Baptist

The building of Vietnam Baptist Church in Philadelphia was burned Tuesday night (Oct. 27) during the second night of unrest in the city after the police shooting of a Black man Monday (Oct. 26).

As tensions about trustees at Southwest Baptist University in Bolivar, Missouri, flared up during the Missouri Baptist Convention’s annual meeting, it was usually with the current SBU trustees speaking — sometimes challenging a fellow trustee at another microphone.

Pastors and community leaders in Charleston, South Carolina, and Mobile and Montgomery, Alabama, have worked on the “Deep South Joint Statement on the Gospel, Racial Reconciliation, and Justice” aimed at spurring Bible-based racial reconciliation, multiracial conciliation, and racial justice.

During the Missouri Baptist Convention’s annual meeting in St. Charles, a leading trustee for Southwest Baptist University urged reforms to the trustee selection process as he criticized MBC leaders for fueling controversy at the school in Bolivar, Missouri.

After Southwest Baptist University President Eric Turner resigned amid a two-year controversy over theology and institutional control, Missouri Baptist Convention Executive Director John Yeats wrote a letter to SBU faculty and staff.

In December 2018, news broke of a controversy at Southwest Baptist University in Bolivar, Missouri, involving the Missouri Baptist Convention, theological debates, and efforts to gain institutional control. As the SBU-MBC controversy continues to evolve, Word&Way created this timeline of key moments.

The Kansas-Nebraska Convention of Southern Baptists elected a new executive director Oct. 16. David Manner, associate state executive director since 2012 and on staff with the convention since 2000, will assume the role March 1.

Just weeks after seeing an outbreak of coronavirus cases at its campus in Chillicothe, The Baptist Home now faces a second outbreak at another of its four residential communities in Missouri. According to an update Wednesday (Oct. 21), a cluster of cases emerged at TBH’s campus in Ozark.

Barely two years after being unanimously chosen by trustees, Eric Turner resigned Tuesday (Oct. 20) as president of Southwest Baptist University. His resignation, made during an executive session of a contentious Board meeting, comes amid a two-year conflict over theology and control at the school.

An accreditation body recently opened an inquiry into recent events at Southwest Baptist University in Bolivar, Missouri, after an alumnus filed a complaint. The Higher Learning Commission decided the complaint warranted review of the institution that finds itself embroiled in a two-year controversy.