c. 2004 Religion News Service

NEW ORLEANS _ New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary continues to be locked in a quiet but determined battle of wills with denominational leaders about how to tie the 3,700-student school to the Southern Baptist Convention.

For more than a year, leaders in the nation’s largest Protestant denomination have been urging trustees of the seminary to clarify the convention’s ownership of the school _ including the right of the convention to replace problematic trustees at a stroke. But the New Orleans school has been the only Southern Baptist seminary to not make an ownership change that would give the national convention tighter control of the seminary’s board.

Such a change, its backers say, would ensure that the seminary could never drift away doctrinally and declare independence from the convention. They point to other Southern Baptist schools _ notably Baylor and Wake Forest universities _ and even some state Baptist conventions, such as in Texas, that now find themselves somewhat estranged from their Southern Baptist roots.

In the past seven years, denominational leaders have persuaded every major Southern Baptist seminary and agency _ with the exception of New Orleans Baptist Theological _ to amend its founding documents to grant the convention “sole membership,” in the language of corporate law. The amendments seek to cement the changes that biblical conservatives wrought in the past 25 years as they wrested control of the machinery of the Southern Baptist world from moderates.

The seminary _ led by President Chuck Kelley and the Rev. Tommy French, a Baton Rouge pastor who is chairman of the seminary’s trustee board _ has resisted on grounds of principle, illustrated by recent history.

If the new arrangement were in place 25 years ago, they argue, a handful of convention leaders could have controlled the trustee boards of several Baptist seminaries and thwarted what Kelley, French and other conservatives regard as their rescue of those schools from a drift toward liberalism.

Further, Kelley has argued, granting sole membership would violate years of Baptist practice, which values local autonomy and prevents concentrations of power in a few hands.

In months of debates and public addresses, Kelley and others have said there is no doctrinal tension between the seminary and the convention, or with its executive committee, which directs the church between annual meetings.

“We’re not a bunch of renegade trustees. We’re trying to protect both the (seminary) and the convention,” French said in a July 1 interview.

Throughout the 1980s, Kelley has noted, a changing convention created a bottom-up revolution by electing new, conservative trustees to its institutions in twos and threes, year after year.

But granting sole membership, with its greater ability for denomination leaders to repel change, is a move away from Baptist tradition not worthy of conservatives’ trust in God, Kelley said.

“Having seen God do a miracle once, conservatives changed the rules lest they have to count on a miracle again,” Kelley told the seminary in a chapel service last fall. He was unavailable for comment in early July.

Denomination leaders also want Southern Baptist agencies to adopt sole membership to limit the convention’s exposure to damage awards in liability lawsuits against individual agencies. Courts recognize that sole membership closely ties agencies to the convention. However, it also clarifies to courts that the agencies are governed locally, which should stop the upward spread of damage awards, supporters have said.

French, Kelley and others have said that sole membership under Louisiana law provides no such protection to the convention. Convention lawyers disagree.

For almost a year, the dispute has simmered quietly out of sight, occasionally boiling over in the Baptist press.

Kelley and several members of the seminary faculty have filed academic defenses of their position, detailing how sole membership violates the traditional understanding of Southern Baptist life. Their papers have been answered in kind by dueling critiques from Baptist scholars in support of the change.

Last fall, the seminary’s trustees rejected the convention’s sole membership request.

Then, in February, Kelley and allies confronted a somewhat agitated Southern Baptist Executive Committee during a tense two-hour meeting in Nashville, Tenn. At its conclusion, Kelley promised to abide by the ultimate decision of the entire convention.

A few weeks later, the seminary trustees voted to present the 2005 annual convention with two proposals _ sole membership, and an alternative.

During last month’s (June) national meeting in Indianapolis, delegates voted by a 64 percent to 36 percent margin to back the Executive Committee in asking the seminary to adopt sole membership at its next trustee meeting in October. The convention also asked the seminary to have the paperwork ready to file with Louisiana authorities as soon as the full convention approves the changes in 2005.

In the interview, however, French said the seminary may not do that, opting instead to use its October meeting to explore alternatives to take to the next annual convention.

“They didn’t say we had to do it. … They requested, they didn’t demand,” French said. “We’ll come back and say we heard the request, and this is what we recommend.”

One option would be to reincorporate the seminary in Georgia, where it maintains an extension campus, or change the charters of both the convention and the seminary to tie the two together more closely without resorting to sole membership.

The Executive Committee is expecting to abide by assurances made at the meeting in Nashville.

“I believe the (seminary) … in the October meeting of the trustees, will choose to cooperate and comply with the request of the convention in the approved recommendation,” the Rev. Morris Chapman, the Executive Committee’s president, said by e-mail.

KRE/MO END NOLAN