c. 2006 Religion News Service

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. _ One longtime observer of Thomas Corts says the perfect parting gift for Samford University’s 17th president would be a balancing pole of the type used by high-wire walkers.

The 64-year-old Corts, who will retire at the end of May, would never be mistaken for the late Karl Walenda. But Corts has performed his own high-wire act of sorts in leading Samford through controversial changes during his almost 23 years at the helm of one of the nation’s largest Baptist institutions.

Like most university presidents, Corts has presided over steady increases in tuition, worked to raise millions of dollars to keep the increases as small as possible, renovated aging buildings, built new ones and improved the quality of teaching in an age of national rankings of universities.

But those are only a part of the pressures Corts has managed as Samford’s leader.

Perhaps his greatest challenge was to strike a balance between learning and faith as moderate and conservative Baptists squared off time and again over the direction of the Southern Baptist Convention, the nation’s largest Protestant denomination.

Corts has been keenly aware of the pressures to balance the need for academic freedom with the need to keep Samford close to its Baptist roots. That balance is maybe best summed up in the school’s motto: For God. For learning. For life.

“When I came here the mission of the university, if you put it into words, went something like this: A quality education in a Christian context,” Corts said. “What I’ve tried to say is this: Be a strong university first academically. But also be strong from the Christian perspective and knit that together into a caring community.”

Striking that balance between learning and faith led Corts in 1994 to push through his most controversial move as Samford’s president _ breaking the school’s legal ties with Southern Baptists. In a move to prevent a possible takeover of the Samford board of trustees, Corts convinced the board that it, and not the Alabama Baptist Convention, should elect new trustees.

The board, dominated by moderate Baptists, agreed by a 31-2 vote. One of those two no votes came from then-trustee Calvin Kelly, pastor of Birmingham’s Valleydale Baptist Church. Kelly called the vote a “dark day” for Alabama Baptists.

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Kelly, whose staff said he is out of the office for the summer, was unavailable for comment on Corts’ retirement. But his church’s Web site notes he has served on several boards of trustees, but does not mention his time on the Samford board.

Requests for interviews from more than a half-dozen pastors around the state seeking comment on Corts’ time at Samford were declined.

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Corts defends the action as necessary to protect Samford from religious political activism that threatened to take control of the board and endanger the integrity of the university.

“We began to worry that with the changing times and the religious political activism we saw out there, the university might be put into a position of having to accept trustees who might not be all that interested in Samford but in pushing agendas that had very little to do with operating a strong academic university,” Corts said.

“We did not seek to distance ourselves from Alabama Baptists, but to elect trustees who love and care about this institution first, not some particular agenda or theological outlook.”

Examples of Corts’ balancing act are numerous.

While the school accepts Baptists and non-Baptists alike, all students are required to attend chapel. The school’s biology department is home to a faculty that mostly teaches and supports Darwin’s theory of evolution and rejects teaching of intelligent design, which is similar to the scientific creationism that holds an intelligent designer played a role in the development of life on Earth. Still, Corts has sanctioned guest lecturers who support intelligent design.

The school’s religion department is widely regarded as moderate to liberal in its outlook, while the Samford-affiliated Beeson Divinity School is dominated by a mostly theologically conservative faculty.

Corts said it is important that Samford keep its roots in the Baptist tradition while remembering that Samford is a university, not a church. And he said it’s vital that the school be a place that opens its arms to all kinds of students.

“We’ve got some very poor kids here and a diversity you don’t necessarily find at all schools like ours, and I would not want to see that diminished in any way because it makes us stronger,” Corts said. “There are colleges like ours who ask prospective students if they consider themselves a Christian or ask if they have made a profession of faith in Christ. We do not. If we did, you would find a number of kids who would answer such a question with a no. But they all contribute, all make this a better university.”

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Corts, who has been among the leaders in the effort to rewrite Alabama’s constitution, said he is not opposed to men and women of faith being guided by that faith in the voting booth. But he is critical of those who use faith and the church to promote certain candidates or causes.

“I’m not much on the church as an entity getting involved in and organizing to back this or that candidate or position,” he said. “I like to think that the church is a place where the most liberal Democrat can sit down next to the most conservative Republican and worship the same God.”

But Corts said that kind of thing is becoming harder to do in Alabama and across the nation.

“Our faith is too precious to be put at risk by politicians and some in the church who want to use it to push narrow political agendas,” Corts said. “I don’t back away from the idea that your faith can influence your vote, and should. But the church should not be organizing the vote, endorsing this candidate or slate of candidates. That is dangerous for the democracy, and it’s dangerous for our faith.”

Editors: To obtain a photo of Thomas Corts, go to the RNS Web site at https://religionnews.com. On the lower right, click on “photos,” then search by subject or slug.

(Charles J. Dean writes for the Birmingham News in Birmingham, Ala.)