NORRISITES FIRE DILDAY

The spiritual children of J. Frank Norris have finally succeeded in accomplishing what the old warhorse could never accomplish: the destruction of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary.

Wednesday Morning, March 9, 1994, the trustees, in Norrislike style, fired seminary President Russell Dilday without citing a reason.

The takeover of the Southern Baptist Convention is now complete. For a few years, students will receive a quality education, but as traditional Baptists professors leave and are replaced, the quality of education will decrease. Make no mistake about it, the Seminary has been destroyed, from the traditional Baptist point of view.

Dilday was fired “effective immediately,” and plans for the dismissal had been laid well in advance of Wednesday’s firing. The firing was well planned out as “within minutes of the firing, trustees changed the locks on the president’s office and denied him access,” according to news reports.

The trustees voted on printed ballots prepared ahead of time, and a letter from the trustees to the students about the firing had been prepared before the meeting.

According to Associated Baptist Press, the details of the firing are as follows:

Dilday had a job performance review Tuesday night, March 8, in which trustees gave him a favorable evaluation.

Dilday said he had asked the trustee executive committee members — including Ralph Pulley, former chairman of deacons at First Baptist, Dallas, T. Bob Davis, a Dallas dentist and trustee secretary, and chairman Damon Shook of Houston — about the rumors that he would be dismissed. They said they knew nothing about such a plan.

The following morning, as trustees gathered for their 11 a.m. session, Shook and trustee secretary Lee Weaver of Fort Worth asked to meet with Dilday privately in the president’s office. Waiting for them were Pulley, Davis and Gerald Dacus, a trustee from Walnut, Calif.

Pulley said they wanted to offer him an early retirement plan, Dilday recalled. “I said I had no plans to retire and didn’t need to see the plan because I wasn’t ready for retirement. I said if they wanted me to announce my retirement plans, I would be glad to so that, but that they were for when I am 67 or 68.

“It was not my intention to retire immediately. God led me here and I had no leadership from the Lord that this was the time to retire,” Dilday said.

Dilday said Pulley replied that the alternative was that he be fired.

“I asked under what charges, what rationale, would they dismiss me,” said Dilday. “His response was ‘We don’t need a reason. We can do it. We have the votes and we will, and it will be with no provision for anything if you don’t accept the early retirement plan.’”

THEN THE PRE-MEDITATED, NONJUSTIFIABLE DEED WAS DONE.

Another trustee, Wayne Allen, pastor of First Baptist Church of Carrollton, Texas, said in the Dallas Morning News, “I cannot believe how un-Christian it was, the way it was handled.”

Somewhere J. Frank Norris is smiling, and B. H. Carroll and L. R. Scarborough share our pain.

*Editors note: All of this newsletter was written prior to Dr. Dilday’s firing except the articles that particularly refer to his firing. Notice how many of the other articles fit in with these recent events, especially the comments by Jerry Falwell, even though they were written prior to the firing.

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