PINEVILLE, La. (ABP) — Trustees of Louisiana College voted Sept. 24 to offer the presidency of the embattled school to Malcolm Yarnell, a seminary dean with conservative credentials.
Yarnell, assistant dean of theological studies and associate professor of systemic theology at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, Texas, was offered the job after a closed-door session of trustees. Yarnell has asked for time to consider the offer, and trustees of the Louisiana Baptist school said they anticipate an answer by Sept. 29.
Although the vote reportedly was divided, the trustees united behind their choice after the vote.
“On behalf of the board, we are excited about the prospect of having Dr. Yarnell on campus,” board chair Bill Hudson said in a statement. “The board supports Dr. Yarnell 100 percent. We feel there are great days ahead.”
The trustee board has been divided between the conservative majority and a moderate minority, and the school is now under investigation by its accrediting agency, the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools.
Trustee chair Joe Nesom resigned June 27 as fellow trustees prepared to remove him from office. In a scathing resignation letter, Nesom denounced “unwise unilateral actions taken by certain board members” and said those trustees “are determined to use the board to humiliate and punish those that they despise and reward those they love.”
Earlier in June, President Rory Lee resigned amid controversy over new policies that require new faculty members to submit a statement outlining their “worldviews,” as well as a policy forcing faculty members to have all classroom materials approved by the academic dean.
Another policy adopted recently requires a committee of trustees to approve the contract before a new faculty member can be hired. That policy, reportedly unique among Baptist colleges, is similar to one criticized by the college's accrediting agency in 2001.
Many faculty members have protested the policies, saying they endanger academic freedom. Conservative board members have defended the policies as necessary to maintain the school's fidelity to its Baptist roots.
“I anticipate a bright future for this Louisiana Baptist Christian liberal arts college,” Yarnell said in a statement after the trustees vote. “The trustees have an innovative vision for the school which combines orthodox theology with academic excellence, and I fully support that vision.”
Yarnell previously was academic dean and vice president for academic affairs at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Kansas City, Mo. — like Southwestern, a Southern Baptist Convention seminary. He holds a bachelor's degree from Louisiana State University, master's degrees from Southwestern and Duke University and a doctor of philosophy from Oxford University.
He has been pastor of churches in North Carolina and Louisiana.
Yarnell, an advocate for the conservative movement in the SBC, has written articles arguing for closer governance of Christian colleges by local churches and against self-perpetuating trustee boards.
“One does not have to choose between scholarship and faith; one does not have to be either a brilliant infidel or a dull-witted adherent of Scripture,” he wrote in the Pathway. “One can be both Christian and intellectual; indeed, the best intellectuals are Christian.”
“Of course, we do teach the long Baptist struggle for religious liberty,” he said in a Baptist Press article, “but we carefully extricate religious liberty from its entanglement with theological liberalism which a recent generation of Baptist scholars have advocated.”
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