Longtime Southern Seminary librarian fired after challenging SBC leader
By Mark Wingfield

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (ABP) — The longtime reference librarian at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary was fired Sept. 26, apparently because he wrote a personal letter questioning statements made in a chapel address by Southern Baptist Convention President Tom Elliff.

Paul Debusman, a 35-year employee of the seminary in Louisville, Ky., was 10 months away from retirement. He was given one month’s severance pay and immediately dismissed.

As a result of the “involuntary retirement,” Debusman, 64, will lose some retirement benefits he otherwise would have received.

Seminary President Albert Mohler did not return a phone call seeking comment on the firing. Seminary spokesman David Porter said Mohler would not comment because of the confidential legal nature of personnel matters.

Friends and colleagues of Debusman described him as one of the most “gentle” and “mild-mannered” people they know. “Paul is the kindest man in all the world,” said his pastor, Ron Sisk. Debusman reluctantly spoke about his situation, noting that he still has “a lot of positive feelings for the seminary” and that he’s “not trying to recruit any people” to his side of the firing dispute.

SBC President Elliff, pastor of First Southern Baptist Church of Del City, Okla., spoke in chapel at Southern Sept. 16, as part of the seminary’s Pastor Appreciation Day.

According to seminary-produced news reports, Elliff lauded the changes toward conservatism that have occurred at Southern under Mohler’s administration. Debusman said in that context Elliff suggested he would not have been invited to speak in chapel under previous moderate administrations.

“At least the tone of what I felt he was saying was that in the former days he would not have been invited,” Debusman explained.

That prompted the librarian to write Elliff a personal letter in which he attempted to correct what he perceived as historical inaccuracies in Elliff’s comments. Studying and working at the seminary since the 1950s, Debusman has witnessed the administration of three presidents: Duke McCall, Roy Honeycutt and Mohler.

“I reminded him that [in the past] we had heard SBC presidents and other ranking members of the Southern Baptist Convention,” Debusman said. “Chapel as I remembered it from the ’50s, ’60s, ’70s and ’80s was a time when we heard everyone. There was a deliberate strategy to bring in different points of view.

” “That’s no longer true,” Debusman said he pointed out to Elliff. Under the Mohler administration, “some people will not be invited,” he explained. “My pastor will not be invited.”

Debusman is a longtime member of Crescent Hill Baptist Church in Louisville, the Baptist church nearest the seminary. In the past, the moderate congregation was closely linked with the seminary. In recent years that relationship has faded, as moderate faculty and students were gradually replaced by conservatives during the 1980s.

“The ironic thing to me is I was attempting to be conciliatory,” Debusman said. “I’m not naive, and I don’t mean to sound Pollyanish. But I closed my letter by saying my heart had been broken since 1979 by the way we had sniped at each other and I would to God that we could unite around the larger mission of sharing the gospel, discipling and equipping believers.”

“Although critical, I was intending to be in my little tiny way some kind of conciliatory spirit and expressing the fact that I’m brokenhearted because we can’t find bigger objectives and unite even through our differences,” he added.

Elliff declined to comment on Debusman’s letter and firing. “This is, apparently, a matter concerning the personnel policies at Southern Seminary. I have no statement to make,” Elliff said in a faxed response to an interview request.

However, Debusman said it was obvious to him that Elliff had communicated with the seminary. Debusman did not receive a personal reply from Elliff until the Monday after he was fired.

Debusman said seminary administrators told him his actions had been “harmful” to the seminary.

In April 1995, in response to controversy over Mohler’s firing of Carver School dean Diana Garland, seminary trustees adopted a new “policy on constructive relationships.” That policy originally stated: “Faculty members and staff of this institution are not to act in ways that are injurious or detrimental to the seminary’s relationship with the denomination, donors or other constituencies within and without the seminary community.”

In April 1997, after extensive consultation with faculty and staff, the policy was amended to state that faculty and staff “should seek to relate constructively to the denomination, donors and other constituencies.”

News of Debusman’s firing shocked and angered his fellow church members at Crescent Hill, Sisk said.

“He is held in enormous respect in our church,” Sisk said. “He has been elected term after term to our board of deacons, frequently heads our nominating committee because of his knowledge of the church and sensitivity to persons. You won’t find anyone to fault his character or suggest he would ever be guilty of indiscretion.

“We announced his firing and the basic terms on Sunday morning. The congregation rose as one and gave him a prolonged standing ovation in celebration of his integrity.”

Sisk said Debusman has been “unfailingly helpful” to generations of students doing research at Southern.

At Crescent Hill, he sings in the choir and “visits in the nursing homes more than I do,” Sisk said.

“He is a devoted husband, father and grandfather, and in my mind is a sterling example of the very best of Baptist faith. He is simply a gentle man who spoke his mind in an ungentle venue.”

October 1997