UPLAND, Ind. (ABP) — Sheri Klouda sparked denominational — and national — debate when she cried foul last year over her dismissal from teaching at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, allegedly because of her gender.
Ten months later and anticipating a year of legal proceedings, media interviews and medical procedures for her ailing husband, the professor says she hopes to come out of it with “resolution and closure — having a final decision made on the matter and a righteous and just decision being rendered.”
She'll get her first taste of the decision, whatever it may be, when Klouda v. Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary begins trial proceedings June 2.
Preliminary work on the case began in March of 2007, when Klouda filed a cause of action in federal court against the Fort Worth, Texas-based school and its president, Paige Patterson. The suit charged fraud, breach of contract and defamation.
By Sept. 14, United States District Judge John McBryde had denied Southwestern's motions to dismiss the suit and accepted an amended complaint that added “sex discrimination” to the charges. He also ordered Klouda, Patterson, and their advisors to discuss settling the case. Klouda requested $1.1 million to settle the lawsuit, Patterson refused to counter-offer or settle, and the parties now await the verdict on a request for a summary judgment. That means that the judge would decide the case without a jury trial.
If, upon review, McBryde decides a jury could possibly side with Klouda, he will reject the summary-judgment request and proceed with plans for a full trial. It is not clear how much Klouda's attorneys will seek in damages should the case go to trial.
Experts say the case will hinge on whether the seminary falls under the free-exercise clause of the First Amendment, which prevents the government from interfering in the employment relationships between churches and ministers.
Should the courts decide that a seminary is not technically a church — or that its faculty members are not ministers — Klouda could come away with a big win.
Klouda said she thinks governments should have no jurisdiction over churches but that a seminary is not a house of worship.
“The seminary would have been well within its rights not to hire me in the fist place,” she said. But, the fact that Southwestern hired her and allowed her to teach for several semesters “and then turned around and decided it was against its faith tradition, that is contradictory.”
Klouda makes it clear she does not see herself as a minister. According to her Sept. 14 complaint, she never preached, spread the faith, worked in church governance, or supervised worship or religious events at the school. She saw herself strictly as a professor and would have turned down the opportunity to act as a minister, the complaint said.
“Defendant Patterson, based upon his social and/or personal beliefs, disingenuously used religion as a pretext for [his] actions in failing to renew her contract,” the complaint said. “Southwestern itself and by and through its agents intentionally engaged in unlawful employment practices involving [Klouda] because she is female. Patterson, using his social belief but calling it ‘religious interpretation,' blatantly discriminated against Dr. Klouda based on her gender.
“Dr. Klouda's lengthy and successful tenure with Southwestern prior to [Patterson's] arrival demonstrates the inconsistency, and thus the fallacy, of claiming religious interpretation as justification for its actions.”
Another complication, Klouda argues, has to do with the Southern Baptist Convention's “Baptist Faith and Message” statement adopted in 2000. It says that women should not serve as pastors.
But Southwestern's website lists 11 women, including librarians and Dorothy Patterson, wife of the president, as faculty members. Should seminary officials claim all faculty are ministers — in an attempt to fall under the free-exercise clause — the school might be hard-pressed to explain to a secular jury how “ministers” are different from pastors, and how some women are qualified to teach while Klouda's gender bars her from doing so.
Several pundits in the blogosphere have speculated on the outcome of the case. In a Jan. 1 post on his blog (kerussocharis.blogspot.com) Oklahoma pastor Wade Burleson predicted that Southwestern will offer to settle the case in June “when it is realized that the Klouda case is actually going to trial — only to discover, too late, that Sheri Klouda will ultimately allow a jury of peers to declare the verdict and judgment.”
Burleson, the pastor of Emmanuel Baptist Church in Enid, Okla., who arranged a benevolence fund at his church to help the Klouda family, also predicted that the “jury judgment in the summer of 2008 will be over eight figures.”
In addition to the lawsuit, then-Texas pastor Benjamin Cole filed complaints last January with the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools and Association of Theological Schools, asking them to investigate “a serious breach” of accreditation guidelines by Southwestern. An ATS spokesperson said her agency's policy is not to investigate a complaint while the complainant is engaged in a civil suit against a member school.
Southwestern officials have repeatedly failed to respond to requests from Associated Baptist Press for comment on the Klouda matter since it began last year.
In the meantime, Klouda continues to teach at Taylor University in Upland, Ind. She and her husband, Pinky, have since sold their home in Texas and taken out a loan on her retirement funds to help pay for a house they're renting in Indiana.
Pinky, who has coronary-artery disease, suffered a heart attack last fall but continues to drive commercial trucks on an occasional basis. Their 15-year-old daughter is aware of her mother's legal situation and “is really concerned with the unfairness of it all,” Klouda said.
But while the media attention drains her and takes her away from her “real” job, Klouda said, the responses from strangers, fellow church members and colleagues have been “overwhelmingly positive.”
Most people who criticize Klouda question her choice to pursue a legal settlement regarding her dismissal, arguing that Christians should not sue other Christians. She said they ask her why she didn't attempt to handle the dispute internally before going public.
In fact, Klouda said she did attempt to pursue resolution “on a personal basis with Dr. Patterson and others” before taking the case public.
“Folks keep asking, ‘Why didn't you file some sort of appeal at the school?'” she said. “The thing is, I was told at the beginning that I wasn't supposed to talk about it and as long as I was quiet, they would continue to employ me.”
But after her dismissal, Klouda began to feel like her “basic rights [were] being denied on the basis of religious belief.”
“I think that at this point it's about Dr. Patterson being a very powerful, influential person who can do what he wants and his supporters will follow him. He doesn't feel like he's accountable to anybody,” Klouda said.
Now, she said, she regrets the “fallout” of her case and its impact on those she sees as innocent bystanders, namely former colleagues and students at Southwestern.
“I liked teaching there. I liked my students,” Klouda said. “It caused a whole negative light on the people there and the seminary, and I really would have liked to avoid that.
“And yet it's not right that somebody who is so prominent can treat people unfairly and get away with it.”
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