As Southwest Baptist University looks for a new president to the lead the school, a prominent group that advocates for victims and survivors of sexual abuse criticized the school’s trustees for naming a “controversial” minister as vice chair of the search committee.
As Southwest Baptist University searches for a new president, trustees sparked additional concerns by creating a presidential search committee made up only of themselves and two Missouri Baptist Convention leaders. The school’s Faculty Senate passed a resolution on Friday criticizing this search process.
Many women preachers and teachers say their call to ministry was inspired in part by Beth Moore’s example. Some have been able to stay in evangelical churches by avoiding the title “pastor” and going by “Bible teacher” instead. Others have had to leave their home churches.
The National African American Fellowship of the SBC issued a statement Wednesday asking presidents of SBC seminaries to take steps to help defuse current racial tensions within the convention.
Baylor University released a report Tuesday documenting its slavery legacy and offering recommendations for more fully telling its history. The 94-page report focuses on monuments and markers on its campus honoring various founders who enslaved Black people and supported the Confederacy.
Even before a member of a Southern Baptist church was accused of the Georgia spa massacre, motivated, he told police, by guilt over a “sex addiction,” the Southern Baptist Convention was under scrutiny over its teachings on gender and sexuality.
New legal filings by individuals seeking to block new governing documents for Southwest Baptist University respond to the arguments made by the school in Bolivar, Missouri. The new responses rebuke SBU’s attempt to reframe the legal dispute as an internal theological controversy.
A new generation of evangelical women are following in the footsteps of Beth Moore, the popular women’s Bible teacher who shook up the evangelical world by announcing last week she was quitting the Southern Baptist Convention.
When pastors or churches talk about misconduct as a ‘moral failing’ instead of abuse, they send a message that victims and survivors are partially to blame. This can be seen in the response to Jennifer Lyell in Southern Baptist life.
The American Association of University Professors is challenging Southwest Baptist University in Bolivar, Missouri, for terminating its tenured philosophy professor in apparent violation of academic freedom.