RICK SCARBOROUGH POSTPONES SOUTHWESTERN CHAPEL APPEARANCE

Rick Scarborough, fundamentalist candidate for president of the BGCT, was scheduled to speak in chapel at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary on November 1, ten days prior to the BGCT annual meeting. According to Dr. Kenneth Hemphill, president of Southwestern, Scarborough volunteered to postpone his appearance because some Texas Baptists were making a political issue of the timing of his appearance.

He is correct. We certainly were making an issue of it. After what happened in North Carolina last year when a fundamentalist president was elected for the first time since the controversy began, it is a big issue. North Carolina Baptists elected a fundamentalist president by less than 100 votes with many Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary students, encouraged by Paige Patterson, attending the state convention and voting for the fundamentalist candidate.

It is also interesting to us that Charles Wade lives 20 minutes from the seminary and has not been asked to speak in chapel during his term as president of the BGCT

We are glad that Rick Scarbrough has cancelled and hope that Dr. Hemphill will make every effort to keep Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary from getting politicized by the fundamentalists.

October 1996