SWBTS STUDENT RESOLUTION

NOTE: This resolution was passed by an overwhelming majority of over 500 students during an ad hoc meeting March 21, 1994, at Gambrell Street Baptist Church. It was presented as a press release March 22, 1994, and is being mailed to all of the faculty, the trustees, and the state Baptist papers.

WHEREAS, we the students of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, called by God to prepare for ministry, affirm the dual principles of love for God and love for neighbor as exemplified by our Lord Jesus Christ; and

WHEREAS, this love compels us to live out lives advocating justice, acting with integrity, cherishing honesty, speaking truth, and promoting the kingdom of God; and

WHEREAS, we submit ourselves to mutual accountability in order to more fully embody these ideals since we all fall short of these principles; and

WHEREAS, we maintain that certain actions of the trustees during their Spring 1994 meetings violated the principles of love for God and love for neighbor; and

WHEREAS, justice was abandoned by the dismissal of our president without due process according to guidelines set out by the Association of Theological Schools, especially in light of the present vitality of the institution; and

WHEREAS, integrity was forsaken by the following: 1) the premeditated agenda evidenced by preprinted ballots, preprinted letters to the faculty explaining the president’s “early retirement,” and selective secretive polling of the board prior to the vote; 2) refusing the president access to his office by changing the locks directly after the closed session in which he was fired, making it impossible for him to retrieve even his personal belongings; and

WHEREAS, honesty and truth were deserted when the trustees fired Dr. Dilday after affirming, in the presence of the student body, the president’s leadership both on Tuesday during his evaluation and on Wednesday during a trustee-led prayer in chapel; and

WHEREAS, these actions betray the principles of Christian love and reflect a motivation contrary to the trustees’ given responsibilities to hold the seminary in trust;

BE IT RESOLVED THAT we the students, in Christian love, implore the board of trustees to be accountable both to the students whose best interest they have pledged to protect and to the members of the churches who have entrusted them with this institution.

We call upon members of the board to repent of their unchristian behaviors, to ask forgiveness of those they have wronged, and to restore the vitality and academic integrity of the institution by reversing their actions.

We the students will continue to demand accountability from the trustees by proclaiming the truth of their actions through letters and contacts throughout the convention and through other appropriate responses. We call on Southern Baptist around the world the join us by educating others of this betrayal, by writing the trustees, and by calling for justice at the national convention.

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