Southern Baptists tussle over seminary's ties to denomination

New Orleans Seminary has resisted moves by the Southern Baptist Convention to assume greater control over the seminary. The seminary is the only major convention agency not to grant “sole membership” to the SBC.

New Orleans Seminary continues to be locked in a quiet but determined battle of wills with denominational leaders about how to tie the 3,700-student school to the Southern Baptist Convention.

For more than a year, leaders in the nation’s largest Protestant denomination have been urging trustees of the seminary to clarify the convention’s ownership of the school – including the right of the convention to replace problematic trustees at a stroke. But the New Orleans school has been the only Southern Baptist seminary to not make an ownership change giving the national convention tighter control of the seminary’s board.

Such a change, its backers say, would ensure that the seminary could never drift away doctrinally and declare independence from the convention. They point to other Southern Baptist schools – notably Baylor and Wake Forest universities – that now find themselves somewhat estranged from their Southern Baptist roots.

Cementing conservatism

In the past seven years, denominational leaders have persuaded every major Southern Baptist seminary and agency – with the exception of New Orleans – to amend its founding documents to grant the convention “sole membership” in the language of corporate law. The amendments seek to cement the changes that biblical conservatives wrought in the past 25 years.

The seminary – led by President Chuck Kelley and Tommy French, a Baton Rouge pastor who is chairman of the seminary’s trustee board– has resisted on grounds of principle.

If the new arrangement were in place 25 years ago, they argue, a handful of convention leaders could have controlled the trustee boards of several Baptist seminaries and thwarted what Kelley, French and other conservatives regard as their rescue of those schools from a drift toward liberalism.

In months of debates and public addresses, Kelley and others have said there is no doctrinal tension between the seminary and the convention, or with its executive committee.

“We’re not a bunch of renegade trustees. We’re trying to protect both the (seminary) and the convention,” French said in a July 1 interview.

Denomination leaders also want Southern Baptist agencies to adopt sole membership to limit the convention’s exposure to damage awards in liability lawsuits against individual agencies. Courts recognize that sole membership closely ties agencies to the convention. However, it also clarifies to courts that the agencies are governed locally, which should stop the upward spread of damage awards.

French, Kelley and others have said that sole membership under Louisiana law provides no such protection to the convention. Convention lawyers disagree.

Public disagreements

For almost a year, the dispute has simmered quietly out of sight, occasionally boiling over in the Baptist press.

Kelley and several members of the seminary faculty have filed academic defenses of their position, detailing how sole membership violates the traditional understanding of Southern Baptist life. Their papers have been answered by critiques from Baptist scholars in support of the change.

Last fall, the seminary’s trustees rejected the convention’s sole membership request.

Then, in February, Kelley and allies confronted a somewhat agitated Southern Baptist Executive Committee during a tense two-hour meeting in Nashville, Tenn. At its conclusion, Kelley promised to abide by the ultimate decision of the convention.

Exploring alternatives

During June’s national meeting in Indianapolis, delegates voted by a 64 percent to 36 percent margin to back the Executive Committee in asking the seminary to adopt sole membership at its next trustee meeting in October. The convention also asked the seminary to have the paperwork ready to file with Louisiana authorities as soon as the full convention approves the changes in 2005.

In the interview, however, French said the seminary may not do that, opting instead to use its October meeting to explore alternatives to take to the next annual convention.

“They didn’t say we had to do it,” French said. “We’ll come back and say we heard the request, and this is what we recommend.”

One option would be to reincorporate the seminary in Georgia, where it maintains an extension campus, or change the charters of both the convention and the seminary to tie the two together without resorting to sole membership.