Although I have never attended seminary, the purging of our seminary teachers and leaders from the very earliest days of the present problems is to me one of the most frightening aspects of the whole scenario that has brought us into this year.

In the seminary study report, I read about the threats of trial for heresy, with darkly veiled hints of secret charges. This seems to me to echo the darkest days of the dark ages. In those days which our modern Christian world has trusted would never come again, the principal of freedom of the individual to act in accord with his/her conscience was one of the first victims.

 But something similar has happened again, and again. When I went to teach in China in 1980, when very few western teachers had been admitted, I was several times sought out by Chinese Christians, young and old, who had suffered for their faith during the Cultural Revolution. They wanted to tell the story to someone who was not involved directly in those terrible purges but who would, nevertheless, understand their need to tell what had happened to them.

Since then I have worshiped in many open churches in China and even lived and worked for a time on the campus of the Union Seminary. I heard hymns floating out over the areas surrounding the seminaries and the churches and, in my limited understanding of the language, heard enough fine testimonies from young people, trained since the seminaries reopened, to know that they are now being challenged to speak out openly and given the freedom to do so.

Surely, we cannot expect less freedom in our Baptist institutions in America than is even now being exercised in China!

 The seminary study report is made up of factual, fully documented reports, with carefully footnoted references supporting every detail. It is worthy of the careful study of everyone who believes that a well- rounded seminary faculty, and students allowed to exercise their own freedom of conscience, are essential to the preservation of our Baptist distinctive of freedom.

I believe all of our Texas institutions deserve our support in carrying out their mission to educate leaders, men and women, to serve in our own state and in many other parts of this country and world.

October 2000