Shorter College chills the Air

[Sandy]

[Ed Pettibone]

[Sandy]

[Gene Scarborough]

Sandy---

You are describing the "skin of their teeth" escape of SEBTS!

They WERE put on probation until an investigation could be completed. Masses of students went elsewhere for several years. Students returned under the pretense that "it was now safe." The numbers came back with the start of a College Degree (not needed in a seminary environment and in direct competition to state Baptist colleges all over).

My school became a "cult of the personality" as Paige Patterson became President. He made things so rough on my professors, most of them found employment elsewhere or retired early. They were treated like rabid dogs!

Meanwhile, the same text books we used were still in use. The lectures contained new terms like "cultural relativism, liberalism." It was a pretended education and more indoctrination. There were great lies told about the numbers of students. Only 30% of their classrooms were in use, yet they had to build new buildings with new names on them and that of Paige and Dorothy Patterson.

It is no longer the school and the quality I experienced in 1967-70. It was at its highest student level under Randall Lolley and was teaching practical matters training young men and women to lead churches in a practical fashion. The school begans a crusade to change small churches to a King Pastor mode of operation and many went into crisis. They will no longer call a student pastor from SEBTS. They started working in the Associations of NC and the Baptist State Convention. Controversy and exclusions are happening everywhere. The attendance at the State Convention meeting has dwindled to the point they moved to a much smaller facility. It is now run, mostly, by the Executive Committee.

The days of autonomy and joy agreeing to disagree on certain matters are past / gone / ended / fini

[Stephen Fox]

I promised Dr. Thornton I would share this link since he dissed my July 4th Sermon outline in Faith and Practice

http://saveourshorter.com/2012/06/27/is ... -inerrant/

[Stephen Fox]

Great job all around. I got so enthused I posted on the Collinsville PTO Facebook page of Collinsville, Al where my Mother was baptized and SCOTUS Hugo Black's grandson Stephen was my guest April 28, 2006. 43 Atty general Gonzalez Mother in Law came over from the next county for a few minutes

http://www.abpnews.com/faith/theology/i ... _ZEAfWEHDO

[William Thornton]

[William Thornton]

I'm not sure where the anti-Shorter crowd is headed. The GBC owns the thing and is willing to pour millions annually into the school, for good or ill.

[Big Daddy Weaver]

[Stephen Fox]

[William Thornton]

[Sandy]

[Tom Parker]

Sandy:

You said:"If you're a high school senior involved in a conservative, Georgia Baptist Convention-affiliated church, and you're looking for a comprehensive college education in a conservative Christian environment with a Baptist flavor."

The terms conservative and liberal have so many definitions so when I read those words I am never sure what someone is trying to say.

[Stephen Fox]

[Stephen Fox]

Samford is not a fundamentalist institution and would be appalled by the direction Price and Dowles are taking Shorter.
It is true the President's daughter was editor of the Samford Crimson Student paper and is something like a Huckabee conservative ( families were friends in Arkansas); but they teach evolution there and most of the faculty are at odds with Timothy George on the Manhattan Declaration.
Randall Balmer has twice been the Dotson Nelson lecturer at Samford, and just last fall Charles Marsh lectured there. Marsh has issues with Francis Schaeffer; Nelson Price and Dowles embrace him.
That is the difference.

[Sandy]

[Stephen Fox]

Many of the faculty and staff are members of Riverchase, Mtn Brook BC, and www.bcoc.net

Jim Evans has a degree from Beeson Div School; Evans frequent contributor to ethicsdaily.com

Kate Campbell is a Samford Grad. She is in concert with www.bcoc.net; not with Gov Bentley and Rick Lance, nor the Manhattan Declaration, as I understand the several events she has shared with Wayne Flynt, who was Bruce Gourley's dissertation advisor.

So know, in no way does Samford smile at what Price and Dowles are about at Shorter; neither, and I defer to BDW on this; does the current President of Baylor.

If you ask the right questions Samford has more in common with the mother jones easy google on Mercer President Underwood, than it has in common with Nelson Price and Truett McConnell. That's a no brainer.

[Stephen Fox]

[Sandy]

You wouldn't know any of the Samford alums I know. But I can tell you, from the seventies through to fairly recently, the vast majority of them are mainstream Southern Baptist conservatives. Perhaps you would recognize a few names. Al Mohler. Fred Lowrey, pastor of FBC Bossier City, LA and a leading Louisiana conservative. Harold Martin, of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association. Ed Stetzer, of Lifeway. Of course, Kirby Godsey is also a Samford alum, but from my observation, that's an abberation from the norm.

Over the past few years, in my involvement with short term missions through various NAMB projects, the staff members I've met from Samford are among the best trained in terms of their theological education, and well inside the boundaries of the conservative resurgence.

[Ed Pettibone]

[Sandy]

Well, Ed, you can get the list of current Southern or Southeastern profs and where their degrees came from and come up with a similar list. Perhaps there are a few more "in house" degrees on the faculty, but then, the theological faculty at a seminary is much larger than that of a college or university. Samford may indeed not be headed in the direction of Shorter, but it isn't going down the road that forks to the left, either.

A lot of Southern Baptist related schools, including the seminaries, have taken a much more non-denominational, or interdenominational approach over the past decade and a half. The number of students attending Southwestern these days is about half of what it was when I was there, but the number of non-SBC students is double what it was when I was there.

Schools change direction. Grand Canyon University, my alma mater, was a small, very Southern Baptist college when I started there in 1975. During my time there, the school finally achieved financial stability and enrollment growth to insure its future, which had been in doubt many times prior to that. I always wondered how a Southern Baptist school, with a faculty drawn mainly from Texas, Oklahoma, Louisiana and Mississippi, could function in secular Arizona, where the population was booming, and extremely diverse. But over time, the leadership, drawn from the state's SBC churches, saw that the college would have to do what the churches were doing in order to grow, and over time, they did it. Then, the scandal at the Baptist Foundation of Arizona forced the school to dissolve its ties with the state convention. It was purchased by a group of alumni who have successfully turned it into a regional Christian university. It is debt free, just completed about $40 million worth of contruction on campus, has about 5,000 students on campus, and 35,000 on line. Some of the alumni in the purchase group were connected with the University of Phoenix, and brought some of their concepts to Grand Canyon, using them in a Christian atmosphere. I think that's probably the future for most small, Christian, denominationally-affiliated institutions of higher education. Remaining theologically conservative, especially in the Bible (not "religion") department has helped the school attract students from a growing number of non-denominational churches.

[Stephen Fox]

http://rn-t.com/pages/full_story/push?n ... e=21093844

[Stephen Fox]

http://saveourshorter.com/2012/12/06/what-a-game/