So. Baptist Group to Start Seminary as a Response to Fundamentalists

GREENVILLE, S.C. —  The Southern Baptist Alliance has decided to start a seminary in Richmond, Va., in response to the fundamentalism now dominating the Southern Baptist Convention.

The alliance, which is a faction of about 43,000 people within the 14.7-million-member denomination, approved the move 462 to 42 at its third national convocation, held at First Baptist Church here.

Backers said the seminary will champion women in ministry and will cooperate with other Baptist denominations.

The new seminary was seen as a partial answer to actions of the new fundamentalist majority on the board of Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in Wake Forest, N.C. The former president of Southeastern, the Rev. Randall Lolley, told the alliance meeting that he was “a lucky Baptist to be at a time and a place where some free church Baptists said no to fundamentalism.”

Offers Prediction

Elizabeth Barnes, professor of theology at Southeastern, predicted that she will be the last woman faculty member there “for a long, long time to come.” She urged a positive vote for a new seminary because “there is no Baptist seminary in existence which has the vision of the Southern Baptist Alliance.”

Voting against the new seminary was the Rev. Harold Cole, executive secretary-treasurer emeritus of the South Carolina Baptist Convention.

“I want the Southern Baptist Alliance to stay in the convention and to remain loyal to the convention,” Cole said. He said he wants the alliance to remain as “a protest movement, but one within the denomination.”

The alliance seminary will cooperate with a black Baptist seminary already in Richmond and with seminaries of the American Baptist Churches. It will open when plans are implemented and about $500,000 is raised. An interim board of trustees is being established, and the school will open with about 150 students.

May Drop ‘Southern’

Members also voted for the Southern Baptist Alliance to study the idea of dropping the word “Southern” from the name to reflect the fact that it has members in 40 states.

The alliance heard a greeting from John Sundquist, who chairs the American Baptist Task Force on the Southern Baptist Convention. American Baptists want “to appropriately stand with our moderate brothers and sisters, whom we feel so close to,” he said. “We feel your pain. Our prayers are with you. We wish you God’s very best.”

The alliance also voted to have its directors study whether the group might become a representative body rather than a participatory democracy. The directors had proposed a general assembly or house of delegates from each state or region to attend the national business session, but the proposal did not go over well. Baptists hold annual state and national conventions in which “messengers” sent by churches are free to vote their consciences.

Another issue that surfaced at the three-day convention was whether the Southern Baptist Woman’s Missionary Union should publicly favor the ordination of women. The group, reportedly the largest women’s organization in the world, promotes foreign missions. It has shied away from endorsing women as pastors or preachers, but it has affirmed the right of each local church to choose its own pastor.

Delegate Walks Out

The Rev. Ginny Britt, with Crisis Control Ministry in Winston-Salem, N.C., walked out in protest when Woman’s Missionary Union leader Catherine Allen spoke. Later, Britt spoke to the group and urged that the union “make an affirming comment on the role of women as pastors in the local churches and as local preachers.”

Allen defended the union, saying that it has “very effectively cut a pathway for women” for 100 years.