Belmont University & the TBC

You won't be able to believe everything you read about this issue. If you want to know what each side is saying here's a good article.

 

wow, whatever. Almost no common ground in any responses the convention & belmont gave. It's probably gonna get uglier, IMO.

This affects youth ministry in that Belmont college is one of the colleges used for the popular missions camp M-fuge...so my eyes are on this.

I just hate seeing all this fighting. I'm sure lost folks look at us and roll their eyes.

 

gb93433 has posted the Baptist Press story in the General Baptist Discussion category. The thread is labeled "Tennessee Baptists reject Belmont settlement, vote to remove trustees."

It generally reports on the Tennessee Baptist Convention side of the story, and gives little of the Belmont side.

ktn4eg's link to the Nashville Tennesseean in the first post fills in some blanks. Also, it's interesting to read the comments in the Tennesseean's forum. A lot of heat, but there is a little light shed on the issue.

 

You are correct, rbell. Each side may be wrong but both sides cannot be right. The division is deep, and the fight will likely be ugly. It is hard to imagine a positive outcome no matter what happens.

 

A similar situation happened in Kentucky. The three Baptist colleges pushed hard to get Kentucky Baptist Convention permission to have up to 25% of its board non-Baptist. The KBC convention blew it out of the water, and immediately Georgetown College began making noises about re-evaluating its relationship to the KBC. Ultimately, the KBC and Georgetown reached an agreement to part peaceably.

The non-Baptist trustee idea is driven by a desire to raise more money. There are a lot of well-off non-Baptists out there. Belmont wanted some of them on their board, too.

And that's because the financial support from the TBC (same with KBC and Georgetown) is an increasingly smaller percentage of the total revenue, and a few wealthy non-Baptist trustees can easily make up any revenue lost by separation.

Simmering under the surface is another issue. What do the schools teach? Belmont (and Georgetown) may be solidly Baptist and bibilical, but the history of these separations is that the schools which desire to shake off state convention control are less than conservative, and that's putting it mildly.

So money is a large issue, but I doubt that it's the only issue.

 

Well said, and right on the money!

"Just go away, let us 'do our thing', and leave us a loan!"

With puns both intended and no puns intended.

Ed

 

I ran across a publication, the Nashville City Paper. Along with a report on the TBC-Belmont situation, a forum accompanied the article.

http://www.nashvillecitypaper.com/index.cfm?section=9&screen=opinion&news_id=49715

A couple of comments jumped out at me. One poster said:

"Belmont has enjoyed the growing diversity of the student and faculty population. (I even had a gay professor!) The mixture of the alternative lifestyles found in the Music Business Program and the profound "non-Baptist" diversity of the MBA programs are great."

Since this comment was posted under a pseudonym, I can't vouch for its truthfulness.

Although some posters did defend the TBC, the majority, apparently students or grads, dislike the TBC intensely. Read them for yourselves and draw your own conclusions.

 

While they let Satan declare himself the winner. Satans like the world to see what Christians can do when in the ring fighting as a spectacle. It is easy to level with people and tell them that is what happens when people do not follow Christ.

 

The obvious disconnect between the TBC and Belmont is partly the TBC's own fault. If Belmont is as liberal as some say it is, here's how it got that way. The TBC elected the trustees who hired the president who hired the other administrators and faculty.

The conservative president of a conservative Baptist university told me, "I can steal this school and take it liberal any time I want to. Here's how. One hire at a time."

Here's how the trustees allowed this situation to develop. One hire (the president) at a time.

Here's how the TBC, which elects the trustees, allowed this situation to develop. One trustee at a time.

By firing all the trustees, the TBC sought to fix the problem on the back end. Better to prevent the problem on the front end.

By recognizing the problem, the TBC can also recognize the solution. It will be long and painful, as the battle to turn around the Southern Baptist Convention seminaries demonstrated.

 

And yet another version from the Associated Baptist Press:

http://www.abpnews.com/www/1016.article

 

The last sentence in the ABP article noted "The majority of the Nashville school's student body is not Baptist."

So what?

 

That's the reason that the university gives for wanting non-Baptist trustees. Seems silly to me.