What is going on at SWBTS?

[Sandy]

https://sbctoo.wordpress.com/2018/05/26 ... nt-enough/

This sounds like a cult is running the place.

[William Thornton]

It was a one man show. I read the account when it came out last year prior to Patterson's firing. Now that they have a new president,mMore personnel changes will come. Big financial issues as well.

[Sandy]

Are we still going to have to listen to the obligatory statement about the necessity of the "Conservative Resurgence" and how Patterson and Pressler did the right thing, in spite of both of them being deep in weeds of sexual assault and misogyny? Or are they going to get rid of the windows?

[William Thornton]

Windows shoul go but still a lot of sycophants around. The new guy needs to stabilize stuff.

[Sandy]

I hope their new president can stabilize the school and get it back on track. It's a mess. He's taken on a big challenge because most of the trustees were hand picked by Patterson. The SBC has a lot of resources and I'd bet that they'd bail the school out if it becomes necessary but in the meantime, it will have to try to rebuild enrollment and get potential students to trust them with their theological education.

It's amazing to me that this sort of thing can happen in a denomination as large as the SBC, but the mechanisms and means of operation have made it possible for a relatively small group of people, operating out of a backwoods good-ole-boy mentality and all kinds of nepotism and influence peddling, to operate theological schools and mission sending agencies, mainly for their own benefit. At least this president of Southwestern Seminary came from an academic background comparable to the kind of scholarship necessary to lead an academic institution like SWBTS. How you get promoted from the leadership of a second-rate, broken down, crumbling, insignificant, unaccredited Bible college in an old church building in Dallas to the presidency of Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary and then, after doing some damage, on to the crown jewel of SBC seminaries is a story of manipulation, nepotism and influence peddling. Name dropping seems to be the M.O. of Southern Baptists and not just those of the conservative resurgence type. The consequence may very well be the loss of what was its best seminary.