Life carry his book? I'll also accept either of the other two volumes in his History of Christianity Trilogy.

Jerusalem: The Biography
Simon Sebag Montefiore (New York: Knopf, 2011)
Clever and carefully researched story of Jerusalem's historical, spiritual, and contemporary importance.

The Meaning of the Bible: What the Jewish Scriptures and Christian Old Testament Can Teach Us
Douglas A. Knight and Amy-Jill Levine (New York: HarperOne, 2011)
Very well-reviewed new book from two of the top Old Testament scholars in the world.

NRSV Study Bible
The best ones are the New Oxford Annotated Bible (Oxford University Press, 2010), the HarperCollins Study Bible (HarperOne, 2006), and the New Interpreter's Bible (Abingdon, 2003). But I've got $10 for any NRSV study Bible at Tree of Life. The New Revised Standard Version's mantra is "as literal as possible" but "as free as necessary." Unlike the better-selling NIV, the NRSV translation committee was not dominated by fundamentalists. The NRSV features a number of distinctives that fundamentalists love to hate, most notably inclusive language, brothers and sisters. Every decent college bookstore in America sells NRSV study Bibles. Does Tree of Life?

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Book 7)
J.K. Rowling (New York: Arthur A. Levine, 2009)
I'm mostly curious to see if, like most "Christian" bookstores, Tree of Life believes Harry Potter is satanic.

Dollar Bonus Round!
A buck to you and a buck to OBU for every book by

Archbishop Desmond Tutu
Episcopal Bishop John Shelby Spong
Oklahoma City pastor Robin Meyers
Astronomer Carl Sagan
Paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould
Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson

I'm sure these people get bashed mercilessly in "Apologetics" and "Worldview" classes, but I'm sure you are encouraged to read them before you dismiss their arguments:

Christopher Hitchens
Richard Dawkins
Daniel Dennett

And Just for Fun...
Take pictures of the most ridiculous books you see in Tree of Life, "Christian" or otherwise. Post them to our Facebook page, too.

I'm betting I keep all my money today. But trust me, I would love more than anything in all the world to write a $100 check to OBU, give $100 to the students who found the books, and even pay out extra for the Dollar Bonus Round. So get out there, Bison, and prove me wrong!

Faculty Friday: Open Hostility on Bison Hill

2012-01-20T16:00:00.000-06:00

This is not going to be pleasant for anyone, but it needs to be said: Relations between OBU faculty and administrators are at an all-time low. Let's review some facts:

Two professors have been dismissed for ideological reasons. Luckily for OBU, we have not yet suffered the embarrassing consequences of these politically-motivated firings. But just as Southwestern Seminary was put on probation in the mid-1990s because of fundamentalist meddling, when OBU applies for continued accreditation in the future, these unethical actions will reflect very negatively on us. Don't be surprised if administrators try to abandon the North Central Association of Colleges and Schools and pursue "accreditation" through some bogus second-rate fundamentalist-friendly entity that won't make them answer for their actions.
Many faculty have retired quite a few years sooner than they might have. They saw the writing on the wall and, understandably, did not want to be become targets of fundamentalist zeal in the waning years of their careers.
Faculty Council morale is low because in spite of its best efforts, it could not successfully intervene in the two forced dismissals.
Administrators routinely ignore faculty search committee recommendations. This means that some recent hires were actually our third and fourth choices, but were fast-tracked for hiring because of ideological conformity and not because of their qualifications or promise for future success. If this embarrassing and dangerous trend continues, the best applicants will be dissuaded from enduring the horrendous interview process at OBU altogether.
More than a handful of professors fear for their jobs, and some have conceded that their work is much more joyless than it had been under previous administrations.
In light of recent actions, many professors are reluctant to express their anger and disillusionment.
While leadership starts at the very top, a lot of people feel that the provost is the real "hatchet man" or "enforcer." Though Dr. Norman missed an opportunity to be a part of a fundamentalist house-cleaning at Louisiana College, where he applied for the presidency in the throes of a fundamentalist takeover, he seems to be relishing that role at OBU. But he clearly overestimated the university community's tolerance for such a radical shift away from academic freedom and OBU's great liberal arts heritage. (In fact, most would argue he misinterpreted the university's mission altogether.) Many faculty are irate that Dr. Norman, whose position was created especially for him after he was passed over for the School of Christian Service deanship in favor of Anthony Jordan's close friend, has not undergone a traditional evaluation with input from faculty and staff. His predecessor, a longtime OBU administrator, underwent such evaluations annually and was universally praised.
Faculty have almost no recourse. The university has shown in the past 18 months that it is not afraid to dismiss even the most capable and devoted professors. As much as it pains them to do so, a surprising number of (mostly tenured) professors have declined to support the capital campaign in order to register their sadness at the university's direction. Also, for the first time since the fundamentalist takeover of the SBC, OBU professors are organizing a chapter of the American Association of University Professors. Since faculty norms and advice are frequently ignored and they are in constant danger of dismissal in open violation of the Faculty Handbook and basic H.R. ethics, the faculty are at a loss for ways to protect themselves from retaliation and unjust termination.

The solution to this impasse is complicated. While OBU and the BGCO coexisted tenuously but relatively peacefully for many years, that relationship has outlived its usefulness. While OBU remained, until recently, a proud, moderate institution offering a balanced Christian liberal arts education, the BGCO has descended headlong into fundamentalism. It no longer makes sense for it to own and operate a true liberal arts university. To the extent that the BGCO cheerleads for fundamentalism on Bison Hill, it will meet relentless and increasingly angry resistance. It has goals for evangelism and missions that OBU does not efficiently advance and it could spend Cooperative Program funds much more effectively elsewhere. OBU, for its part, has constituencies including students, their families, faculty, and alumni that simply cannot abide the fundamentalist-inspired personnel and policy changes that are eroding at our alma mater's proud reputation, devaluing students' diplomas, risking parents' investments, and dispiriting professors' careers.

Trustees need to, at a minimum, know the whole story behind the actions they are asked to sign off on. Eventually, they will know the full story of the two forced dismissals. But they also need to ensure, from now on, that the new faculty contracts they approve are actually for the people we want most, not the ones at the bottom of search committees' rankings who are being hand-picked for their fundamentalist views. Unlike the situation at SBC-controlled institutions, where the trustees were the problem, we have very good trustees. The problem in our case lies with administrators who are torn between what Anthony Jordan wants OBU to become and what the OBU community wants for itself. Trustees are in a unique position to be a moderating influence on encroaching fundamentalism. Hopefully, as they learn more about the history of fundamentalists taking control of state convention-run colleges (stories we are telling nearly every Sunday on the blog), they will recognize the need to assert their independence from the BGCO.

Faculty are in many ways the heart and soul of a university. Their time horizon is longer than students' and they typically outlast several presidents. They are the ones whose day-to-day experience would be most significantly improved by a separation from the BGCO. Of course, students, alumni, and Oklahoma Baptists all have something to gain. If you won't do it for anyone else, please support Save OBU for the faculty's sake. They are badly constrained and have little recourse. The current situation is not doing any of them any good. Senior faculty are seeing the institution they love and have served faithfully for years turned into something they would never have chosen to associate with all those years ago. And the junior faculty are being done a disservice, too. It's not a good feeling to know that you were not the first or even the second choice and that you got your job primarily because of your opinions and only secondarily because of your qualifications.

In some important ways, these are good times for OBU: growing enrollment, an exciting and promising capital campaign, the resumption of football as a varsity sport after 72 years, etc. But we have to be most vigilant during apparently good times, because those are the times fundamentalists think they make their disastrous changes without attracting much attention. Unfortunately for them, we are paying very close attention.

"Tree of Life" Bookstore

2012-01-19T18:28:00.000-06:00

If you've read the blog much over the past six weeks, you know that I've come down pretty hard on the fact that OBU contracted with a fundamentalist company to run the university bookstore. Without even getting into the textbook side of the business, just the fact that OBU administrators have denied students, faculty, and, frankly, the entire Shawnee community, a place to buy mainstream books is disconcerting.

But -- as always -- I could be badly mistaken here. It may be the case that this new arrangement is better for students, faculty, and a better financial arrangement with the university. I simply don't know. There's plenty of evidence of encroaching fundamentalism at OBU without the bookstore change. If I'm way off base here, please let me know.

Here are a few reasons the new bookstore situation stinks. Whether this move (along with the firing of excellent professors, the gutting of core curriculum areas, the open hostility toward faculty norms and search committee recommendations, the suppression of dissent, the censorship of student journalism, the hijacking of great moderates' namesakes for fundamentalist purposes, the incessant cozying up to BGCO and SBC elites, etc. etc. ad nauseam) is part of the deliberate move toward fundamentalism is something you will have to judge for yourselves.

As a rule, what today passes for "Christian bookstores" is horrible. Even when I was a youth, I remember feeling creeped out just walking into these places. You feel like your IQ goes down 20 points within a few minutes of walking through the door. They contract almost exclusively with fundamentalist publishing houses. You will never find mainstream fiction books in a Christian bookstore. You will also never find nonfiction books from places like Cambridge University Press, the University of Chicago press, or pretty much any university press other than Bob Jones (not even kidding). These institutions create and nurture the idea that "Christian" is a totally separate category. Whether intentionally or not, they define the parameters of that category and make into a consumer commodity. They are openly anti-intellectual. God knows the books in Christian bookstores are not going to make you think too hard. Thinking is the devil's business. Aside from that, a random sampling of titles usually reveals that these bookstores are extremely sexist, not to mention bigoted and ignorant with respect to other religious traditions. In general, I think it is safe to say that these places have no business on a university campus, Christian or otherwise.
OBU students quickly picked up on the fact that this move seemed in line with other efforts to change the definition of Christian higher education that had existed at OBU for decades. The second edition of "The Norm," a student-produced newsletter, asks: "Is it purely coincidental that the OBU bookstore has moved from Barnes and Noble, a store that along with textbooks, stocked a variety of books, some of which were secular in nature, to Tree of Life, a store that, other than textboks, only stocks Christian books, many of which focus on Christian dating and courtship?" Given the students' other concerns, I can see why this aroused suspicion.
The other colleges Tree of Life lists as its clients (here and here) are almost without exception avowedly fundamentalist. It would be a major step down for OBU if we suddenly consider these places our peer institutions in any way. (Although given our precipitous drop in the Forbes college rankings over the past two years, we may actually become their peer institutions, whether we like it or not.)
Tree of Life's stated values seem strange. "What's good for business is good for ministry and what's good for ministry is good for business." Really?
Their list of "Innovative Services" seems pretty sketchy, too. They have something called a "Textbook Butler" service, a ministry whereby their employees shop for textbooks for you. Basically, this means that students are not allowed to physically go check textbook prices in the store (though this can be done online if you can get reliable internet service at OBU, which is apparently not a given these days). Tree of Life will even deliver the books to students' dorm rooms. They say students and parents appreciate the service. I don't know about you, but when I was in college, my parents appreciated me finding the best prices on books, not paying full retail on every book and having them delivered to my door. Tree of Life takes unprecedented steps to prevent students from getting better deals on their course materials.
They also have an "innovative service" by which the university charges students a fee for textbooks, thus prohibiting them from finding books cheaper online or elsewhere. This is a flat fee for all students, regardless of major or number of credits enrolled. To my knowledge, this has not been instituted at OBU yet. If it ever is, hopefully OBU parents will light up the switchboard. Even if patrons lose 20 IQ points when they enter Tree of Life, they still are not stupid enough to fall for this "innovative" trick.
As we have already discussed, women at OBU have enough challenges. I shudder to even think about how many books at Tree of Life reinforce fundamentalist gender roles.
Now that Waldenbooks in the mall is closing, there is literally nowhere the literate people of Shawnee (a town of more than 30,000 people) can go to buy non-fundamentalist books.

Just out of curiosity, I can't help but wonder if any long-serving employees of the OBU bookstore lost their jobs so that OBU could make reading safe for its students.

Again, the university may be making a lot more money under this arrangement than with Barnes & Noble. I doubt it, though. But even if it is, given the significant drawbacks, it's hard to imagine it's worth it.

Bookstore Scavenger Hunt -- Saturday, January 21
To help determine whether the new bookstore is a total joke, or just an unfortunate change, Save OBU is sponsoring a Bookstore Scavenger Hunt this Saturday! At 8:00 am, we will post a list of books that any college bookstore should stock. For each one Tree of Life carries, I will personally donate $10 to OBU and $10 to the first student who posts a picture of the book to our Facebook page. You could earn up to $100 toward your spring semester books! And, just to keep things interesting, please feel free to post pictures of the most ridiculous titles for everyone's amusement.

OBU Bison Football

2012-01-18T14:13:00.000-06:00

As you know, OBU announced today that it hired a head football coach. The Bison will begin play in 2013. A lot of you have asked my opinion. I'm agnostic on this question. All I can say is, go Bison!

The university engaged in a self-study beginning in 2006. The committee reported in January 2008. Part of that report is here. At the time, we were experiencing a substantial enrollment drop. A group began studying the feasibility of fielding a football team, in large part to help boost enrollment, particularly male enrollment. I found parts of the report to be troubling. But as far as I know (and I don't know much), the football issue received significant attention and scrutiny from a number of very capable and devoted people before a decision was made to proceed.

There are going to be challenges and changes, of course. But adding a football program can have important advantages, as well. I'm optimistic.

Now, if boosting male enrollment is a concern, I certainly have some ideas. First of all, OBU could end its anti-social and reactionary dorm visitation policy. Sexually repressed 17 year old church kids may not want to come to a college that treats them like they are 12 and is more obsessed with their "purity" than their parents ever were. Not to mention that this visitation policy creates another horrible problem -- the frequent and gratuitous public displays of affection that OBU students across the generations have loved to hate. But that's another issue for another day.

Sorry to disappoint those who may have been looking to Save OBU to rail against the decision to add football. It is not our intent to oppose every decision OBU makes. It is not our view that everything, or even most things, about OBU are bad. Rather, we are concerned specifically with issues related to encroaching fundamentalism, authoritarianism, and anti-intellectualism that have been occasionally present for many years but have become painfully obvious recently. And, as always, we are committed to the proposition that only complete independence and autonomy from the BGCO can ultimately solve these problems.

While we're on the subject, I think I'll just list a few issues that I propose Save OBU not take positions on:

OBU Athletics (Go Bison!)
OU-OSU, OU-UT, Braums-Blue Bell, etc. etc. Not going there...
Politics. Most of our supporters are conservatives and Republicans, but we will welcome people across the spectrum. Even Ron Paul disciples!
Theology. Most of our supporters identify as Baptists and/or evangelicals, but again, we have welcomed people from a variety of denominational backgrounds. Like the pre-Takeover SBC, we do not intend to impose creeds, but rather respect the liberty of individuals' conscience and their soul competency.

We are building a movement that aims to unite rather than divide. It is going to be difficult enough to bring together so many diverse OBU constituencies: students, alumni, faculty, former faculty, parents, donors, Oklahoma Baptists, etc. But we have to be united. It's too easy for powerful people to dismiss a few anonymous students one year, then a few hundred alumni the next year, and then some retired faculty the year after that. If we are actually going to preserve academic freedom and OBU's great liberal arts tradition by winning independence from the BGCO, we have to be united. The football issue -- decided years ago -- is not our battle. It has little, if any, strategic importance to the changes we seek.

Go Bison!

My OBU Story: Kris Shiplet '03

2012-01-17T13:38:00.000-06:00

We are pleased to have found so much support in such a short time. Dozens of you have emailed with words of encouragement and gratitude. As we build this grassroots network, we want to help connect current students with retired faculty, older alumni with recent alumni, and Shawnee residents with Baptist clergy and laypeople around the state. Most of us know OBU only from our personal experience. Yet others' OBU experiences can provide great insight. We all share -- students, alumni, parents, faculty, and concerned friends -- a wellspring of affection for OBU, a great deal of anger and disappointment about its recent trend toward fundamentalism, and a collective fear for its future as long as we lack autonomy and independence from the BGCO.

Today, we continue sharing our OBU stories. If you would like to send in yours, copy the text below and type to your heart's content! Email your story to SaveOBU@gmail.com for inclusion in an upcoming edition!

Name: Kris Shiplet

Years: 1999-2003

Major(s): Youth Ministry & Journalism

Hometown: Bixby, Oklahoma

Church Affiliation Then: Southern Baptist

How/Why I Chose OBU: I felt called to be a youth pastor and wanted to go to a college that would give me the knowledge needed for the job. Raised by a Baptist pastor and Shawnee was the perfect distance away from home.

Good Times: Many, many good memories. Meeting and bonding with several students, especially Bible and ministry majors. Eating with the guys at Van's Pig Stand, late-night studying at IHOP/Denny's. Working with some talented writers at The Bison and writing "The Ship on Sports." Meeting my wife through one of my roommates.

Bad Times: Seeing the odd tension between fundamentalists and moderates on a daily basis. I think we had a great blend of professors but it was obvious even then that OBU was headed in the wrong direction because of Dr. Brister's leanings. Being labeled a liberal amongst fellow ministry majors because I think women in ministry is a good thing.

Best Thing(s) about OBU: Preaching at "OBU Day" my Freshman and Sophomore years. When I preached at a church in Enid my Freshman year, that was my very first experience behind the pulpit. When I preached at a small church in St. Louis, OK my sophomore year, I got my very first job in youth ministry and was there for the rest of my time as a student. Learning from great profs like Mr. Philip Todd, Dr. Mac, Dr. Bobby Kelly and Dr. Tom Wilks...

Worst Thing(s) about OBU: Again, just the odd tension between a fundamentalist President and conservative/moderate profs. Finding out that not too long after I left Mr. Todd, who taught me not only about journalism but a great deal about life in general, was fired basically because he wouldn't allow Brister to completely censor the newspaper.

Spiritual/Religious Reflections (if any): OBU was great for my spiritual life. I had plenty of fellow students and professors who encouraged me in my faith. When my mom had a stroke, I had a lot of support. If I had a question about ministry or something good to share, I always had support right there. I learned to think for myself and become more open-minded, but definitely didn't "lose my faith." I came there with the idea of learning things on my own, not just taking my dad's opinion, and I accomplished that.

Life/Career: I'm married and have a great dog :) I work as a customer service rep for US Cellular and volunteer/teach in the youth ministry at Christ's Church of Yukon.
Residence: Yukon, OK

Church Affiliation Now: Christian Independent

Reflections on OBU-BGCO Relationship: I genuinely believe that the two need to break up. OBU needs freedom from the organization itself. OBU can be a Baptist University without being the redheaded stepchild of the Mother that is BGCO. It needs to be a place of learning, not just a 4-year-long Sunday School class that it seems to be becoming.

Final Thoughts: I genuinely loved my time on Bison Hill and pray for its success. I still have friends who work there and hope they can continue to teach future generations. I hope true balanced liberal arts education can be restored.

Now, it's your turn...
Name:
Years:
Major(s):
Hometown:
Church Affiliation Then:
How/Why I Chose OBU:
Good Times:
Bad Times:
Best Thing(s) about OBU:
Worst Thing(s) about OBU:
Spiritual/Religious Reflections (if any):
Life/Career:
Residence:
Church Affiliation Now:
Reflections on OBU-BGCO Relationship:
Final Thoughts:

Money Monday: Capital Campaign Looking Good -- On the Surface

2012-01-16T19:21:00.000-06:00

By now most of you will have heard the news that a generous Shawnee couple has pledged $1 million toward the local phase of the Vision for a New Century campaign. This is absolutely fantastic news, and we salute the donors for their generosity. OBU is right to laud their gift and challenge others who are able to do likewise.

Yet there are important facts about the campaign's early phase that may reveal signs of trouble. A faculty member -- one of several current and former professors who have reached out in support of Save OBU's mission -- offers an important perspective:

One of the important promotional factors in any fundraising campaign is the support of faculty and staff. The important number is not the amount raised or whether it surpasses a target, but the percentage of current staff and faculty contributing.

As a matter of fact, the target amount for faculty and staff has been surpassed. However, the administration and some others had almost reached the target amount (about $50k short of it) before the faculty campaign was officially launched in August. I and a number of others--especially senior faculty (with tenure)--opted not to contribute. Some wrote letters to the president and/or our fundraising chairmen, indicating that they would not contribute until changes were made in the direction of the administration.

Some of our retired colleagues and a number of traditional OBU supporters in town and elsewhere--and certainly concerned alumni--have made a similar decision, and some of those have also written letters explaining why.

(Note: Save OBU is encouraging supporters to go on the record. However, we are absolutely committed to preserving the anonymity of persons whose livelihoods would be in jeopardy if it was known that they supported OBU's independence from the BGCO.)

It's not the case that fundamentalist institutions are inherently unable to raise money. There will always be true believers with deep pockets. And there will always be wealthy people who make huge donations at the behest of their tax advisors without being concerned with whether the recipient is fanatical or out of the mainstream.

But in general, institutions that are deliberately and self-consciously fundamentalist do have a harder time surviving financially, much less expanding. OBU is in a favorable position in many ways. It weathered an enrollment dip in the mid-2000s and is in a position of relative strength just as the depressed national economy begins to recover. But many of the negative changes that have occurred under most peoples' radar screens threaten to make this campaign -- and even basic survival -- much more difficult.

As the faculty member stated above, the degree of internal support sends a strong signal to prospective donors -- especially those considering major gifts. Most institutions that undertake a campaign of this scope begin by boasting of near-universal internal support. Apparently, OBU in its current state could never reveal those numbers without bringing embarrassment upon itself.

The Shawnee couple who graciously pledged $1 million may not know (and may not care) that professors are being unethically dismissed from OBU, that OBU administrators happily deny students access to mainstream academic materials by contracting with an anti-intellectual, fundamentalist bookseller, that administrators openly loathe longstanding faculty norms and routinely ignore faculty search committee recommendations, and that there exists among faculty, students, and alumni and unprecedented amount of discontent about these actions.

But over time, as OBU's reputation suffers and these glaring flaws become more widely known, it will be more difficult to raise money. One fundamentalist college in Florida recently loosened its ties to the Florida Baptist Convention in recognition of its increasing dependence on non-Southern Baptist donors and institutions for financial support. As OBU clings to the BGCO and does its fundamentalist bidding on Bison Hill, the universe of potential donors is bound to shrink.

If we are serious about such an ambitious capital campaign, we need to get honest about the problems of the past few years, rather than sweep them under the rug, as seems to be the current strategy. The discontent is only going to grow. These negative changes adversely impact OBU right now, and that is bad enough. But having OBU's national rankings continue to decline and its reputation suffer the consequences of administrators' recent actions is going to seriously damage this campaign's prospects for success.

Sunday School: Furman University

2012-01-15T14:37:00.000-06:00

Happy Sunday! Thank you for taking a moment to visit the Save OBU blog and read our "Sunday School" feature. Every Sunday, we tell the story of how a Baptist university attained independence from its fundamentalist state convention. Today's Sunday School post tells the story of Furman University in Greenville, South Carolina.

The Story
Furman's predecessor institution dates to 1826, but was renamed for Richard Furman of Charleston, S.C., the president of the first Baptist convention in the U.S., in 1850. The current campus, built in the late 1950s in Greenvile, S.C., is widely cited as one of the most beautiful college campuses in the U.S. Furman is a beneficiary of the Duke Endowment, having received more than $100 million since the 1920s. Of course, Furman was also affiliated with the South Carolina Baptist Convention, which contributed a $1.6 million annual subsidy until 1991.

In the 1980s, Furman administrators and trustees became concerned about fundamentalists taking over the Southern Baptist Convention's boards and seminaries. As the fundamentalist takeover moved to state conventions and the SCBC started electing fundamentalist activists to the Furman Board of Trustees, administrators and trustees knew they had to act. Fortunately, they got an early start. By 1990, only six of the 25 board members were fundamentalists. In 1990, Furman trustees amended the schools charter, giving itself the sole right to elect trustees. Previously, they had been elected by the SCBC. Over the next 18 months, an ugly battle ensued. You should read this brief summary. Furman trustees and administrators offered many concessions, but fundamentalist pastors and state convention leaders fought hard, even preparing to take legal action. In early 1992, a special committee of the SCBC decided it would not use convention funds to sue Furman, and in May 1992 SCBC messengers ended the convention's financial and legal relationship to Furman in a vote by a show of hands.

The Aftermath
As is always the case after Baptist colleges and state conventions part ways, both entities are far better off now. Furman has expanded its mission and profile while remaining true the highest ideals of liberal arts education. It has dramatically improved its position in national college rankings. In fact, in recent years more Furman alumni have gone on to Ph.D. studies than students from any other college in the South. By every conceivable measure, Furman is significantly better off without the fundamentalist South Carolina Baptist Convention attempting to do continual and irreparable harm to its academic programs.

The SCBC, likewise, is free of a significant administrative and institutional burden. It still controls three fundamentalist colleges in the state: Charleston Southern, Anderson, and North Greenville. In the aftermath of the Furman split, the SCBC had somewhat more financial leeway to support its three remaining fundamentalist colleges, as well as bolster collegiate ministries at several dozen other colleges and universities in South Carolina. (However, in 2010, the SCBC reduced its funding to the three colleges in order to send more SCBC money to the International Mission Board.

Each entity is happier and better positioned to reach its goals, as both Furman and the SCBC readily acknowledge. Far from becoming a liberal, secular university, Furman remains proud of its Baptist heritage:

Furman's heritage is rooted in the non-creedal, free church Baptist tradition which has always valued particular religious commitments while insisting not only on the freedom of the individual to believe as he or she sees fit but also on respect for a diversity of religious perspectives, including the perspective of the non-religious person. This heritage has always maintained that the religious journey has both a private and public dimension and is a lifelong undertaking that cannot be tied to doctrinal propositions.

Furman recognizes its responsibility both in and out of the classroom to encourage students and faculty to confront the problems of contemporary society and to exercise moral judgment in the use of knowledge. To this end, Furman fosters a sense of social justice and encourages civic responsibility in creating a fair and equitable order. The Latin motto of the university, Christo et Doctrinae (For Christ and Learning), underlines the interrelationship of faith and learning. The university is committed to the education of the whole person.

And, unsurprisingly, Baptist life is still surprisingly vibrant at Furman. The Baptist Collegiate Ministry is the largest student group on campus.

Lessons Learned
Furman was lucky to have leaders in the 1980s who saw the fundamentalist takeover for what it was: a political power grab designed to handicap, then control, then subject once proud institutions. Determined not to let that happen, Furman trustees saw the writing on the wall and made the first move.

For many years at OBU, trustees probably did not have to worry much about the fundamentalist takeover because we had administrators who stood up for academic freedom. That dynamic has dramatically eroded in the past 10-15 years, obviously. While we still have a good faculty that does what it can, we seem to have administrators that have a higher loyalty to BGCO elites. If this is indeed the case, we desperately need trustees to take notice and realize that they may be our last, best vanguards for academic freedom, free inquiry, and OBU's proud liberal arts tradition.

Hopefully, we can begin to strategize in the coming months with trustees who do not want to be complicit in OBU's implosion. They should be encouraged to study the cases of these other Baptist schools and determine what actions they might take. At a minimum, they need to take a more active role in trustee succession. If the BGCO is left completely to its own devices, the fundamentalist takeover of OBU will continue apace.

Yet again, we see a split between a moderate school and a fundamentalist state convention that did not cost presidents and administrators their jobs. We stand ready to lend extraordinary support to President Whitlock if he can provide leadership for OBU as it charts its own course apart from the BGCO's fundamentalist designs. He could be a towering figure in OBU history -- and in Baptist higher education more broadly. Or he could be just one more in a series of BGCO puppet presidents who accede to the BGCO's apparent desire to destroy everything great about OBU. It's his choice, really. Furman President John E. Johns, who had been at Stetson previously, capably and admirably led Furman through the split. He died in 2007.

Furman is a great example for OBU in many ways. OBU's insulation from the fundamentalist takeover of Southern Baptist life is over. We are going to change -- one way or the other. The South Carolina Baptist Convention case is illustrative of our choices. We can either become more like the fundamentalist and increasingly irrelevant schools the SCBC still controls, or we can become more like Furman.

(This is the third in a series of articles about Baptist colleges that have altered or ended their relationships with state conventions. See the previous articles on William Jewell College and Stetson University.)

Student Saturday: My OBU Story

2012-01-14T18:59:00.000-06:00

One of the things I want this blog to become is a forum for students and alumni to tell their OBU stories. Many people have indicated interest, but say they don't know exactly what to say. Some are hesitant to speak publicly for fear of recrimination or harassment. Others are unsure whether to emphasize the positive aspects, or the ways in which encroaching fundamentalism detracted from their experience.

I'm hoping some of you have dramatic stories of run-ins with fundamentalism -- being silenced by administrators, being threatened or harassed, being forced into reparative therapy for being gay, etc. I don't have any stories like that. My story is actually pretty ordinary. But it is my own, and I'm happy to share it with you in gratitude for your kindness in taking the time to hear all I've had to say these past six weeks.

Name: Jacob Lupfer
Years: 1999-2002
Major(s): Religion (Bible emphasis)
Hometown: Kissimmee, Florida
Church Affiliation Then: First United Methodist Church, Kissimmee, Florida
How/Why I Chose OBU: A girl
Good Times: Life felt pretty carefree! I spent a lot of time with my girlfriend (we married in 2002 and divorced in 2008), but also enjoyed a small-ish circle of really good friends. In 2001 and 2002, I completed the OKC Memorial Marathon -- that was 10 years and 50 pounds ago, but remains one of my proudest accomplishments. I went hiking in several locations around Oklahoma and visited a number of friends' hometowns. I don't have a lot of campus memories that stick out in my mind, but I enjoyed late-night study and BS sessions at Denny's, IHOP (which opened while I was there), a dumpy diner/truck stop the name of which escapes me now, and a bar called Dietrich's. I absolutely loved Van's Pig Stand, and there were two other BBQ places -- one on S. Kickapoo and one just east of campus on MacArthur -- that we went to a lot. I did some volunteer work at the Central Oklahoma Juvenile Center in Tecumseh, which was pretty eye-opening. I jogged around the airport, downtown, and along the (then) dirt roads near St. Gregory's. I tried racquetball, but never became very good. I took voice lessons from a music major. Attending oratorio concerts helped nurture a lifelong love of sacred choral music. I loved all the professors in my department. I wish I had taken more classes with Don Wester and Tom Dowdy.
Bad Times: J-Term and summer school were pretty boring -- and that's saying something because much of the time at OBU, there wasn't a lot going on. It was hard to have a serious girlfriend, because you could never spend time alone together. In retrospect, I found the authoritarian cultural/institutional dynamic about morals and sexuality to be extremely backwards, repressive, and ultimately pretty harmful to people's development. I learned to think for myself at OBU, but I didn't learn to be my own person. I enjoyed class lectures, but discussions could be pretty painful. A lot of students had never thought for themselves and had no intention of ever doing so. Chapel services were often quite bad (though I liked the pipe organ). The fact that chapel was compulsory struck me as extremely odd, but I was so compliant and non-confrontational back then I never tested the policy to find out what the consequences were, if any. I had a NatSci biology class that was 5% science and 95% indoctrination. It was the only class I had at OBU that was just awful. At the time, I was no Mark Brister fan. I knew he had been part of the fundamentalist takeover and I was suspicious of his every move, especially when Professor Slayden Yarbrough retired under circumstances that weren't clear to me. I had a few friends on the Bison staff, and it stinks how badly student journalism has been censored at OBU.
Best Thing(s) about OBU: The professors were great. Almost from the beginning, I got the feeling that I wanted to become a professor one day (though I wouldn't last long at a place like OBU). My teachers took the time to get to know me, to mentor me, and to take my questions seriously. When I decided to go to graduate school, they were very encouraging and helpful. Occasionally we brought scholars to OBU for conferences and lectures, and this helped me to see what academia outside the confines of fundamentalist-tending institutions could be like. Meeting scholars like Jacob Neusner, William Scott Green, Phyllis Trible, and others turned out to be very consequential for my development.
Worst Thing(s) about OBU: The culture was extremely authoritarian and conformist. I was always someone who pretty much did what I thought my parents/church/family wanted, but even I never got over how weird it was to be part of a community that was so conformist. Maybe I just wasn't familiar with the Calvinist strand in Baptist life where you have to show people that you're "in." But it was strange seeing Christians trying so hard to out-Christian one another. Combine that with the bizarre mating ritual that involved getting very fashionably dressed for Tuesday night BCM services... it was just all very strange to me. And as much as I hated chapel, I sometimes wished there was a Sunday service on campus because a lot of the Baptist churches in and around Shawnee were insufferable -- like parodies of themselves. (To be fair, I never attended UBC or FBC. Eventually, I attend the UMC church downtown, and finally ended up driving 40 miles each way to Mayflower United Church of Christ in Oklahoma City, which was absolutely wonderful). Overall, there were things about OBU that seemed to retard peoples' personal development. A lot of identity/personality/values issues tend not to get worked out in that kind of environment, because it's only "okay" to be one kind of person. I think a lot of people ended up trying so hard to be that idealized OBU Christian that they resisted/fought/hated whatever they actually were. Well, enough pop psychology. I just feel like there were ways in which being at OBU was more harmful than helpful, and to the degree that's true, it's a shame.
Spiritual/Religious Reflections (if any): For many years, most OBU students who entered as church kids and left as moderate evangelicals can honestly say that OBU helped them to think for themselves, engage their religious tradition with a good balance of head and heart, and contributed to their development as thinking Christians. That's great. And really, I think that ideal is about the best we can hope for. My journey was quite different. At OBU, I realized I didn't believe most of what I was taught about the Bible, God and Jesus as a child. The books I read and the critical thinking skills I learned helped me arrive at relatively unorthodox positions. Most of all, I learned that it's better to take the Bible seriously than literally -- and that the two are mutually exclusive. For several years, I would keep searching for a version of Protestantism I could believe honestly and with integrity. In the end, all I could do was define my faith in terms of what I didn't believe, not what I did believe. There turned out not to be much left. So I know all the hymns, most of the scriptures and I love parts of the tradition, but I just don't feel it. I'm eternally grateful that OBU afforded me the skills, knowledge, and encouragement to think through some of the most profound implications of our existence. I hope others will continue to find that same opportunity, no matter where their journey takes them.
Life/Career: Master of Theological Studies at Boston University School of Theology; 2 years in parish ministry; 2 years in K-12 public education; Currently pursuing a Ph.D. in political science
Residence: Washington, D.C.
Church Affiliation Now: None
Reflections on OBU-BGCO Relationship: People's perceptions about OBU are relative. I thought I was conservative, but when I came to OBU, I was liberal by comparison. What amazed me was this prevalent idea among Oklahoma Baptists that OBU was liberal. I always found that laughable, but compared to a lot of fundamentalist churches in Oklahoma, I guess it's true. Even now, as fundamentalists are replacing moderates on Bison Hill and the BGCO is obviously calling a lot of the shots, there are still Baptist pastors warning their young congregants, "Don't go to OBU -- you'll lose your faith." The only way we are ever going to win this fight is if we fight battles on two fronts. We all know the idea that OBU is liberal is completely ridiculous -- and we need to push back against fundamentalism whenever it rears its ugly head. But to the degree that Oklahoma Baptist clergy and laypeople actually do believe OBU is liberal, godless, and/or dangerous, we need to continue to stoke and affirm those fears. In order for our long-awaited split to happen, it can't just be a coalition of relative moderates breaking the tie that binds us to fundamentalists. It has to be a large number of fundamentalists saying "good riddance" to us.
Final Thoughts: I am happy to continue providing some informational and structural resources to Save OBU. But I cannot be the only leader in this movement. Not that the fundamentalists would like me any better if I was a United Methodist minister or a liberal Episcopal layman, but the fact that I turned out not to be very religious makes me even easier to dismiss. While there are plenty of things I find admirable about the Baptist tradition before the fundamentalist takeover, it never was or will be my tradition. But for many of you, it is yours. That's why we need you to be leaders in this movement. You have had something taken from you, and you are the ones who need to fight to take it back.

As always, if you would like to share your OBU story, perhaps you can follow some version of the format I used above. Feel free to copy the text below and, in the words of Shakespeare, "Speak what you feel, not what you ought to say."

Name:
Years:
Major(s):
Hometown:
Church Affiliation Then:
How/Why I Chose OBU:
Good Times:
Bad Times:
Best Thing(s) about OBU:
Worst Thing(s) about OBU:
Spiritual/Religious Reflections (if any):
Life/Career:
Residence:
Church Affiliation Now:
Reflections on OBU-BGCO Relationship:
Final Thoughts:

Faculty Friday: Firing Professors a Favored Tactic among SBC Fundamentalists

2012-01-13T17:53:00.000-06:00

OBU has seen its fair share of professors harrassed, marginalized, and even nudged into early retirment for not being fundamentalists. This certainly happened in the early days of the Brister Administration, though I do not know if it happened much in the later years of his presidency. Many of us thought academic freedom was under attack then -- how strange it seems now to look back at the early 2000s as the "good ol' days!"

As you probably know, OBU has only recently made it a practice to dismiss professors for ideological reasons. As a private, religious instition, there is no recourse. That's why it is important that we change the culture of the institution -- before even more outstanding, qualified, and dedicated Christian professors have their lives and careers disrupted in the coming years.

As a tactic of institutional warfare, firing academics for being insufficiently fundamentalist has a long and ugly history in Baptist politics. Fundamentalists have been using this unilateral power for years. First, they employed deplorable, unchristian tactics to fire seminary presidents. Then, once they installed fundamentalists in administrative posts, they declared open season on moderate professors.

In 1994, Professor Molly Marshall, a distinguished and well-loved professor at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, was forced to resign. Even though the faculty voted 44-8 in favor of a resolution opposing the action, newly-installed President Al Mohler used the dismissal to showcase his willingness to pervert his unilateral power to show SBC leaders that he was up to the task of making Southern a fundamentalist seminary, which he accomplished in fairly short order. Today, Marshall is president of Central Baptist Theological Seminary in Kansas City. Hopefully, we will have more to say about Professor Marshall's story. Like many fine Baptist academics that the fundamentalists love to hate, she is an OBU graduate.

In 1999, Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary fired Professors Alan Brehm and Dan Kent, who objected to signing off on the Baptist Faith and Message, which emphasized female submission. (Five years earlier, Southwestern trustees fired the long-serving and well-loved President Russell Dilday for allegedly being a moderate.) In 2001, two more professors lost their jobs for refusing to sign the newly-updated (and more conservative) Baptist Faith and Message.

While all these stories (and more) are very well known to people who followed the fundamentalist takeover of the SBC, the stories of professors forced out of colleges like OBU, run by the state conventions, and much more numerous. OBU avoided these embarrassing headlines because of relatively moderate administration and a university culture committed to a balanced, Christian liberal arts education. Frankly I'm surprised the recent firings did not generate media attention.

Thankfully, OBU's descent into ideological cleansing has generated enough anger and protest from faculty, students, and alumni that the administration will think twice before firing more professors. However, make no mistake: there are professors the BGCO would like to see fired from OBU tomorrow. Though we are all righteously angry about the absolutely shameful treatment some of our beloved professors and colleagues received (and the fact that faculty search committee recommendations are routinely ignored, thus allowing more fundamentalists to be hired), we have sent a signal that in the future, administrators should consider siding with us rather than siding with the BGCO. The BGCO's fundamentalist dream for OBU is simply out of line with the OBU community's vision of itself as a proud inheritor of the very best in Christian liberal arts education. Administrators can no longer servce both interests. They have to choose.

Later in his presidency, Mark Brister finally realized that Dr. Anthony Jordan was not his boss. Hopefully the current president will get the message before too many more professors lose their jobs.

Open Letter to OBU Trustees

2012-01-12T18:21:00.000-06:00

Yesterday, we began our outreach to OBU parents, significant but often forgotten stakeholders in OBU's future. We have already begun receiving their support -- some had no idea that OBU was becoming so fundamentalist so fast! We certainly look forward to more parents joining the movement in the coming months.

Today, we acknowledge the OBU Board of Trustees (web link is out of date). The trustees do not have the ability to immediately undo all the damage that recent changes have caused. However, they certainly can provide political support and cover to administrators who decide to stand up for OBU students and teachers rather than advance a fundamentalist agenda.

One important caveat: Things could get much worse at OBU. Right now, we have some outstanding trustees. Some are even from CBFO churches! But if they exert too much independence or defy Dr. Jordan's preferences, he will simply ensure that next year's convention elects trustees who are fundamentalist loyalists. In fact, given the amount of unrest and the sheer fact that Save OBU exists, it is a near certainty that the next class of trustees elected in 2012 will unanimously share the BGCO's interest in turning OBU into a fundamentalist Bible academy. That's why the time for serious deliberation about the OBU-BGCO relationship is now. In a few years, the transformation will be complete and OBU's fate will be sealed... if we do nothing.

That said, please see our open letter to OBU Trustees below:

Dear Oklahoma Baptist University Trustees,

As you know, Save OBU is a movement of students, parents, faculty, and alumni who advocate changing the terms of the relationship between OBU and the BGCO. We are people who, like you, love OBU and pray its best years are yet to come. Even so, we are alarmed by the fact that there is unprecedented discontent among faculty, students, and alumni.

You may have been directed here with warnings that we are unfair, overly critical, misinformed, liberal, ungodly, or worse. The truth is that we are diverse coalition of OBU stakeholders with a profoundly deep affection for OBU -- an affection that began long before the current crisis and that will continue long after it is over.

The broader context of our concern is the fundamentalist takeover of the Southern Baptist Convention in the 1980s. After fundamentalists seized control of SBC seminaries, boards, and agencies, they turned their sights on state conventions. Baptist state conventions in Texas and Virginia withstood the onslaught, but in every other state, including Oklahoma, resurgent fundamentalists control the levers of power from megachurch pulpits and state convention offices.

Moderates have been pushed out of BGCO life in many ways, some subtler than others. OBU has not elected a moderate president in nearly three decades. The convention censured former executive director-treasurer Joe Ingram in the early 1990s for "consorting with moderates." You yourselves have been asked to abide the dismissal of two moderate professors from OBU in the past two years, as well as to sign off on the hiring of fundamentalists to replace aging moderates.

OBU largely avoided the effects of the fundamentalist takeover at the national level and remained a strong, moderate institution through many of those tumultuous years. Former OBU Presidents Grady Cothen and Bill Tanner joined the resistance against the fundamentalist takeover. So did Joe Ingram. Bob Agee advocated a balanced, moderate Christian liberal arts education. Herschel Hobbs deplored the tactics fundamentalists used to remake the Southern Baptist Convention in their own narrow image.

In recent years, however, the effects of encroaching fundamentalism at OBU have simply become too obvious to escape notice. Specifically, we are concerned about the following policy and personnel issues:

Dismissing faculty members without just cause, but rather for ideological reasons
Remaking the faculty by replacing aging moderates almost exclusively with younger conservatives who adhere to the SBC's ever-more fundamentalist party line
Disregarding faculty norms, ignoring faculty search committee recommendations, and creating an unsustainably contentious and hostile dynamic between faculty and administrators
Gutting curriculum areas like philosophy, a core discipline in the liberal arts which is being replaced by "Christian apologetics"
Censoring academic materials by contracting with a fundamentalist bookstore, thus denying the OBU community access to mainstream books in the natural and social sciences, history, literature, the arts, philosophy, and non-fundamentalist theology

OBU administrators and BGCO officials will tell you that they are not cracking down on academic freedom or moving away from OBU's liberal arts tradition. They will instead argue that they are bringing the university's academic program more closely in line with Baptist values and doctrine. They will tell you there's no need to look at how dramatically they are changing the character of OBU. They will downplay the amount of anger and disappointment among students, faculty, and alumni that recent actions have generated.

Indeed, these are exciting times for OBU. Enrollment is strong, programs and facilities are expanding, and fundraising/development continues at a good pace (on the surface -- the notable lack of senior faculty participation in the current campaign is indicative of their collective dissatisfaction with the current state of affairs). Even so, OBU's balanced, moderate brand of liberal arts education is being eroded. Schools that follow this path survive for a while, but eventually experience precipitous declines in academic quality, mass faculty resignations, legal and financial problems, and difficulty maintaining accreditation.

Baptist universities that make the difficult decision to seek independence and autonomy from their state conventions are better off by any objective measure. If OBU were run from Bison Hill rather than from the Baptist Building, none of the problems cited above would exist. The BGCO would be in a better position, too, since it would no longer spending nearly 20% of its annual budget to subsidize OBU. Of course, if the BGCO wants to run a fundamentalist Bible academy, as seems to be the case, it would have the resources to start or acquire one.

We see the Board of Trustees as a neutral party in the BGCO-OBU relationship. Sometimes you have gone along with actions we oppose. But other times you have initiated positive changes that the BGCO would frown on and the OBU administration never would have pursued on its own.

We simply want to advance the argument that OBU's future as a leading liberal arts institution is in grave peril and that the OBU-BGCO relationship is bad for both entities. We have some ideas about how to transition to a self-perpetuating Board of Trustees and about how OBU can survive without the BGCO's $2.5 million annual subsidy. We hope you have some ideas, too. We will be in touch with you in a more formal way in the coming months, but for now it is enough to thank you for your service and to invite you to consider these issues for yourselves.

Our Very Best Wishes,
Save OBU