Dub Oliver Elected President of Union University

There is huge news this week in the world of Baptist higher education.  Union University in Jackson, TN announced the election of the Reverend Dr. Samuel W. "Dub" Oliver as its 16th president.  Dr. Oliver, currently president of East Texas Baptist University, will succeed David Dockery, who is transitioning to the role of chancellor.

At first glance, this news seems like a win for academic freedom and respectability in Baptist higher education.  Like OBU President David Whitlock and unlike recent Baptist college presidents that have pushed their schools toward fundamentalism (including Shorter's Don Dowless and Cedarville's Thomas White), Dr. Oliver does not hold academic degrees from post-Takeover SBC seminaries.  This alone may be an indication that he has little appetite for fundamentalist encroachment in academic institutions.

Oliver's ETBU is more moderate than Union and most other Baptist colleges.  Along with a handful of schools, ETBU is affiliated with the Baptist General Convention of Texas.  After the Conservative Resurgence progressed from the national SBC to the state conventions, moderates in two states (Virginia and Texas) successfully resisted the resurgence.  In those states, conservatives formed rival conventions in order to avoid sharing power with moderates.  Today's SBC leaders have a complicated relationship with the BGCT.  The BGCT pours millions of dollars into SBC seminaries and agencies through its Cooperative Program giving.  At the same time, many Texas Baptist congregations contribute to the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship.  The BGCT contributes to organizations that post-Takeover SBC leaders loathe, such as the Baptist Joint Committee on Religious Liberty.

While solidly committed to distinctively Baptist Christian higher education and employing only believing Christians as faculty, ETBU is nowhere near conservative enough for today's SBC leaders.  They will not be pleased that Union's new president did not personally intervene to prevent ETBU from hiring a female Bible professor.  They will also not be pleased that at Oliver's former institution, the religion department does not employ a single post-Takeover SBC seminary graduate.  ETBU's religion faculty typically present their research at the mainstream American Academy of Religion/Society of Biblical Literature meetings rather than the Evangelical Theological Society's conference.  The fact that Oliver tolerated moderates will not inspire the confidence of certain SBC insiders.  At least he had the good sense to sue the federal government over the Affordable Care Act's contraceptive mandate.

However, Union University is a very different environment than the ETBU that Oliver leaves behind.  Union is widely considered to be the flagship of Baptist state convention-affiliated colleges.  Numerous SBC agency staffers and seminary faculty send their own children to Union.  Like Cedarville, the only female employee in Union's religion department is the secretary.  The exclusively male religion faculty is largely composed of SBC seminary alumni.

Union is not a fundamentalist university.  It is a strong, thriving, growing institution.  There is no evidence to suggest that it is on the same trajectory as Cedarville and Shorter, let alone Baptist colleges that are in danger of losing their accreditation.  Like Bob Agee, a former Union administrator who was president of OBU from 1982 to 1998 , David Dockery masterfully earned and kept the trust of two forces in Baptist higher education that, since the Conservative Resurgence, are increasingly at odds with one another.  These tensions will continue to exist at OBU, Union, and many other universities.  I wrote about the two competing forces in my last post:

First, there is a majority among the trustees, faculty, and alumni that wants [the school] to remain academically strong, respected, and rigorous (while, of course, being true to its Baptist heritage).  At the same time, there is a powerful force within Southern Baptist life today that wants doctrinal conformity, is more trustful of authoritarian leadership, and is less tolerant of dissenting perspectives (while also desiring, if possible, academic respectability).

Hiring a president who has never studied or worked in a post-Takeover Southern Baptist institution is a big step for Union.  It proves that Union is ultimately run out of Jackson, not out of Brentwood, Nashville, Louisville, or anywhere else.  Though a few SBC leaders have tweeted out congratulatory messages to Dr. Oliver today, it seems reasonable to assume that some would have preferred a more fundamentalist-friendly president at Union.

Oliver's inauguration service at ETBU in 2009 included greetings and blessings from friends at Baylor and Carson-Newman.  That alone is enough to make today's Southern Baptist power brokers wary.  Presumably his installation service at Union will be more SBC-centric.  The dynamics of relating to the Tennessee Baptist Convention will be different than how Oliver's ETBU relates to the BGCT.  But ultimately Union's trustees have the responsibility to protect and defend Dr. Oliver's stewardship of the institution when he finds himself opposed to forces that would erode academic freedom and encroach upon fragile Baptist freedoms.

Deservedly, Dr. Oliver will begin his tenure with reservoirs of trust and goodwill from both "sides."  He will have an inestimable ally and confidant in Chancellor David Dockery.  There will be plenty of time in years to come to speculate about the role of the Union presidency in the Baptist battles.  For now, it is enough to congratulate Dub Oliver and wish him our best.  Remembering that his election was unanimous, let us be unanimous in our prayers for him for Union, and for all the Baptist institutions we so dearly love.

From the Archives: OBU's Peers Series

When we first started the blog, we thought the experiences of formerly Baptist schools like Stetson, Furman, Wake Forest, and William Jewell would be instructive.  But given the parameters of the BGCO's legal ownership of OBU, it turns out that we're more interested in comparing notes with other state convention-run colleges.

Last month, we posed the question: What schools are OBU's peers?  We looked at nondenominational evangelical colleges, BGCT colleges, and nearby Baptist schools controlled by post-Takeover state conventions.  The best parallel seemed to be Union University in Jackson, TN.  Union is older and larger, but shares much in common with OBU.  Given that Union's president, Dr. David Dockery, is a noted leader in Baptist higher education, we are especially keen to know how Union handles its joint obligations to faculty and students (who need academic freedom and open inquiry) and a fundamentalist-controlled state convention (which prizes doctrinal conformity and absolute control).

Without futher ado, please review our posts in the OBU's Peers series:
Intro: Who's In the Same Boat?
OBU's Peers: Nondenominational Colleges?
OBU's Peers: Nearby Baptist Colleges (Ouachita and Southwest Baptist)?
OBU's Peers: Texas Baptist Colleges?
OBU's Peers: Union University?

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.

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!

OBU's Peers: Union University?

OBU's Peers Series:
Intro: Who's In the Same Boat?
OBU's Peers: Nondenominational Colleges?
OBU's Peers: Nearby Baptist Colleges (Ouachita and Southwest Baptist)?
OBU's Peers: Texas Baptist Colleges

If you've been following the series, you know what we're trying to accomplish.  We're looking around the world of Christian higher education to see how well or how poorly peer institutions are doing with respect to academic freedom issues.  Shorter University in Rome, GA has a lot in common with OBU but, unfortunately, its administration, trustees, and state convention are actively running it into the ground.  I'm open to suggests for schools that are genuinely similar to OBU, but upon reflection, one of the closest parallels I see is Union University in Jackson, TN.

The Agee/Union Connection
While in recent years there's been an administrative pipeline between OBU and Southwest Baptist University in Bolivar, MO (SBU's president came from OBU and OBU's president and provost did stints at SBU), OBU also shares an administrative connection to Union University in Jackson, TN.  Longtime OBU President Bob Agee came to OBU from Union in 1982 and retired to Jackson.

In his day, Agee was known as one of the most prominent Baptist college presidents (and is still an elder statesman in that distinguished fraternity).  In addition to working hard to earn and keep the trust of faculty as a defender of faculty rights and academic freedom, President Agee worked even harder to maintain good relations with local churches and the state convention.  He regularly preached in as many as 40-50 Oklahoma Baptist churches a year.  Agee had a knack for defending academic freedom and OBU's true liberal arts tradition without offending a sometimes skeptical, even hostile, Oklahoma Baptist constituency.  Of course, when the legendary Joe Ingram and former OBU President Bill Tanner headed the BGCO, relating to the state convention was not as difficult as it is in today's post-Takeover reality.  But Agee did a very difficult job and he did it well.

Any Baptist liberal arts college president should like to model his (I doubt they're ready for a "her") career after Agee's.  Union University President David Dockery certainly seems to have done so in his 17 year tenure.  Like Agee, Dockery has spoken fluently and published widely on the subject of Christian higher education.  I have not read Dockery's books yet, but I know some of our readers have.  For now I'll trust that he advocates an authentically open, fearless, and searching brand of Christian scholarship, and not just fundamentalism dressed up in academic/intellectual-sounding language.  Also like Agee, Dockery has managed the difficult task of upholding academic freedom and maintaining the trust of faculty while also staying in the fundamentalists' good graces.  (I admit this may be more perception than fact, but I trust readers will correct me where I'm wrong about the situation at Union.)

This is not to make figures like Agee and Dockery into heroes.  Their jobs are difficult and have becoming increasingly so, especially in light of how dramatically the state conventions have swung toward the fundamentalist end of the spectrum.  But make no mistake: they are compensated handsomely for their efforts.  Standing up for academic freedom might make them feel good about themselves, but at the end of the day, pleasing convention power brokers is how they stayed in their jobs year after year.  Both men care deeply about the ideal of Christian liberal arts education and have devoted their careers to that end.  Agee, for his part, seems to have regressed somewhat in his later years, as we'll discuss below.  Perhaps Dockery has done likewise in order to survive as long as he has.  We are piecing together Pat Taylor's and Agee's roles in David Whitlock's journey to the OBU presidency.  But for now, let's focus on the most successful and prominent Baptist liberal arts college president in the U.S. right now, Union's Dockery.

Save OBU's Questions about Union University
Even when I was a student at OBU, Dockery had already made a name for himself in Baptist higher education.  He spoke in Raley Chapel in the early 2000s, and I'm sure he's returned since.  Union and OBU have a lot in common, although there are some differences.  Union is almost twice as large as OBU (by enrollment).  Union is ranked lower according to Forbes, but does somewhat better in U.S. News, though it still ranks below Stetson, Samford, Belmont, and Mercer.  Union is less selective in admissions, but its draws students with markedly higher SAT scores than OBU.  Union's (all male) theology faculty is highly qualified, and while it's hard to place a department on the ideological/theological spectrum by the professors' CVs, Union's faculty seems to be mostly evangelical but not fundamentalist.  Many of the religion professors who graduated from Baptist seminaries did so before the Takeover, which is reassuring.

While we know a lot about the problems OBU has had as administrators have sought to turn from our heritage, we won't know if Union is truly a good parallel to OBU until we know more about the school and how it relates to its moderate constituents (most faculty, many students) and its fundamentalists (more students, most of the Tennessee Baptist Convention).  If you have inside information, comment below or email SaveOBU@gmail.com.

1. Is academic freedom protected at Union? Do professors or students have to sign creedal statements?
2. Does Union have latitude to select its own trustees, or does the TBC have absolute control?
3. What conflicts involving academic freedom have arisen at Union during Rev. Dr. Dockery's tenure?  How have they been resolved?
4. If it came down to it, would Dockery stand for the school (like William Jewell's President David Sallee [OBU '73]) or the convention (like Shorter's President Don Dowless)?

Can OBU Administrators Learn Anything from Union/David Dockery?
We don't know if OBU administrators have learned anything, but we know they've tried.  David Whitlock looked to Dockery (and Agee) as models when he began his tenure at OBU.  In the Fall of 2010, Whitlock dispatched his struggling provost to Jackson in the midst of the fallout from the first forced dismissal debacle.  Stan Norman shadowed Union's provost and got some on-the-job training, presumably on how not to alienate the faculty.  Unfortunately, when Norman returned, OBU faculty were not impressed.  He immediately delivered what became known as his "On Mission" speech.  Everyone at Union, he said, was unified in adhering to the university's mission.  The reaction of the OBU faculty was, of course, "You mean to say we're not 'on mission?'"  No, he didn't mean it that way, he said, but his tone and phraseology indicated his desire for lockstep.

How presidents relate to students and churches are fairly public, while relationships with trustees and faculty are less so.  Their relationships with state convention elites, however, are almost completely private and usually quite a bit less inspiring.  We can't help but wonder if Whitlock's relationship to the BGCO comes from the Dockery/Agee model.  Consider that before David Whitlock's hiring, OBU's School of Christian Service professors had to endure an hourlong meeting with Agee in which he did not ask a single question nor did he dialogue.  He spoke for the entire hour telling them what they were doing wrong and how they needed to change to satisfy the BGCO.  The entire department was completely dejected after the meeting because they could see what was coming: The new president was to take the university in a fundamentalist direction as the BGCO cheered him on all the way.  Whitlock and Norman even told some members of a local church in a meeting that there were some professors in the religion department they needed to dismiss somehow but Whitlock told the group, "We must do it in a winsome way." This story can be corroborated by a number of individuals.

By now, President Whitlock has learned that it's hard to appease fundamentalists and that there is no "winsome way" to supervise the reversal of a tradition that students, faculty, and alumni hold dear.  But like Dockery (and Agee), he does have a winsome personality and many of the tools needed to have a similarly long tenure and lasting impact.  The question is, does Union retain the support of fundamentalists and moderates because Dockery can effectively and authentically relate to both constituencies?  Could the same be done in Oklahoma, or has the convention moved so far that no president can bridge the gap?  Or have we misread the Union parallel completely?

I trust we'll hear from people with inside knowledge.  And I'll report back soon.