Brewton-Parker's Fledgling Accreditation: Even if It Wins, It Loses

A couple weeks ago, we shared reports that Bretwon-Parker College, a Georgia Baptist Convention-related school, was again denied a 10-year renewal of its accreditation and placed on probation by SACS, the regional accrediting body.

Since B-PC is already thoroughly fundamentalist and is widely believed to be on the road to loss of accreditation, irrelevance, and, eventually, ruin, media reports on the debacle have been scarce.  However, since our last post, the SACS report on B-PC was made public.  The report found that, even after being on Warning for a year, Brewton-Parker

failed to demonstrate compliance with Core Requirement 2.5 (Institutional Effectiveness), Core Requirement 2.8 (Faculty), Core Requirement 2.11.1 (Financial Resources), Comprehensive Standard 3.3.1.1 (Institutional Effectiveness: Educational Programs), Comprehensive Standard 3.5.4 (Terminal Degrees of Faculty), Comprehensive Standard 3.7.1 (Faculty Competence), Comprehensive Standard 3.10.1 (Financial Stability), Comprehensive Standard 3.10.3 (Control of Finances), and Federal Requirement 4.7 (Title IV Program Responsibilities) of the Principles of Accreditation. The cited standards expect an accredited institution to provide evidence that it (1) engages in ongoing, integrated, and institution-wide research-based planning and evaluation processes, (2) has an adequate
number of full-time faculty, (3) has a sound financial base and demonstrated financial stability, (4) identifies expected outcomes of and shows improvements in the area of student learning and educational programs, ( (5) ensures a sufficient number of faculty
members holding appropriate terminal degrees, (6) employs qualified faculty, (7) exercises appropriate control over all its financial resources, and (8) ensures compliance with Title IV program responsibilities.   (To read the full statements for the standards cited above, access the Principles of Accreditation at http://www.sacscoc.org/principles.asp.)

Now, B-PC's administrators will rightly argue that the school had been in bad shape for quite a few years.  Our only point is that B-PC's selling out basic norms such as academic freedom and basic Baptist distinctives such as liberty of the conscience in order to get back into the good graces of the Georgia Baptist Convention cannot possibly help the school's desperate predicament.

Unsurprisingly, though, the administrators remain upbeat.  President Mike Simoneaux, who is on loan from fellow GBC institution Truett-McConnell College, points to progress made (apparently in areas other than the SACS' laundry list above).  Failing schools always say they want to remain accredited... Until they lose accreditation.  Then they change their tune and talk about being faithful to the Lord's standards instead of some manmade bureaucracy, etc etc ad nauseam.  For now, there is absolutely no mention anywhere on the college website about being on Probation, SACS' most serious sanction.  There is a notation at the bottom of the home page with a number you can call with questions about B-PC's accreditation status.  I'm tempted to call just to see how they spin it!

The unspoken truth in all this is that SACS isn't even B-PC's biggest issue right now.  The problem remains: Even if Brewton-Parker somehow comes out of this with its accreditation intact, it really won't matter.  It's already given up on being a legitimate liberal arts college.  The fundamentalist takeover of B-PC is already accomplished.  As a number of schools vividly illustrate, accrediting bodies can't do much about fundamentalism.  They are only concerned with ensuring minimal levels of academic rigor, instructional quality, and financial stability.

Even if Brewton-Parker wins, it's already lost.

SACS Puts Brewton-Parker on Academic Probation

Happy Monday, everyone.  I hope everyone saw last week's series on fundamentalism and the SBC by 2006 OBU alumnus Clayton Mauritzen.  I appreciate his very fine contribution here, and was especially gratified to learn that people at other Baptist institutions picked up the series and circulated it among their concerned constituents.

We've said it all along: Fundamentalism eventually destroys educational institutions.  It diverts them from their missions, wrecks their reputations, and never fails to disrupt the careers of very capable, committed professors.

In Georgia, the fundamentalist race to the bottom continues apace.  We reported this spring that Brewton-Parker College, a Georgia Baptist Convention-controlled school in Mount Vernon, GA, was denied reaccreditation last summer by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools.  By denying BPC's decennial application for reaccreditation, SACS placed the school on warning last June and gave it one year to improve in several critical areas, including institutional effectiveness, financial stability, and having professors insufficiently qualified in the subjects in which they are teaching.

For now, BPC is saying it's disappointed:

MOUNT VERNON — Brewton-Parker College President Mike Simoneaux says he is “extremely disappointed” that the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools has placed the institution on academic probation and has failed to recognize the progress the college has made in the past year.

(The above quotation is the opening graf of the GBC's newspaper PR publication, the Christian Index. It's password protected, but I can't wait to see the full version to see how the fundamentalists try to spin this.)  Notice how President Simoneaux is trying to say that SACS has failed, not his fundamentalist Bible college.  It's natural to feel disappointed when you realize that your capitulation to fundamentalist demands is the nail in your institution's coffin and it happened on your watch.  A lot of other schools managed to retain their accreditation, in spite of horrible abuses suffered at the hands of fundamentalist trustees and administrators (Exhibit A: the SBC seminaries).  So it's not as if the national accrediting bodies have an agenda against religious institutions.  So it's easy to understand why President Simoneaux is saying he is "Embarrassed" is actually the proper reaction, but fundamentalists have no shame about what they are doing.

Once the accreditation battle is lost, a lot of post-Takeover schools eventually adopt a different line, and it's one I predict Simoneaux and his GBC college president colleagues Emir Caner and Don Dowless will be using soon enough.  They will say that they were presented with a choice between secular elites' vision and God's vision for how their institution should operate.  Since losing your accreditation is horribly embarrassing, they will turn it around and try to wear it as a badge of honor.  Then they'll pursue "accreditation" through one of several joke associations of fundamentalist schools such as the Association for Biblical Higher Education.  It's sad, but BPC seems to be far enough down this road that I doubt they can turn things around.  And it seems quite obvious that the true power brokers (GBC elites) don't even care.

Baptist College Race to the Bottom Moving to TN

From the earliest days of this blog, we've reported on the Georgia Baptist Convention's assalut on liberal arts education.  While there are a few state conventions that aren't even trying anymore (e.g., Louisiana, Florida), Georgia stands out the worst offender among Baptist conventions that either in pretense or in actuality claim to want to contribute meaningfully to the project of Christian higher education.  With GA's lesser Baptist colleges leaping headlong into fundamentalism, the GBC found the trustees and president it needed to force its flagship school, Shorter University, to join the others in a race to the bottom.

Our situation in Oklahoma is a little different because there is only one Baptist college.  So while it may be true that every dollar OBU gets from the BGCO is a dollar that BCMs, evangelism efforts, and Falls Creek goes without, at least OBU is not competing with other colleges for scarce funds.  In Georgia, Shorter gets about $2 million a year while Brewton-Parker and Truett-McConnell get about $1 million each.  Make no mistake: BPC and TMC would love to get their hands on a bigger piece of the GBC pie, and obviously have no qualms about trashing academic freedom and even respectability in order to do it.  Thus, Shorter is basically forced to do what it must to protect its share.  Unfortunately, Shorter's new president, Don Dowless, has been more than happy to oblige.

With more and more Baptist college presidents and trustees kowtowing to state convention fundamentalists, we're learning how ugly the political game can be.  The Tennessee Baptist Convention seems to have a decent relationship with Union University (which we profiled recently) and Carson-Newman College.  But it looks like things are going to get ugly in the Volunteer State.

The Tennessee Baptist Situation
The TBC is like Oklahoma and most other Baptist state conventions in many respects.  There is no competing fundamentalist convention as in Texas and Virginia.  So, fundamentalists and a few moderates coexist in the TBC, which has offices in suburban Nashville.  The convention sends about 15% of its budget to its two affiliated colleges (a little less than the BGCO sends to OBU).  Carson-Newman and Union get subsidies of $2.5 million apiece from the Cooperative Program.

These allocations grew after Belmont University left the TBC in 2007 following and ugly coup attempt by TBC fundamentalists.  In 2005, Belmont's trustees sought to have more autonomy from the TBC, but the convention rejected their plan and defunded the university, splitting Belmont's subsidy between the other two colleges.  But then the TBC attempted to replace the Belmont board with fundamentalists amenable to ongoing TBC control.  When talks broke down, the TBC demanded the return of every dime of subsidy money it ever gave Belmont -- $58 million.  The school and the convention settled out of court, with the school agreeing to pay back $11 million over 40 years. I guess freedom isn't free.  Belmont maintains a Christian identity, though no longer and exclusively Baptist one.

An Old Newcomer: Tennessee Temple University
Now, another once-crumbling fundamentalist college wants a piece of the TBC pie.  Tennessee Temple University, long an Independent Baptist institution affiliated with Highland Park Baptist Church in Chattanooga, wants back into the TBC.  Highland Park has sought to renew its SBC ties in recent years.  One pastor initiated the process of joining the local Baptist Association.  Another pastor continued the effort before he left to become dean of Liberty University's seminary.  The current pastor is a Southwestern Seminary graduate who previously served on staff of the alternative fundamentalist state conventions in Texas and Virginia.  Highland Park is asking Tennessee Baptists to assist in repairing a camp compound (church owned, not TBC owned) that was recently damaged by tornadoes.

Tennessee Temple's new president, Rev. Dr. Steve Echols, came to TTU from New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary.  He shares Highland Park's desire to get a TBC subsidy for Tennessee Temple, and appears willing to throw Union and Carson-Newman under the bus in order to do it:

When Echols assumed leadership at Tennessee Temple, one of his priorities was for the school's trustees to adopt the Baptist Faith and Message 2000. The school's April 30 spring graduation will include a formal ceremony in which all of the faculty sign the Southern Baptist statement of beliefs.  

"So our entire faculty has already agreed to be in line with the Baptist Faith and Message," Echols said. "We still have our belief statements that we've had all along, but we feel like the Baptist Faith and Message is in harmony with that. So I think that speaks pretty strongly. There aren't many schools doing that. We want to say to Southern Baptists, 'This is a safe place to send your students, theologically'" (emphasis mine).

It is unseemly to say the least for Echols to imply that Southern Baptists should send their children to TTU because other Christian colleges -- maybe even other Baptist schools -- aren't "theologically safe."

Leaders, faculty, and students at Carson-Newman and Union need to watch out.  Echols and Tennessee Temple need that Tennessee Baptist subsidy for their fledgling school really badly.  They are going around telling everyone how extra Southern Baptist they are.  Unlike Union and Carson-Newman, they'll never have to worry about academic respectability or accreditation, neither of which it has ever had.

But if the lessons of Georgia are any indication, TTU will have no problem engaging the others in a race to the bottom.  Union and Carson-Newman have enough problems trying to remain viable academic institutions without upsetting the fundamentalists who control the TBC.  The last thing they need is competition from Tennessee Temple.  Depending how vigorously TTU wants to compete for scarce TBC funds, things could get very ugly again in Tennessee.  Just ask our friends in Georgia.

Lessons for OBU
Frankly, I find the Belmont story more interesting and relevant than TTU.  While I would love nothing more than for some fundamentalist college to spring up and woo the BGCO until the convention drops us, I don't see any viable competition.  So at least we can be thankful we aren't in a race to the bottom.

But the Belmont example is instructive.  First, it shows how obsessive fundamentalists are about control.  They don't want to give a penny to anything they can't fully control.  Second, we see that it's also largely about money.  If OBU ever actually got the opportunity to disaffiliate from the BGCO, we would have to pay back huge sums of cash.  In our case, we would also have to buy the buildings and grounds, since the convention owns them.  But the Belmont case illustrates that a reasonable compromise settlement could be reached and that no court would rule that we have to pay back tens of millions of dollars.  Given that OBU has an endowment nearing nine figures that is completely independent of BGCO control, I still say the price of disaffiliating is a bargain to be free from outside coercion and control forever.

Shaking free from the BGCO wouldn't even hurt OBU's endowment as badly as one moderate recession.  And once we expand our constituency beyond Oklahoma Baptist life to the broader spectrum of American evangelicalism, we would eventually bring in many, many new donors.  Academic freedom would be secure.  The BGCO could spend on ministry priorities that are actually consistent with its mission.  Faculty would be better off.  Students would be better off.  Alumni would be better off.  It's a win-win-win-win-win-win-win-win-win!

Vigilance is Necessary.

Yesterday, I explained a bit of my personal reasoning for blogging: it is currently for me the best way that I can see to do the right thing.

Today, I want to continue in explanation of my own motivation. We have said it many times on this blog, but I really don't think it goes without saying. I cannot emphasize enough the importance of our keeping vigilance over our dear school.

Something that has struck me in almost all of the stories we have seen/heard about schools and other institutions suffering fallout from the fundamentalist takeover is the swiftness with which the changes occur.

I never thought about it until I started reading about it in other schools, but the downward spiral is truly just that. Devastation can come to a great university seemingly overnight. And it does not take long for that devastation to spiral out of control.

If you have not read the account given by former Shorter University trustee Larry Burgess, I suggest you do. Jacob highlighted some of the main points, but the tale is truly awe-inspiring... in the worst way. Several times when reading it my jaw just dropped. Literally.

Here's what is still so surprising to me: a small number of people who are only mildly affiliated with a school can lie and threaten their way into driving that school past unaccreditation straight into the ground.

Larry Burgess was continually surprised at the dirty-handed tactics used by the convention, but frankly, I was too. It shouldn't be surprising. I have seen and heard of it too many times. It is the same story told in different places and voices about those looking to guard "orthodoxy" and the incredible means they will pursue in order to find it.

It happens so fast.

And if no one is watching, it will happen right before our eyes.

Changes already happened quickly at OBU! In my short time there I saw one president leave, the approximately one year interim presidency, and the beginning of the current administration-- but before I left, one person had already been fired. It took less than two years. The current BGCO-friendly administration has been there for only 3 and a half years and already we have had enough things to fill nearly six months of blog. AND, that is with extreme faculty and student resistance.

That has not been the only swift change. In 2009, OBU ranked #109 in Forbes best colleges. Now, we have dropped to #299. In those two years, OBU has been surpassed by nearly 200 schools. That is an almost 200% drop.

When students and faculty are no longer respected in favor of catering to the fundamentalist Baptist elites, the good ones start figuring out that it's time to leave.

That could happen soon. And then we would have nothing. And when you read someone's testimony about how it happened so quickly, it would surprise you. But it shouldn't.

But if we can keep up vigilance, hopefully, we can stop the cycle.

Accreditation: What Fundamentalism Eventually Costs You

Lots of bad things happen at universities when fundamentalism is pervasive.  Quality faculty members are dismissed.  Core curriculum areas are gutted.  Mainstream books are censored.  All these things and more have happened at OBU just in the past few years.  But take the long view.  Imagine what OBU will look like in 10 or 20 years if these radical changes continue at their current pace.  Since fundamentalists took over Southern Baptist institutional life in the 1980s, more than a few Baptist colleges have struggled to maintain their accreditation.  (Though technically secular in nature, the accrediting bodies are exceedingly tolerant of the religious nature of Christian schools' mission.)

Accrediting bodies exist to establish and uphold some basic threshold of financial integrity, academic quality, managerial competence, and physical plant maintenance and repair.  At good schools, these issues are never problems: there is significant institutional coordination to ensure that all these basic standards are met.  At crumbling institutions, however, these standards are never a given.  And fundamentalists are often so obsessed with making their institutions "pure" that they forget how to make them run smoothly and properly.

Take, for example, Louisiana College.  For decades, Louisiana College was a fine Baptist liberal arts university.  Former OBU Interim President Robert L. Lynn served as president from the mid-70s to the mid-90s.  As recently as a decade ago, it was dreaming of one day building a medical school.  Like so many others, though, it was hijacked by fundamentalists.  I don't presume to know the whole history, but the death knell came in 2005 over a dispute about presidential selection.  A president had recently retired and trustees had enacted fundamentalist policies restricting academic freedom.  The search committee's first choice, an administrator at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, withdrew his name from consideration because the governance situation was so awful.  The committee's second choice, Stan Norman, did not even get a chance because a reconstituted committee usurped the original committee's authority and elected Joe Aguillard, one of the school's most conservative professors, as president.  (But let the record show that as early as 2005, Stan Norman wanted to be the president of a nominally accredited fundamentalist college.)  The faculty voted overwhelmingly to oppose Aguillard's nomination, but he was installed anyway.  Due to the disastrous governance problems, the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools put Louisiana College on probation.

What has happened at LC in the meantime?  Nothing good.  Dozens of faculty have resigned in protest.  Academic freedom is nonexistent.  One former professor laments, "Education has been replaced by indoctrination.  They've made it clear that you will do nothing but advocate the fundamentalist position, or you're not welcome here."  Even a former president of the stridently conservative Council for Christian Colleges and Universities said, "The state conventions in the Southern Baptist world own the colleges, and there's a sense of wanting them to adhere to the theological positions of the Baptist Church and not always understanding the meaning of liberal education."

Finally, in 2011, one professor courageously spoke out and sued the college over his termination.  (OBU is lucky it has avoided such lawsuits -- not so much for substantive reasons but because of the tremendous amount of bad press it would have generated.)  The wrongfully terminated Louisiana College professor's case is typical: under fundamentalist leadership, speaking out against restrictive academic policies will not be tolerated.  Now, Louisiana College is once again in trouble with its accrediting body, as this letter details.

Their "Save Our LC" movement is a bit more in-your-face than Save OBU, but who can blame them?  Their situation is even more dire.

I don't mean to sound alarmist.  OBU is in no immediate danger of losing its accreditation.  We're on relatively solid ground financially (even without the BGCO's subsidy, I'd argue).  But I hope you can see the parallels with Louisiana College's story, which began with fundamentalists taking control of the Louisiana Baptist Convention and stacking the college's Board of Trustees with loyalists.  If nothing changes, this is the road we're on, friends.  Look around you -- some of the telltale signs are already evident: fundamentalism is now a litmus test in personnel decisions; academic freedom is being squelched; dissent among faculty is not tolerated; state convention elites drive the agenda.  OBU is a long way from a Louisiana College-like implosion.  But make no mistake: it's where we are headed, and it's happening faster than many people realize.

Sometimes when you create master's programs, add athletic teams, and launch capital campaigns, you forget the basics: a solid, balanced, moderate liberal arts education.  From the outside, it looks like progress.  But when appeasing fundamentalist power brokers is a constant duty of administrators, students and faculty suffer.  At least now we have a presumably independent-minded Board of Trustees.  But if they ever started exerting that independence, Anthony Jordan would just replace them with sworn fundamentalist loyalists.  It's a difficult balancing act, but we simply must fight for an OBU free from BGCO governance.  The OBU/BGCO partnership has long outlived its usefulness, and will eventually destroy the former and be a huge financial burden on the latter.