BRENTWOOD, Tenn. (ABP) — Belmont University has subpoenaed giving records from 100 Tennessee Baptist Convention churches in an ongoing legal dispute with the convention over control of the school's assets.
The subpoena asks for records on churches' giving to the Cooperative Program — the unified budget of the Southern Baptist Convention and its affiliated state conventions — between 1951, when the school became affiliated with the convention, and 2005, when Belmont trustees removed the school from convention control.
In a Jan. 3 letter accompanying the subpoenas, Belmont trustee chairman Marty Dickens asked if, “in making those gifts, the churches knew about or relied upon the 1951 document that is the focus of the [TBC] Executive Board's lawsuit against Belmont.”
The reference was to a once-forgotten document convention officials are relying on in the suit, filed last year. The agreement says that, should the school ever remove itself from convention control, it would owe the convention for all the Cooperative Program funds it has received.
Belmont representatives have said the agreement has been superseded by at least two other documents and is no longer effective.
Belmont apparently mailed its letter to all TBC churches, not just to those that received subpoenas. In the letter, Dickens wrote, “We are not serving subpoenas on all of the affiliated churches of the Tennessee Baptist Convention. Rather, we are serving them on the largest donors to the Cooperative Program because Cooperative Program funds are at the center of the Executive Board's claims against us.”
Convention leaders responded to the Belmont action in a three-page letter that was mailed to churches across the state on Jan. 12.
The TBC response was signed by Executive Director James Porch and Clay Austin, pastor of First Baptist Church, Blountville, and chairman of a convention committee that has been studying the Belmont situation.
The letter said: “During 2005 Belmont University acted to terminate its affiliated relationship with the Tennessee Baptist Convention through a charter change. The Executive Board and TBC did not want to have to initiate litigation against Belmont and, to that end, tried for many months to persuade Belmont to honor the promise it made to Tennessee Baptists in 1951.
“That promise, as many of you know, is memorialized in a written document, the Repayment Agreement, which was signed by a former president of Belmont,” the letter said.
Porch and Austin observed that the Repayment Agreement “contains a simple and clear promise from Belmont that it would repay all monies given to it by the Executive Board in the event that the TBC ever lost the right to elect the directors/trustees of Belmont. It does not take a lawyer to understand the promise made by Belmont in 1951 in the Repayment Agreement,” they wrote.
“By steadfastly refusing to acknowledge, much less honor, its promise to us, Belmont, not the Executive Board or the Belmont Study Committee, forced this matter into the courthouse,” the letter stated.
In the Belmont letter, Dickens noted the request for information was “necessitated by the lawsuit filed against Belmont by the Executive Board” and also wrote that “we do not wish this request to create a costly or burdensome task for the churches and do not believe that it will, but we have been informed by the Executive Board's attorneys that they do not represent the churches. Unfortunately, this means that rather than seeking this information directly from the Executive Board, Belmont must request it from individual churches by sending them subpoenas.”
In response to that assertion, Porch and Austin noted that “the unfortunate reality is that the information sought by the subpoenas is irrelevant to the lawsuit. None of the churches are parties to the Repayment Agreement. Furthermore, the Executive Board is seeking repayment of Cooperative Program funds only, not funds contributed by churches directly to or for the benefit of Belmont.”
The letter from TBC leaders also challenged an assertion that the request for information by Belmont from the subpoenaed churches will not be costly or “burdensome.”
“Mr Dickens states that Belmont does 'not wish' for and does 'not believe' that its request will 'create a costly or burdensome task for the churches.'
“If your church had few books and records since 1951, then responding to the subpoena should not be costly or burdensome. If, however, your church has extensive books and records for the period of time in question, then this could be a monumental task for your staff,” Austin and Porch wrote in the letter.
They noted that “at the very least, Belmont's subpoena requires each church to conduct a review of its 55-plus years of books and records. The review task must be undertaken by each church staff even if no documents responsive to Belmont's specific questions exist,” they wrote.
“In any event, we can say from experience that the review task alone will fully consume and exhaust the administrative staff of most, if not all, churches,” the TBC leaders wrote.
Belmont has requested the churches that received subpoenas to mail their responses to the school's attorneys by Feb. 15. TBC leaders informed churches in the letter that, “since Belmont has chosen to utilize subpoenas, each of the 100 churches which received a subpoena is compelled by law to respond accordingly.”
The Belmont letter stressed that Belmont leaders “believed that a resolution of the disagreement between the Executive Board and the university could be reached within the Christian family without resorting to a secular court.
“We regret the decision of the Executive Board to take this matter to court,” Dickens wrote. “We continue to desire to mediate this matter believing that this alternative is consistent with our faith,” he continued.
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Read more:
Belmont names first non-Baptists to board as controversy continues (12/28/2006)
Tennessee Baptist Convention files lawsuit against Belmont (10/5/2006)
Tenn. Baptists reject Belmont offer, will likely sue to retain control (5/9/2006)
Tennessee leaders reject Belmont plan to ad non-Baptists to trustee board (9/16/2005)