Dr. Whitlock Blocks @SaveOBU_Blog on Twitter

Funny how things change.

Previously, our Twitter account had been blocked by Truett-McConnell College President Emir Caner after we criticized him for shepherding the fundamentalist takeover of a troubled Georgia Baptist Convention-affiliated school.  (Last fall, they had a big ceremony headlined by Paige Patterson in which all faculty signed the 2000 Baptist Faith and Message.)  Yet recently, Rev. Dr. Caner unblocked us!

Closer to home, however, we now find ourselves blocked from following OBU President David Whitlock on Twitter.  Off the top of my head, I can only think of two things I learned by following Rev. Dr. Whitlock.  First, OBU's board of trustees has (had?) two M.D./Ph.D. medical researchers.  I thought this was great news -- the fewer people affiliated with a university who believe in young earth creationism the better!  We may now take flat young earthers in the Hobbs College of Theology and Ministry, but hopefully we can still keep these people off the Board of Trustees.  The second thing I learned from Whitlock via Twitter is that he was "proud" that a junior religion prof "represented OBU" at the Baptist World Alliance gathering this summer.  I was, of course, shocked that Whitlock would publicly defy all the SBC leaders over the years who so openly loathe the BWA (for its alleged liberalism and, of course, the unpardonable sin of admitting the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship as a member).  But as far as I was concerned, it was just more proof that deep down, David Whitlock is not a post-Takeover Baptist culture warrior/crusader who is trying to cleanse the world of moderates.  Still, I guess I should say: Sorry, Dr. Whitlock, if you had to endure a talking to from your boss-who's-not-really-your-boss-but-kind-of-is-your-boss Anthony Jordan or any of the other SBC elites who may have decided to set you straight about the evils of the Baptist World Alliance.

Just for fun, I'd like to ask everyone to attempt to follow Dr. Whitlock on Twitter.  See if he deigns you worthy to read his updates.  I'm curious to find out who else is on the outs with him.  Did you ask a tough question at a "Fireside Chat" last year about why your favorite religion profs are disappearing?  Were you in last spring's production of Hairspray (which prompted a certain dean to end OBU's longstanding collaboration with Shawnee Little Theater)? Or does Whitlock just not handle criticism very well?  What does it take to be denied access to 140 characters of someone's thoughts?  I'd like to know.

For the uninitiated, Twitter is a lot of fun!  Until I founded Save OBU, I had never used it before.  Since last December, our account @SaveOBU_Blog has been an invaluable tool for communicating with friends and foes alike.  I even started a personal account (@jlupf) so I could end the awkwardness of having the culture wars fought on my Facebook page.  (Facebook was a lot more fun before everyone's parents and grandparents joined and, in any event, at my age it should only be used for sharing cute baby pictures.)

Dr. Whitlock, I thought you were unflappable.  I actually didn't know we'd made any kind of impact on you, let alone gotten under your skin.  Still, even though I don't know you, I believe in my heart you're the kind of guy I'd love to have a beer (or a Dr. Pepper) with.  And even though Save OBU can't follow you on Twitter, if you're ever in Washington, I've got a $250 donation (the real D.C. way...) if we can hang out and talk OBU's mission and direction sometime.

And the first round's on me.

OBU Prof Attends Baptist World Alliance Meeting

Last month OBU's president, the Rev. Dr. David Whitlock, approvingly tweeted that an OBU religion professor represented OBU at the Baptist World Alliance's annual gathering.  This may seem innocuous enough.  But it actually reveals quite a lot about a) how out-of-step today's fundamentalist SBC elites are with the Baptist tradition throughout the world, b) how David Whitlock is still finding his way among that elite, and c) the delicate and difficult balancing act Rev. Dr. Stan Norman, with Whitlock's backing, has created for faculty to actually do legitimate scholarly and ecumenical work while also staying in the new regime's good graces.

The SBC and the BWA
As the Takeover progressed into the 1990s, hostility toward the Baptist World Alliance among SBC power brokers increased.  I have tried to stay away from secular politics on this blog, and the SBC pullout of the BWA had a lot to do with the convention's new commitment to conservative politics.  Please pardon me for not delving into the whole back story in this post.  Perhaps I (or someone else) will tell the story in another post or series.  But you can read about it here, here, and here.

Long story short: The BWA was formed in the early 1900s, largely through SBC support.  During the 20th century, the BWA participated in the worldwide ecumenical movement through the World Council of Churches and other organizations.  The BWA came to stand for ecumenism, social justice, the separation of church and state and unity in diversity.  As all Baptists used to be, the BWA opposes creedalism.  So, as you might imagine, the SBC's new powerful men hated pretty much everything the BWA had worked nearly a century to champion.  The fundamentalist SBC machine launched a smear campaign, making the BWA a liberal/communist/socialist/secularist bogeyman.  Messengers to the 2004 SBC meeting voted to sever ties with the BWA.

Whitlock Still Finding His Way
Given all that, I sure was surprised to see President Whitlock so enthusiastic that one of OBU's junior professors was attending the BWA gathering (held last month in Santiago, Chile).  Anyone paying the least bit of attention to SBC life over the past 15 years would know that the BWA is anathema to the new SBC.  For instance, Baptist college presidents like Union's David Dockery and Truett-McConnell's Emir Caner would know this.  The good news is that Whitlock apparently did not know.

It turns out there are have been a lot of things Whitlock did not know.  Current and former faculty have described him to me as "theologically naive" and "theologically, an infant."  Several people recalled that, while appearing at the First Baptist Church of Oklahoma City, Whitlock seemed innocently clueless about why relations between that congregation and the BGCO have been so tense over the years.

Now, under normal circumstances, you would not want words like "clueless" and "naive" to apply to a college president.  But when you consider that we're dealing with a post-Takeover state convention-run Baptist college, it's actually a huge blessing for us. Ninety-nine times out of 100, we would have ended up with a Takeover henchman as OBU president when David Whitlock was elected in 2008.  I would have expected a true believer like Stan Norman -- someone who knew well why the BGCO hates FBC OKC and why the SBC elites hate the BWA.

The fact that we got someone who may actually be more interested in the competent administration of an institution than taking the Baptist wars to Bison Hill is a huge blessing.  Or maybe the BGCO colluded to get a naive figurehead at the top and a hatchet man like Stan Norman to do the dirty work.

In the past two years, and certainly at the past two SBC annual meetings, Whitlock has gotten a taste for what it means to be an SBC elite man, an insider.  Lets hope he doesn't find it intoxicating.  But I'm afraid they've seduced him.

The Trouble They've Created
The absolute last thing I want to do is create any trouble for the assistant professor who went to the BWA gathering.  For all I know, he could have been going an as observer to write articles in third-rate fundamentalist "journals" about how evil the BWA is.  Or he could have been doing legitimate scholarly research.  Or he could have attended out of personal or professional commitments.  I simply don't know and don't want to speculate.

But it does raise an important issue.  How has the new regime affected the kinds of scholarly work OBU faculty members conduct?  Once the news about this professor's attendance at the BWA gathering gets around, will College of Theology and Ministry Dean Mark McClellan institute rules about what kinds of conferences OBU religion faculty can attend with university funding?  At this point, nothing would surprise me.  I just hope these capable scholars will continue to pursue their vocation, either at OBU or somewhere more supportive of academic freedom, open inquiry, and commitment to the scholarly enterprise.

Credit Where Credit is Due
I'm not sure if I've mentioned this before, but I've received a lot of flack from supporters and friends for being too easy on Dr. Whitlock.  I can't even remember how many people have said, essentially, "Even if Provost Norman is the culprit in institutionalizing fundamentalism at OBU, Whitlock is complicit.  He's the president and he has the power to reign Stan in, tell Stan it's time to move on, etc.  If he wanted to, Whitlock could stay out of SBC politics and claim the mantle of Raley, Scales, Cothen, Tanner, Hall, and Agee, all of whom stood for academic freedom and all of whom would be aghast at what has occurred under his watch.."

If we reject the naivete hypothesis and take President Whitlock at his word, then we simply have a leader who expressed pride that a junior faculty member took part in a gathering of Baptists from around the world.  But in doing so, Whitlock publicly repudiated every single SBC power player of the past 15 years -- from Rev. Dr. Paige Patterson on down the line -- all of whom are on record as absolutely loathing the Baptist World Alliance.

And if Dr. Whitlock has what it takes to stand up to that crowd, then maybe there's hope.

Post-Takeover SBC Presidents: Mayors of Crazy Town?

Last weekend, OBU sent a delegation to New Orleans to award SBC President-in-Waiting Fred Luter an honorary Doctor of Divinity.  For 30 years after the Takeover, it was not OBU's practice to give out honorary degrees to SBC climbers and elites.  Yet in the past month, we have given honorary doctorates to two SBC presidents.  If anything, we should be keeping our distance from modern SBC leadership, which has collectively had a disastrous effect on academic freedom and Baptist distinctives over the past 30 years.  Yet the David Whitlock Administration seems to be wasting no opportunity to cozy up to SBC elites.

So let's take a look at this prestigious fraternity.  Chances are you'll recognize some, if not most, of the names.

Note that some of the events and statements reported below did not take place during that man's tenure as SBC president.  Rather, the point is being fundamentalist and obsessive about political control and domination are prerequisites for the job.  Being a little crazy usually helps, too.  The recent presidents haven't been nearly as bad as the earlier ones.  But then again, the first generation presidents did most of the dirty work.  Nowadays, all the boards and institutions have already been pretty much destroyed.  You can read about most of these guys in this handy online guide: 30 People, 7 Boards, 2 Committees, and 1 News Service Who Screwed Up the Southern Baptist Convention.


Rev. Adrian Rogers, TN (1979-1980)
After several years of planning by Takeover architects, Rogers's election signaled the beginning of the end for moderates in the SBC.

Rev. Bailey Smith, OK (1980-1982)
Tom Elliff's brother-in-law was special indeed.  He claimed to know the limits of divine hearing, insisting "God Almighty does not hear the prayer of a Jew."  Just for kicks, he also quipped, "I don't know why God chose the Jew, they have such funny noses."  I really hope Rev. Smith's sister dated a few Jewish guys before she married Tom Elliff.

Rev. Jimmy Draper, TX (1982-1984)
As SBC president, he continued the practice of appointing only fundamentalists to denominational boards and agencies.  Later, as president of the Sunday School Board, he purged that organization of moderates through more than 100 early retirements and forced resignations.

Rev. Dr. Charles Stanley, GA (1984-1986)
He wasn't quite as much of a one-man wrecking ball as some of the other early Takeover presidents.  But he dutifully appointed only fundamentalists to SBC boards and agencies.  Stanley cashed in on his SBC fame and made a boatload of money writing devotional books.

Rev. Adrian Rogers, TN (1986-1988)
Even after his second stint as SBC president, Rogers continued to be active in the Takeover.  Regarding his desire to police what SBC seminary professors taught, Rogers said "If we say pickles have souls, they better teach that pickles have souls!"  Rogers also advocated that the WMU be "hardwired" into the convention's power structure -- in other words, that the convention strip the power of electing WMU board members from the state WMU organizations.  Also, Rogers spearheaded a 1992 meeting where fundamentalists, having taken over the SBC, turned their sights on state conventions.  Tellingly, this was shortly before Anthony Jordan and other fundamentalists led the BGCO to censure former Executive Director-Treasurer Joe Ingram for "consorting with moderates."

Rev. Dr. Jerry Vines, FL (1988-1990)
As SBC president, he continued the fundamentalist practice of appointing only like-minded people to SBC boards and agencies.  You probably know Vines best for his description of the Prophet Mohammed as a "demon possessed pedophile."  When pushed Vines cited a book by (now) Truett-McConnell College President Emir Caner (and his brother Ergun, who was demoted from Liberty University's administration for lying repeatedly about his life story and testimony).

Rev. Dr. Morris Chapman, TX (1990-1992)
Nominated for the SBC presidency by OBU alum Rev. Dr. John Bisagno, an influential pastor who had previously said he was neutral in the controversy.  Chapman exemplified the growing hatred of moderates, informing the Baptist World Alliance that the SBC would be pulling out of the international Baptist body because it had admitted the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship as a member.

Rev. Ed Young, TX (1992-1994)
More of the same.  Particularly bad on church-state issues, reflecting the new normal for the SBC.  It was on Young's watch that the SBC defunded the Baptist Joint Committee on Public Affairs.

Rev. Dr. Jim Henry, FL (1994-1996)
The closest thing to a moderate the SBC presidency has seen since the Takeover began in 1979.  As far as I know, he has not done or said anything too wacky.

Rev. Dr. Tom Elliff, OK (1996-1998)
Elliff continued the purge and marginalization of moderates.  By now, you probably know about his comparison of moderates Baptists to barnacles on a ship.  He recently spoke at OBU's commencement. To preserve decorum, the parasites seated on the platform behind him (OBU faculty) applauded politely.  He has received two honors from OBU in the past year: the First Annual Herschel H. Hobbs Award for Distinguished Denominational Service and an honorary doctorate.  Elliff now leads the SBC's International Mission Board, where liberty of the conscience once existed.

Rev. Dr. Paige Patterson, TX (1998-2000)
As president of Criswell College in the late 1970s, Patterson and Paul Pressler, a Houston judge and Baptist layman, formulated the original Takeover plan.  Noting the massive appointive power of the SBC presidency, Patterson and Pressler realized that if a few fundamentalist presidents exclusively appointed fundamentalists to the denomination's boards and agencies, the whole organization would be thoroughly fundamentalist in just a decade or so.  They were right.

Rev. Dr. James Merritt, GA (2000-2002)
Although Merritt dutifully exercised his expected post-Takeover duties, some Baptist elites and commentators didn't find him to be extreme enough.  Merritt's son, Jonathan, is a popular cultural commentator who is somewhat less reflexively pro-Religious Right than most SBC elites.  The prospect of the younger Merritt acceding to his father's pulpit someday horrifies some fundamentalists.

Rev. Dr. Jack Graham, TX (2002-2004)
About what you would expect.  Graham oversaw the SBC's withdrawal from the Baptist World Alliance.  Perhaps most bizarrely, he supported a resolution at the 2004 SBC that called on Southern Baptists to remove their children from public schools.

Rev. Dr. Bobby Welch, FL (2004-2006)
Welch was one of the relatively normal ones.  But given how far that goalpost has moved, that's not really saying much.  Whereas other past presidents cashed in on their notoriety by writing books, Welch has snagged several plum positions in the SBC and state convention hierarchies.

Rev. Dr. Frank Page, SC (2006-2008)
Like his successors, Page obeyed the post-Takeover playbook and did the requisite Religious Right politicking.  And like Welch, he managed to parlay his success into some nice, influential pre-retirement positions.  Currently, Dr. Page is president of the SBC's Executive Committee, the powerful body that represents the SBC between its annual meetings.

Rev. Johnny Hunt, GA (2008-2010)
The accuracy of Hunt's resume sparked some controversy around the time of his election.  But if legitimizing degree mills is the worst thing contemporary SBC presidents do, then I guess things could be worse.  And pretty soon, a lot of once-great Baptist colleges may indeed become degree mills.

Rev. Bryant Wright, GA (2010-2012)
Wright has had the misfortune of presiding over several P.R. blunders, including the SBC name change debate and the fallout from SBC Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission President Richard Land's plagiarized racist comments about Trayvon Martin, a young black man shot to death earlier this year by a white neighborhood watch patrolman.  But if recent history is any guide, Wright will find a nice, six-figure pre-retirement retirement at some SBC agency or institution.

Rev. Fred Luter, LA (2012-2014)
So, given the less-than-illustrious history of his 16 most recent predecessors, can you understand why we're a little skeptical about David Whitlock's decision to give Luter an honorary doctorate?  Every indication is that Luter will stand firmly in line with the post-Takeover status quo, which has created a horrible environment for what few legitimate Baptist educational institutions remain.  Why are we ingratiating ourselves to SBC politicians when there are so many leaders who have stood with integrity for academic freedom and true Baptist distinctives that we could honor?

Note to members of Franklin Avenue Baptist Church, New Orleans: We here at Save OBU sincerely hope this award ceremony did not encroach on your Sunday worship.  We realize that Pastor Luter has absolutely no relevant connections to Oklahoma Baptist University other than its administrators' desire to be in the good graces of a powerful figure.  But by now you are used to people cozying up to your pastor for no other reason than his position in SBC politics.  Sorry for the charade.

A Review: The Center of a Christian Worldview

This week, we are reviewing a series of essays in the Baptist Messenger (BGCO newspaper P.R. publication) on the concept of Christian worldview.  Five of the 6 commentaries are written by new (Whitlock-era) religion faculty and administrators.  Other posts in the series include:

• Will the Real Christian Worldview Please Stand Up? (Intro)
• "Christian Worldview and Divine Revelation" (Rev. Dr. Mark McClellan, Dean and Professor)
• "The Importance and Impact of Worldview" (Rev. Dr. Tawa Anderson, Assistant Professor)
• "The Creationist Worldview According to the Bible" (Rev. Dr. Ishwaran Mudliar, Associate Professor)
• "A Christian Worldview and Human Sinfulness" (Rev. Dr. Stan Norman, Provost and Executive Vice President for Campus Life)

This is the only article in the Baptist Messenger's worldview series not written by an OBU professor or administrator.  I don't know anything about Prof. Wilder or his work other than what can be gleaned from his online SWBTS profile.  As post-Takeover SBC seminary professors go, he's definitely one of the legitimate ones committed to scholarship over Baptist politics.  He is a member of the mainstream Society of Biblical Literature, which fundamentalist "scholars" regard as apostate.  But he hasn't been involved with the SBL in over a decade, instead aiming his scholarship mostly toward evangelical and fundamentalist publications and conferences.  On a personal note, Wilder's son will be attending Union University in the fall.  (Which brings up an interesting idea: Just as fewer OBU ministry and religion grads than you would expect go on to the post-Takeover SBC seminaries, I bet shockingly few SBC seminary professors send their children to OBU -- but that's another question for another day.)

After the absolutely shameful treatment Randall Lolley, Roy Honeycutt, Russell Dilday and other SBC seminary administrators and faculty received from fundamentalists in the Takeover years, I have a build-in prejudice against people who have chosen to affiliate themselves with these institutions in the post-Takeover era.  But Prof. Wilder was studying in the U.K. and teaching at Midwestern seminary (the "least bad" of the 6 SBC seminaries, I'm told) during those years.  He's only been at Southwestern since 2010.  Hey, everyone needs a job -- even Baptist academics whose careers unfortunately (and by no fault of their own) overlapped with the SBC's deliberate degradation of its own educational institutions.  I wouldn't work for (SWBTS President and original SBC Takeover architect) Paige Patterson for all the gold in China.  But I'm going to give Wilder the benefit of the doubt.  He's done significant service to Baptists and to his profession over many years.

His worldview essay is concise, clear, and about what you would expect.  Wilder refers back to essays by Tawa Anderson and Stan Norman to help bring some internal coherence to the series.  In opposition to previous essays that regard the Bible, not Christ, as God's supreme revelation, Wilder maintains that Christ is at the center of the Christian worldview.  Sensibly, he qualifies this by saying "a thoroughgoing view of the world must operate from a biblical standpoint."  At the end, however, Wilder ups the ante on Bible-as-revelation: "The will of God is grounded in and upon the written revelation of the Bible."  It seems like a lot of Baptist leaders today want to demote Christ from the Trinity and put the Bible in his place (ESV or HCSB translations preferred).  Still, I think Wilder finds a better balance between God, Christ, and Scripture than the others, who seem to say "God so loved the world that He gave us the Bible, and whosoever reads it the same way I do is a real Christian."

Another subtle but significant difference in Wilder's writing is his occasional use of the indefinite article: "A Christian worldview."  He lapses into "the Christian worldview" later on, but he seems willing to at least partially acknowledge that there is no one definitive "Christian worldview," and nowhere does he imply that he has a monopoly on how to define it.  So, that's refreshing.

Wilder contrasts "a Christian worldview" with a variety of other philosophies and -isms.  But he maintains that if we do not adopt a Christian worldview "we will follow whatever system or combination of beliefs are trendy, meet our needs or satisfy our desires or passions, and they are usually those which hold us least accountable for our actions and decisions."  This statement is pretty surprising and even insulting.  First of all, the prevalence of "cheap grace" in contemporary evangelicalism makes the idea that no one outside the Christian fold has any notion of moral or ethical accountability completely laughable.  Furthermore, this kind of holier-than-thou attitude is precisely the kind of thing that drives people away from Christianity.  Many (if not most) non-Christians live with a very deliberate and rigorous moral seriousness.  It's beyond insulting (and factually untrue) to imply that they are unaccountable hedonists living according to the whims of their desires and "trendy" belief systems.

To his credit, Wilder locates Christ at the center of the Christian worldview.  You'd think this would go without saying, but with today's en vogue Southern Baptist intellectuals, nothing surprises me anymore.  Yet Wilder emphasizes Jesus' death, apparently to the exclusion of his life and teachings (at least in this brief essay): "I would maintain that it is the person of Jesus Christ and what He has done on the cross that leads us to see the world from a Christian perspective."  Personally, I'd like a Christian worldview to at least acknowledge major emphases of Jesus' teachings: neighbor love, the kingdom of God, the Sermon on the Mount, etc.  But in today's SBC, if you have the audacity to insist on the teachings of Jesus, they just label you a liberal and cast you out.

Thank you, Professor Wilder, for contributing to the Baptist Messenger "worldview" series.  We're reviewing the series in the context of our ongoing concerns about OBU's troubling new direction, mutually draining relationship with the BGCO, and true mission and calling in the context of post-Takeover Baptist higher education.  Since you're only tangentially involved in our specific concerns, we trust you will take our comments with a grain of salt and hopefully some grace.  Best wishes to you in your life, teaching, and ministry.

From the Archives: Downward Spiral Series

In mid-April, just days before my daughter was born, we did a series of posts on the Georgia Baptist Convention's successful effort at engaging its three colleges in a race toward Bible-academy status and academic irrelevance.  We began and ended with arguments for how Save OBU will have a vital role in preventing the same pathetic fate in Oklahoma Baptist life.

First, we examined the case of Truett-McConnell College in Cleveland, GA.  Though never as prominent as Mercer or even Shorter, TMC is newly invigorated with fundamentalist leadership.  Its new president, Emir Caner, was the founding dean of the College at Southwestern, an undergraduate program at the Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Ft. Worth.  Caner's book Unveiling Islam (coauthored with his brother) was the source of former SBC President and Pastor Emeritus of FBC Jacksonville, FL Jerry Vines's 2002 assertion that the Prophet Mohammed was a "demon-possessed pedophile."  Caner, an adult convert from Islam, is considered a rising star in what remains of Southern Baptist academia.  Caner happily obliged the GBC's desire to institutionalize fundamentalism at TMC, instituting a policy that all faculty sign the 2000 Baptist Faith and Message.  TMC even staged a huge celebration of their descent into creedalism during which Rev. Dr. Paige Patterson, architect of the Fundamentalist Takeover, was the keynote speaker.  Somehow we ran afoul of Caner, though, as evidenced by the fact that he blocked Save OBU from his Twitter feed.  Oh well.  I guess the truth hurts.

Next, we looked at Brewton-Parker College in Mount Vernon, GA.  If TMC was willing to accede to fundamentalist designs for the school, BPC has been willing to one-up TMC in every way.  Whereas TMC still has designs of being a legitimate, accredited college, BPC has pretty much given up and become a fundamentalist Bible academy.  There seems to be little evidence that anyone in the GBC or in BPC leadership even cares if the college loses its accreditation, which seems a near certainty at this point.

Our Downward Spiral post on Shorter University in Rome, GA was one of the most widely-read in the Save OBU blog's history.  We've discussed Shorter's situation at length elsewhere, but in this series we discussed the notion that the GBC's direction and the other two schools' willingness to abandon academic freedom and all semblances of legitimacy has made it even more difficult for Shorter.  In the fight for finite GBC funds, these colleges seem to be locked in a race to the bottom.

Moving on from Georgia, we have elsewhere suggested that the race-to-the-bottom dynamic is now at work in Tennessee.  Tennessee Temple University, an Independent Baptist college affiliated with Highland Park Baptist Church in Chattanooga now wants back into the Tennessee Baptist Convention. But the TBC already subsidizes two Baptist colleges, Union University in Jackson and Carson-Newman College in Jefferson City.  TTU's president, Rev. Dr. Steve Echols, has even suggested that by forcing all faculty to sign the Baptist Faith and Message, TTU is "theologically safe," implying that Tennessee's other Baptist schools are not.  We'll keep you posted as this situation develops.

OBU Shows True Colors in Commencement Speaker Choice

The current leadership of OBU knows it's stuck in the middle of two constituencies whose interests are irreconcilable.  One the one side are almost all faculty, most students and many alumni -- people who cherish historic Baptist freedoms, liberty of the conscience, and academic freedom in particular.  On the other, you have fundamentalist pastors, BGCO power brokers, some students, and many alumni -- people who support the SBC's headlong descent into fundamentalism and authoritarianism, and who would like to see those trends accelerate at OBU.

Invariably, these two camps are going to be in perpetual conflict over the governance and administration of our beloved university.  Administrators have to appease both sides.  Our side has gotten steamrolled the past two years, sustaining blow after blow.  But recently, we realized that the various protests have had a collective impact, and we claimed a minor victory.

But one recent high-profile decision illustrates very clearly who's side OBU's power players are really on. We didn't hear until two days ago, but obviously it's been in the works for some time for the Rev. Dr. Tom Elliff to give the commencement address on Friday and receive an honorary degree from OBU.

As a former missionary, retired large church pastor, past SBC president, and current International Mission Board president, Dr. Elliff is without question a distinguished and significant figure in Baptist life -- particularly Oklahoma Baptist life -- and the school has every right to honor his achievements.

Still, Elliff's presence will upset many, and we feel he was a very controversial choice.  If the president truly values and honors his faculty and is serious about his commitment to do right by them in the future, I do not know how he could have made this insulting choice.  Dr. Elliff's career spanned the entirety of the Fundamentalist Takeover and its aftermath, and Elliff has been relentless in his faithfulness to the fundamentalists' agenda in SBC life.  Like SBC presidents before and after him, Elliff used his two terms in office (1996-1998) to ensure that only fundamentalists were appointed to SBC boards and agencies, gleefully making moderate Baptists exiles and outcasts in their own denomination.

I truly do not understand the current administration's obsession with praising Elliff.  Less than a year ago, they gave him the first annual "Herschel H. Hobbs Award for Distinguished Denominational Service" at last year's Southern Baptist Convention.  This new award, besides demeaning Hobbs's distinguished legacy (many of today's SBC leaders booed Hobbs at the 1980 Southern Baptist Convention), seems like it was designed to ingratiate SBC fundamentalist power brokers to OBU.

Now, a packed Raley Chapel commencement audience will have to abide OBU conferring an honorary degree on someone who believes moderates in the SBC are "barnacles" and "parasites."  That's right.  In his final address as president of the SBC in 1998, Elliff boasted to incoming President Paige Patterson that "all barnacles and parasites had been removed from the Ship of Zion."  The reference was to the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship and other moderate Baptist groups.  How awkward it will be as Elliff is speaking to know that he holds such vehement disdain for the overwhelming majority of the hooded and robed professors sitting behind him.

He may as well turn around and call them parasites to their faces.  Which unfortunately is the nice version of what the BGCO thinks of some of these very fine people, who at least for the moment are safe because President Whitlock has learned that it's hard to dismiss faculty "in a winsome way."  Without question, Elliff was instrumental in the saving of many souls and the maintenance of many institutions.  But a lot of Baptists -- good, faithful Baptists -- have suffered because of him.  In addition to the 35 year veteran of the Southern Seminary library who lost his job because he dared correct inaccuracies in one of Elliff's speeches, a lot of clergy and lay investors were screwed out of their savings when Elliff, as pastor of First Baptist Church of Del City, asked bondholers to forgive the church's debts.

Having Dr. Elliff speak wouldn't be so offensive if OBU invited one of the "parasites" once in a while, too.  But the fact that they have chosen to honor Elliff with not only the insultingly named Hobbs Award, but also with an honorary degree, unfortunately shows their true colors.  At the graduation, few students and hardly any parents will have any idea just what a controversial figure Elliff is.  But most OBU professors will be disappointed and feel dishonored.  And you can bet that Anthony Jordan will be sitting the platform with a huge smile on his face.  As long as the BGCO calls the shots at OBU, this dynamic will always be the same.  Administration will always ultimately side with them over us.

As for President Whitlock, he may as well stand up and give the middle finger to the assembled faculty he's supposedly been trying to win over this academic year after a disastrous start to his tenure.  Very few of them will be impressed that he wanted to honor such an vociferous advocate of fundamentalism's advance in BGCO and SBC life.

If I was graduating Friday, I would write "Parasite" in bold on the top of my graduation cap and encourage all my friends to do likewise.  But even if students wanted to protest having to hear from such a hater of moderates on their big day, I'm sure OBU is still conformist and authoritarian enough to find or create a rule against such protests.

I'm especially sad for faculty, many of whom are either moderate Baptists or stand in solidarity with moderate Baptists.  It's unfortunate that they have to hear from someone who so openly loathes them and all they hold dear.

The Downward Spiral: Truett-McConnell Faculty Succumbs to Creedalism

In this series, we are looking at what happens when once-strong Christian liberal arts universities are taken over by fundamentalists.  Invariably, state convention power brokers force administrators to degrade the academic quality and integrity of the institution, or else they nudge trustees into hiring administrators who will do the conventions' dirty work.  Yesterday, we celebrated that -- thanks to a large, diverse, and growing activist network -- OBU's devolution into a fundamentalist Bible academy appears to be slowing.

The Save OBU movement, as most of you know, comes on the heels of spirited protests by students, faculty, alumni, and retired faculty against the new and unprecedented direction OBU administrators seem to want to take our beloved University.  Acknowledging our debt to those thoughtful students, courageous faculty, concerned alumni, and angry retirees, we claimed a victory yesterday after 4+ months and 100+ blog posts:

OBU will not carry out any ideologically-motivated dismissals this summer.

We coud be wrong, of course.  But at this point, we just don't believe the political will exists for them to go through with it again.  I hate to dare them to try it.  But we are confident that, at this point, the costs outweigh the benefits.  Let's make sure it stays that way.  If we let up our guard for an instant, their agenda will continue apace...

Which brings me to the aim of our Downward Spiral series.  Over the next three days, we'll examine three Southern Baptist colleges whose fundamentalist transformations are much more advanced than OBU's.  The point is to demonstrate how these efforts get started, how the state conventions are always involved, and what to look out for to prevent these kinds of things from happening at our beloved OBU.

Truett-McConnell College (Cleveland, Georgia)
Named for longtime (and, ironically, relatively moderate) pastors in Dallas and Atlanta, TMC has been working hard to beef up and brandish its super-Baptist credentials since the Georgia Baptist Convention parted ways with Mercer University in 2007.  No matter how far to the fundamentalist side the GBC goes, TMC is ready to follow its lead.  The watershed year was 2009.  That year, TMC elected 37 year-old Emir Caner president.  Despite his relative youth, Caner had been a darling of the fundamentalists for some time.  A convert from Islam, Caner and his brother penned the book that former SBC President Jerry Vines cited when he claimed in 2002 that the Prophet Mohammed was a "demon-possessed pedophile."  Caner was the founding dean of the College at Southwestern, an undergraduate program at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Ft. Worth, TX.  Though they won't come right out and say it, the College was formed by fundamentalists stung by the loss they suffered in trying to take over the Baptist General Convention of Texas and its affiliated colleges.

Later in 2009, TMC trustees announced that they would require faculty assent to the Baptist Faith and Message, a creed confession of faith altered in 2000 to reflect more clearly today's Baptists' obsession with female subordination.  (Rev. Dr. Anthony Jordan, the top BGCO executive, chaired the committee that wrote the "Submissive Women" article (Article XXVIII) in the BFM.)  In order to give some broad context, I will quote liberally from Bob Allen's December 28, 2009 article in Associated Baptist Press:

CLEVELAND, Ga. (ABP) -- Truett-McConnell College in northeast Georgia plans to become the first Baptist college to require its faculty to affirm the Baptist Faith and Message as revised by the Southern Baptist Convention in 2000. 

[...] 

"The Georgia Baptist Convention and our churches deserve nothing less than a faculty that will abide by nothing less than the essentials of the faith," said Truett-McConnell President Emir Caner, according to the Georgia Baptist Christian Index. 

"Institutions that do not faithfully support the theology of Southern Baptists do not deserve the faithful support of Southern Baptists," Caner said. 

The policy runs counter to other historically Baptist colleges and universities that in recent decades have loosened or severed ties with sponsoring state conventions. Most have done so to prevent pressure to force their professors to move from moderate theology to the more conservative ideology imposed upon SBC seminaries in the 1980s and 1990s. 

[...] 

"The 20th century saw the degradation of sound, biblical theology," Caner said. "But thankfully on a national level our seminaries, mission agencies, the [SBC] Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, and our other agencies are now faithful to the Word of God, but we can't say the same about all our state Baptist colleges. I will stand on the Baptist Faith and Message."

It's unclear to me whether the trustees, the GBC, or Camer himself came up with this idea.  If anyone knows more about the particulars of this situation, please let us know: SaveOBU@gmail.com.  But it's certainly alarming when you have a president who is clearly in lockstep with the politically powerful SBC elites who long ago abandoned any commitment to academic freedom, academic integrity, or academic respectability.  Even worse is when you have a board of trustees that is willing to not only accede to this brazen fundamentalist demand, but did so unanimously.  Not only that, but TMC's religion department chair enthusiastically greeted the change, saying that not only would all religion faculty gladly sign the BFM.  And it's not that TMC hadn't gone down this road before.  TMC faculty -- regardless of department or field -- have long been required to sign a statement on biblical inerrancy. 

TMC Celebrates Its Descent into Creedalism
Because Dr. Camer wanted to handle this situation "pastorally," he gave a full 18 months before he fired everyone who didn't a) assent to every word of the divinely inspired politically conceived BFM and/or b) thought being forced to sign a creed was an inappropriate or unconscionable intrusion upon what used to be cherished Baptist freedoms.  I don't know how many people resigned in protest.  I would suspect not many because TMC has apparently been a fundamentalist institution for some time.  Neither US News nor Forbes even bother ranking Truett-McConnell, a death knell that these fundamentalists probably consider a badge of honor.  It maintains SACS accreditation for now, but TMC's accreditation renewal could get ugly -- and that's saying something given how much latitude mainstream accreditation bodies give religious schools.

On October 27, 2011, faculty signed the 2000 Baptist Faith and Message.  The date was rescheduled from August in order to accomodate Rev. Dr. Paige Patterson, who delivered the keynote address at the signing.  Patterson, you probably know, is president of SWBTS, was an original architect of the Fundamentalist Takeover, and was president of the SBC when the 2000 revision was adopted.

Could this Happen at OBU?
Read and consider the following hypothetical press release:

Shawnee, Okla. -- The college that leads the nation in providing missionaries for the International Mission Board has strengthened its commitment to Southern Baptist principles, announcing today that all of its 85 faculty have signed the Baptist Faith and Message. 

"The Baptist General Convention of Oklahoma and our churches deserve nothing less than a faculty that will abide by nothing less than the essentials of faith," said President David Whitlock.  "Institutions that do not faithfully support the theology of Southern Baptists do not deserve the faithful support of Southern Baptists." 

College of Theology and Ministry Dean Mark McClellan said that he has long been comfortable with the idea, saying that he would question why any believing Southern Baptist wouldn't sign the statement. 

Likely impossible only a few years ago, a more activist and unified Board of Trustees unanimously affirmed the change.  Though OBU lost some longtime professors over the issue, the university gave them ample time to secure new employment elsewhere.  The BGCO now proudly boasts on its website that OBU joins a growing number of Baptist colleges that ensures faculty faithfulness to consensus Southern Baptist beliefs.

Does that sound even remotely far-fetched to you?  Substitue TMC for OBU, the GBC for the BGCO, Camer for Whitlock, and TMC Dean Sam Pelletier for McClellan and you have exactly what was said about the recent policy at Truett-McConnell.

So yes, this could indeed happen at OBU.  But it's not inevitable.  Important differences remain.  First among them is the trustee situation.  At present, it seems very unlikely that OBU's trustees would go along with something so radical and unprecedented.  Though there does seem to be a tendency to act by consensus that limits the clout of more moderate trustees (how many of them spoke up about the forced dismissals?), there is just no way OBU trustees would approve of this change unanimously.

Second, David Whitlock is no Emir Camer.  Camer is a theologically sophisticated ideologue.  While Whitlock may have good political instincts, no one thinks he is very interested in fighting these kinds of battles.  Several faculty have even described him as theologically naive and unsophisticated -- which is probably an asset if being like Emir Camer is the alternative.

Third, the TMC faculty was already much, much more doctrinaire and conservative before Camer came along than OBU's faculty.  Whereas TMC may have lost a few professors, OBU would likely lose dozens.  But make no mistake -- as we'll see in a few days, some Baptist college administrators and state convention officials see losing dozens of faculty as a good thing.

Fourth, the financial relationships may be completely different.  For all we know, after the Mercer vote in 2007, the three GBC colleges may have been going after this new pot of unallocated Mercer money. The BGCO's contribution to OBU is now so minimal as to be insignificant.  Though it would require some careful planning, OBU could rather easily survive without the BGCO's little subsidy.  Even if the BGCO tried some kind of sticks-and-carrots approach, well, the carrot is pretty tiny.  OBU could tell the BGCO to go jump in a lake.  In fact, we hope that day comes speedily and soon!

The only thing that makes this nightmare scenario more plausible is the difference between GBC Executive J. Robert White and our own Anthony Jordan.  Based on his published writings and the press clippings on the BFM issue at TMC, White seems to be much less of an ideologue, culture warrior, and SBC climber than Jordan.  In any case, White was wise not to leave his fingerprints all over TMC's change, for which President Camer and the trustees claimed responsibility.  If this happened in Oklahoma, it would almost certainly originate in Jordan's office, since neither Whitlock nor the trustees presently have the inclination to abandon historic Baptist freedoms, reverse precedent, and degrade OBU in such a dramatic way.

But make no mistake.  If we remain silent, this is precisely the kind of change we can expect to see at OBU.  Maybe not next year, maybe not even in 5 years.  But eventually.  Now that Whitlock and Norman have put the entire OBU constituency on alert, the BGCO will work harder than ever to make sure the "right" kind of trustees are elected this November and subsequently.  As it stands, Whitlock and the trustees know there is pressure from both sides.  If we remain vigilant, I'm confident we will prevail and disaster will be averted at OBU.  But if we back down and Norman, Jordan, and the BGCO have their way, OBU could be on its way to being just another barely accredited, academically irrelevant, has-been fundamentalist Bible academy like Truett-McConnell College in Georgia.