RICHMOND, Va. (ABP) — Virginia Baptists have approved a joint statement developed with leaders of Averett University that will end their 145-year-old ties to the school.
The Virginia Baptist Mission Board adopted the statement during its spring meeting April 6. Averett's trustees are set to consider the statement at their regular meeting April 15.
The vote by the Mission Board — which is authorized to act for the Baptist General Association of Virginia — ends a century-and-a-half relationship with the school in Danville — a relationship clouded the past two years by disagreements over homosexuality.
The most recent flap — the celebration of a gay pride week by a school-approved gay advocacy group — prompted the latest discussion and the joint statement.
“Because of our current differences, we now resolve to walk separate paths with blessings on one another, recognizing that these paths might join again at a future time,” said the joint statement, which was drafted by Mission Board leaders and Averett's president and trustee chair at a March 17 meeting.
In practical terms, “separate paths” will mean dissolving a covenant approved last year between the BGAV and Averett and ending the BGAV's long practice of nominating a portion of Averett's trustees.
Last year, in response to an earlier disagreement over homosexuality, the BGAV redirected its annual financial allocation to Averett — in recent years totaling about $350,000 — to a new theological education initiative in Roanoke. The joint statement stipulates that responsibility for the Southwest Virginia Christian Leadership Network, which was to be jointly administered by Averett and the Mission Board, will be assumed solely by the BGAV.
“We take this action without bitterness or ill will but with a strong resolve,” said BGAV executive director John Upton, an Averett graduate. “Our position has long been clear and decisive that homosexuality is a lifestyle that goes against Scripture and is contrary to stated Virginia Baptist core values.”
In 1993 the BGAV adopted a resolution — now regarded as part of the state association's “core values” — which affirms “the biblical teaching that homosexual behavior is sinful and unacceptable for Christians.”
Averett president Richard Pfau did not return phone calls to the Religious Herald April 7. But he told the Roanoke Times that day, “What we've recognized is that the [BGAV] has a set of core values and there's no reason why they should compromise those. Likewise, Averett has a set of core values,” about academic inquiry, for instance, “and unfortunately at this point in time, they're not compatible.”
The national debate over sexuality left both university and Baptist leaders with “a sense that we're caught up in something none of us have figured out how to resolve,” Pfau told the Roanoke paper.
Averett, affiliated with the BGAV since the school's founding in 1859, drew the ire of some Virginia Baptists in the fall of 2003 when the chair of its religion department wrote an article published in a Danville newspaper endorsing the ordination of an openly gay Episcopal bishop. At about the same time, John Shelby Spong, a controversial retired Episcopal bishop, delivered two lectures on campus, where he reportedly said that the God revealed in a literal reading of the Bible is “immoral” and “unbelievable.”
In response the BGAV escrowed funds allocated to the school and last December, in consultation with Averett, used the money to create the training center near Roanoke. However, Virginia Baptist leaders' confidence in the agreement was shaken last month when they learned the school's Gay/Straight Alliance hosted a gay-pride week on campus in February.
Though Pfau said the gay-pride events were not endorsed by the school, he acknowledged the Gay/Straight Alliance was a recognized student organization whose administrative advisor is the dean of students.
It's not clear what will happen if Averett's trustees decline to adopt the statement at their meeting April 15.
Pfau told the Roanoke Times he believes the university's heritage “points toward remaining Baptist” in orientation.