EVANSTON, Ill. (ABP) — Morris Ashcraft, a longtime seminary professor and administrator who after retiring helped establish a free-standing seminary for moderates disenfranchised by the "conservative resurgence" in the Southern Baptist Convention, died Jan. 29 after a long illness. He was 88.
An Arkansas native, Ashcraft taught five years at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and 22 years at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary before moving to Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary as a professor and dean in 1981.
Seven years later he resigned his deanship, along with seminary President Randall Lolley and six other administrators, to protest policies adopted by a new conservative majority on the board of trustees intended to ensure the hiring of only professors who affirmed biblical inerrancy.
"It is my belief that too many leaders in the SBC have capitulated to the pressure and agreed with it," Ashcraft said in a statement on Nov. 17, 1987. Ashcraft said his intention in resigning was to say "a clear 'No'" to a movement started in 1979 to purge so-called liberals from the denomination's institutions.
"I will not be party to some of the actions now taking place and injuring persons, nor will I hold the coats of those who do," he concluded.
In 1984 Ashcraft told a group of Baptist educators that Southern Baptist college and seminary degrees offered "ideal preparation" for ministry in Southern Baptist churches. Concerned about the impact of changes at Southeastern Seminary on pulpits in the Carolinas and Virginia, the Alliance of Baptists, a group formed out of the SBC controversy in 1987, decided in 1989 to launch an alternative seminary.
A board of trustees turned to Ashcraft to serve as acting president of Baptist Theological Seminary at Richmond, which opened in the fall of 1991. Tasked primarily with raising start-up funds and processing documents needed to get the school accredited, Ashcraft held the post for one year, until the election of the school's first permanent president.
Today BTSR is one of 15 theology schools in partnership with the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship.
Funeral services are scheduled at 2 p.m. on Saturday, Feb. 5, at First Baptist Church of Raleigh, N.C., where Ashcraft was a member for nearly 30 years. Pastor Christopher Chapman, Associate Pastor Mike Morris and Lolley will officiate.
Burial will be private at Seminary Cemetery in Wake Forest, N.C. In lieu of flowers, the family requests memorial gifts in his honor to the maintenance endowment fund of Raleigh's First Baptist Church.
Ashcraft is survived by his wife of nearly 66 years, a son and daughter and four grandchildren. Late in life he moved to Evanston, Ill, because of illness. He died with his wife, Bernice, at his side.
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Bob Allen is senior writer for Associated Baptist Press.