by Sandy » Sun Dec 11, 2011 8:40 pm
The word "takeover" implies that outsiders came in and gained control. In the SBC, in the context that the pre-1979 leadership had insulated themselves with trustee boards made up of relatives, friends and people who exchanged favor granting in order to remain in power, those who gained control in 1979, in a sense, "took over." But they were not outsiders as far as the denomination was concerned, far from it, I can't think of anyone involved in the conservative resurgence who wasn't Southern Baptist and hadn't been for quite some time.
The door has been open for a long, long time, with a highly publicized open invitation for churches to exit the SBC and join the sympathizers, friends, and relatives of the pre-1979 SBC aristocracy via CBF. There have been few takers, and even some who dipped their toes into the water have withdrawn from that. The state conventions, with two notable exceptions, have all lined up with the SBC, mostly with the overwhelming support of their churches, and with little to no opposition. In the two states where the conventions didn't move with the SBC, conservatives started new state conventions which are well on the way to becoming the predominant Baptist body in their state. In the one state where moderates set up a convention in opposition to the conservative state group, Missouri, it has attracted a handful of churches, and hasn't reached a budget with $250,000 in contributions in the years since it was organized. The BSC in North Carolina was more or less the last one to fall firmly into the hands of conservatives, and it remains to be seen whether moderates will form an alternative state convention there, but the state CBF organization, one of the largest and strongest in the fellowship, numbers less than a tenth of the churches in the state convention. If they haven't gone by now, they're not going to.
The GBC owns Shorter University, and they can do what they want to do with it. Getting up petitions, or attempting to shift assets to weaken convention control would constitute a takeover from the group that it belongs to. If there are individuals who think that its current direction, under its current trustees and administration, isn't to their liking, they are certainly welcome to send messengers to the GBC and nominate trustees who will move the school in the direction they want it to go. I see just a couple of problems with that. One, I don't think that you could find enough Georgia Baptists who would want to do that to get a majority at a convention, and two, Shorter seems to be prospering as it moves in its current direction, and it wasn't when the moderates ran the place.