MAINSTREAM MESSENGER

Vol. 4, No. 2     June 2001    Editor:  Bruce Prescott

Southwestern Professors Forced to Resign for Refusing to Sign the 2000 BF&M

By Associated Baptist Press (ABP ) staff

FORT WORTH, Texas (ABP) -- Two professors at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary will leave their jobs rather than sign the "Baptist Faith and Message" as revised by the Southern Baptist Convention last year.

According to a May 1 story in the Star-Telegram newspaper in Fort Worth, Texas, 49-year-old Old Testament professor Rick Johnson and 44-year-old ethics professor Jeph Holloway have been told they must leave within a year.

The newspaper quoted a leader of the seminary's board of trustees as saying the two men disagree with the faith statement's new prohibition on women pastors.

The seminary's policy is that all faculty must agree with the current "Baptist Faith and Message." That means that when the convention changes the SBC faith statement, as has happened twice in three years, faculty are asked to endorse the changes.

That happened once before, in 1998, when the "Baptist Faith and Message" received a new amendment on the family declaring, among other things, that wives should submit to their husbands. Three professors left rather than endorse that view.

Seminary President Ken Hemphill told the Texas newspaper that limiting employment to faculty who are willing to sign the new document is in the SBC's best interest. Of the 86 full-time faculty members, 84 have agreed to sign the most recent edition of the faith statement first adopted by the SBC in 1925.

"We feel that it would be inappropriate for someone to take Southern Baptist funding and advocate a position that is contrary to a statement of faith that Baptists endorse," Hemphill said.

Mainstream Baptists, disagree, however, saying the latest version of the "Baptist Faith and Message" has crossed over from a voluntary confession of faith to a binding creed. While confessions of faith are a part of Baptist tradition, Baptists have historically opposed any creed but the Bible.

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