SAN ANTONIO (ABP) — Messengers to the Baptist General Convention of Texas sidestepped the controversy over leadership at Baylor University when convention president Ken Hall ruled a motion to escrow funds for Baylor was out of order.
Hall, president of Buckner Baptist Benevolences, said the proposed motion was “not in harmony with the spirit of the convention” and “falls far short of celebrating God's love.” Messengers then voted overwhelmingly to affirm his ruling.
Baylor, the nation's largest Baptist-affiliated university, has been mired in a multifaceted feud involving President Robert Sloan, regents, administrators, faculty and alumni primarily over Baylor 2012, an expensive long-range plan to expand the university and make it a “top tier” school. A divided board of regents has defeated several attempts to fire Sloan.
The BGCT allocated nearly $2.5 million to Baylor in fiscal 2005.
Joan Trew, a member of University Baptist Church in Fort Worth, brought a motion to “escrow the 2005 funds going to Baylor University until unity is restored and confidence re-established in the administration of Baylor University as determined by the Executive Board of the BGCT.”
By deciding not to vote on Trew's motion, the BGCT again refused to take sides in the dispute.
Trew said she understands Hall's desire to be peaceful but disagrees with the decision. She pointed out last year's convention action to withhold finding from Houston Baptist University was similar to her motion. Noting several messengers were lined up at microphones to support her motion when Hall ruled, she said it is time for the BGCT to take a stance.
“I understand the president wants very much to be a peacemaker,” she said. “You can be a peacekeeper, but we need to have peace in the Baylor family.”
Trew said Baylor's escalating tuition makes the school unaffordable to the “middle class.” She further claimed the school's administration under Sloan is creating an atmosphere of “fear” across the campus. Faculty members are scared they will lose their jobs if they disagree with the administration, she said.
“As long as we have leanings of fundamentalism we should withhold funding,” she said after making the motion.
A Baylor spokesman said Trew's “claims of fundamentalist leanings simply have no credible evidence to support them.”
These kinds of characterizations are divisive and not helpful in achieving the peace Ms. Trew and many others want to achieve,” Larry Brumley, associate vice president for external relations, told ABP.
“We appreciate very much BGCT President Ken Hall's reminder in his convention sermon that those who use the fundamentalist label need to get a perspective that not everyone who is strongly conservative is a fundamentalist,” Brumley continued. “Baylor's commitment to hiring faculty who are not only excellent in their disciplines but personally committed to the lordship of Jesus Christ hardly qualifies as fundamentalism.”