Twenty years ago, a single act of speaking truth to power cost one quiet seminary librarian his job.
Paul Debusman
Paul Debusman worked at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky., for 35 years until his “involuntary retirement” 10 months ahead of schedule in 1997 under a policy enacted two years earlier to mute faculty criticism after the firing of a popular dean.
Media reports at the time said seminary administrators decided that Debusman broke a rule on “constructive relationships” when he wrote a personal letter correcting a factual error in a chapel address by Southern Baptist Convention President Tom Elliff.
Elliff, the ninth SBC president elected in a string of victories sometimes called the Conservative Resurgence, reportedly had kind words for the seminary’s young president, Albert Mohler, implying that previous moderate administrations would not have invited the then-pastor of First Southern Baptist Church in Del City, Okla., to speak.
Debusman, who came to the seminary as a student in 1954, wrote Elliff to say SBC presidents were routinely invited to speak at the school and that in the past there had been a deliberate strategy to bring in different points of view. Debusman said by the mid-1990s that was no longer true, and that the pastor of his own church — Crescent Hill Baptist Church, located a few blocks from the seminary — could not speak on campus.
He insisted he was trying to be conciliatory and the gist of his letter was his personal heartbreak at how relationships had deteriorated within the denomination. Seminary officials, however, said it violated a trustee policy stating that faculty and staff “should seek to relate constructively to the denomination, donors and other constituencies.”
Friends and colleagues remember Debusman, who died Feb. 27 at 84, as a warm and gentle man with a reputation for courage and integrity.
Tom Elliff
“Paul was a good Christian gentleman, faithful husband and loving father, a dear and admired friend, model churchman, fellow student and colleague with me for over 50 years,” longtime co-worker Ronald Deering said in an online tribute. “His gentle ways, Christian insights and faithful Christian service will bless me and many others forever.”
Southern seminary trustees adopted a policy in April 1995 that faculty and staff “are not to act in ways that are injurious or detrimental to the seminary’s relationship with the denomination, donors or other constituencies within and without the seminary community.”
Enacted after Mohler fired Diana Garland as dean of the Carver School of Social Work, the policy was intended as a gag order to discourage other faculty from publicly criticizing the 35-year-old president in his second year on the job.
The policy was later reworded to require faculty and staff to “seek to relate constructively” to the various seminary constituencies.
Debusman received one month’s severance pay and lost some retirement benefits. He said he didn’t want to encourage a “vindictive response,” but moderates on the losing end portrayed his career as a casualty of the SBC holy war.
Paul Simmons, a longtime ethics professor at Southern Seminary, termed his firing “further evidence that the politics of power and coercion have triumphed in the Southern Baptist Convention.”
Born in Wichita, Kan., Debusman was ordained as a minister at the city’s Emanuel Baptist Church. He graduated from Baylor University before earning a master’s degree and Ph.D. from Southern Seminary.
Debusman is survived by his wife of 58 years, Amelia Orr Debusman, two daughters and six grandchildren.
It is requested that memorial contributions be sent to Crescent Hill Baptist Church.