Leaders of Virginia Baptists and Averett University have agreed on a course of action following a March 17 meeting in Richmond to discuss their relationship in light of a gay pride week sponsored on the Averett campus by the school's Gay/ Straight Alliance.
But they will make no statement on it until their respective boards act on it, according to John Upton, executive director of the Baptist General Association of Virginia, and Richard Pfau, president of Averett.
The group released a statement that said the issue was “discussed in an open and amicable way” and that they had “reached a mutually agreed upon course of action to recommend to our boards.”
Both the BGAV's Virginia Baptist Mission Board and Averett's board of trustees have regularly scheduled meetings in April.
The gay pride week, which took place on the Averett campus in Danville Feb. 21-26, drew strong expressions of dismay from Virginia Baptist leaders, who felt that it was out of place on a campus relating to Virginia Baptists and against the core values of Virginia Baptists.
“Virginia Baptists are clear on this issue [homosexuality],” said the executive committee of the Mission Board, which received incomplete details of the gay pride week on March 8. “We will investigate and see what the proper response should be.”
Averett President Pfau responded at that time that the event was not officially endorsed by the university.
The gay pride events come three months after the BGAV (whose ties to Averett reach back to the school's founding in 1854) had apparently settled a dispute over homosexuality and biblical authority.
Virginia Baptists and Averett had recently finished a long series of discussions, sparked in September 2003, when Averett's religion department chairman publicly endorsed an Episcopal Church action to ordain an openly homosexual bishop.
Also, John Shelby Spong, a controversial retired Episcopal bishop, lectured on the Baptist university's campus, reportedly saying that the God who is revealed in a literal reading of Scripture is “immoral” and “unbelievable.”
Declaring these actions as contrary to stated core values of Virginia Baptists, the Virginia Baptist Mission Board escrowed budget funds earmarked for Averett. They began discussions that ended Dec. 1, 2004, when Virginia Baptists released the escrowed fund to be used apart from the university's and academic program.
The funds, instead, would be used to develop a church leadership training center, based in Roanoke to provide practical church training and theological education to bivocational ministers, church staff and laity in Southwest Virginia. It would operate directly under the Averett president's office, in cooperation with and accountable to the VBMB.
Averett University officials, as they did after the first controversy, said the student action does not represent the views of the university. But Pfau confirmed that Averett's Gay/Straight Alliance, formed last fall, is a recognized student organization. Its administrative advisor is Averett's dean of students.