Revised Statement will guide employment
By Mark Wingfield, Managing Editor
The Baptist Standard

ORLANDO, Fla.-Professors at Southern Baptist Convention seminaries and employees of SBC agencies will be expected to affirm the newly revised Baptist Faith & Message statement, SBC leaders said after the document was adopted by SBC messengers June 14.

Four members of the blue-ribbon committee that proposed the updated language said during a news conference that requiring adherence to the new Baptist Faith & Message is a matter for trustees of each agency or institution to address. However, they noted, all SBC agencies and institutions already require employees to affirm the Baptist Faith & Message.

After a family amendment was added to the Baptist Faith & Message in 1998, some agencies and institutions changed their requirements to stipulate employees must affirm the Baptist Faith & Message in whatever form it may be amended in the future.

That is the case at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, for example, where two faculty members left in 1998 rather than affirm the family amendment.

Southwestern Seminary President Ken Hemphill said he does not anticipate losing any faculty over the broader changes made this time-changes he labeled as appropriate.

Al Mohler, president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky., and an influential member of the study committee, said during a news conference that no one should be surprised that professors at SBC seminaries would be asked to affirm the new statement.

"To accept employment is to accept the terms of employment," he said. "No one is forced to accept employment. É This is a voluntary accountability."

The preamble to the new Baptist Faith & Message contains an explanation that "Baptist churches, associations and general bodies have adopted confessions of faith as a witness to the world and as instruments of doctrinal accountability."

That language drew a concerned response from Charles Wade, executive director of the Baptist General Convention of Texas and one of three people who attempted to amend the committee's report on the convention floor.

"Never before have we said this document was an instrument of doctrinal accountability," Wade said, noting he is concerned about attempts to require SBC employees and professors to agree with every word of the document.