Your article in the Dec. 9 issue, “Aiming at Southwest Virginia,” reports that the Virginia Baptist Mission Board approved Averett University's proposal to create a program to provide training and theological education to ministers and laity in Southwest Virginia.
Such a program is admirable and no doubt much needed. However, the fact that Averett's religion department is to be excluded from providing faculty for a program it initiated to placate the Baptist General Association of Virginia would suggest that Averett has bowed to “green mail” on the part of the BGAV.
I am fully aware that many Virginia Baptists were upset when John C. H. Laughlin, chair of Averett's religion department, endorsed the ordination of a gay Episcopal bishop and were further offended by two lectures on campus by a controversial retired Episcopal bishop, John Shelby Spong. It is not my intent to endorse or condone either Professor Laughlin's comments or those of Bishop Spong. But I believe free and faithful Virginia Baptists, accustomed to autonomy of the local church, support academic freedom in our institutions of higher education.
I opposed last year's action when the BGAV voted to escrow the university's allocation in the 2004 budget.
I well recall that BGAV Baptists were alarmed when several years ago the Southern Baptist Convention's International Mission Board escrowed and then denied longstanding and promised financial support of the International Seminary at Rüschlikon, Switzerland. If memory serves me correctly, the SBC was upset because the International Seminary had retained Glenn Hinson as a lecturer and Dr. Hinson was considered to be a “liberal.”
As I contended last year, if our Baptist beliefs are so fragile that Averett students cannot be exposed to other theological points of view from a professor, or from an outside lecturer like Bishop Spong, then we might as well expect such “politically correct” theological indoctrination at Averett as takes place at the institutions controlled by SBC conservatives.
I regret that such a worthwhile program had to be initiated by Averett but administered beyond its control. This suggests a lack of trust in one of our fine Virginia Baptist institutions of higher education.
Daniel A. Polk, Richmond