Southwestern Distributes Literature Critical of BGCT
By Ken Camp
Texas Baptist Communications

FORT WORTH—Protests by a Wichita Falls layman resulted in classroom distribution of controversial materials sharply criticizing the Texas Baptist Christian Life Commission and the Baptist Joint Committee on Public Affairs at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary.

Seminary administrators gave the materials to three professors to distribute this month after a Baptist General Convention of Texas employee lectured in those professors’ classes. Phil Strickland, director of the Texas Baptist Christian Life Commission, spoke to five classes at Southwestern Seminary Nov. 2 on “Keeping Your Church Out of Court.” As part of his presentation, he described both appropriate political action and unacceptable political involvement by churches.

FBC Wichita Falls

In at least some of the classes, he cited the example of First Baptist Church in Wichita Falls and its 1998 dispute with the local city council over two library books with homosexual themes.

Pastor Robert Jeffress led the opposition to the books, “Daddy’s Roommate” and “Heather Has Two Mommies,” refusing to return the books and choosing instead to pay a $54 fine.

The church’s deacon body passed a resolution supporting the pastor and urging the city council to remove from its shelves any pro-homosexual books. The library replaced the two books originally in question, moving them from the children’s section to the juvenile area.

Jeffress addressed the issue from the pulpit. On one occasion, he called on church members to share their moral convictions with elected officials and to “vote out the infidels” if they refused to honor biblical principles.

Strickland said that in his lectures at Southwestern he pointed to the Wichita Falls church as an example of acceptable political involvement, since it involved speaking to moral issues, not endorsing specific candidates for office.

”I agreed with the stand the pastor took and offered my opinion that his response did not violate IRS guidelines,” Strickland said.

Critical Materials

However, Bill Streich, a member of First Baptist Church in Wichita Falls, told seminary administrators that a student had reported to him Strickland had been openly critical of the church and its political action. Streich, who has mailed literature statewide under the banner of the Texas Baptist Laymen’s Association, asked the seminary to distribute his material in the classes Strickland had addressed.

President Ken Hemphill said the seminary’s desire was to give students access to “both sides of the dialogue” on critical issues.

“We believe open discussion of critical matters such as these is appropriate and necessary in the academic community,” Hemphill said.

Bill Tolar, acting dean of the school of theology, gave the materials from Streich to professors Bill Goff, Jeph Holloway and Doug Dickens to distribute to their students. Tolar said Goff initially had approached him, expressing his willingness to give the church an opportunity to respond to any perceived misunderstanding.

Tolar said he never would coerce any professors to distribute literature. He added that he just wanted to correct any misunderstanding about statements regarding a local church, and he thought the material was from the church—not an individual with a political agenda

. “I simply said to somebody that if we have any misinformation about a great church, we will try to correct it, but I’ve never tried to force a professor in all my years as an administrator,” he said.

The material distributed included a 12- page booklet, “Baptist Joint Committee on Public Affairs: A Closer Look at the Religious Liberty Organization,” produced by the Missouri Baptist Laymen’s Association. The booklet attempts to link the Baptist Joint Committee, a Washington, D.C.-based religious liberty agency partially supported by the BGCT, to other groups and individuals holding “liberal” social, political or theological positions.

Also included was a front-and-back introductory page from the Texas Baptist Laymen’s Association criticizing BGCT support of the Baptist Joint Committee and touting the new Southern Baptists of Texas Convention as an “alternative to the BGCT.”

The only reference to First Baptist Church of Wichita Falls was a one-page open letter to “Southern Baptist Pastors of Texas” from “Concerned Laymen” at the church, and a three-page paper by Streich, “Southern Baptists in Texas: BEWARE!”

The materials distributed by Streich have been circulated widely around the state by his organization and other supporters of the Southern Baptists of Texas Convention in efforts to persuade churches to align with the new conservative state convention.

Streich’s materials, which draw largely upon similar literature developed by Roger Moran of Missouri, have been uniformly condemned by leaders of the BGCT, Cooperative Baptist Fellowship and Baptist Joint Committee. The BGCT Committee on Integrity has likened the accusations in the literature to bathroom graffiti.

The literature attempts to link BGCT, Fellowship and Baptist Joint Committee officials to left-leaning causes through a series of relationships that critics have labeled “guilt by association.”

For example, Streich’s paper says Strickland and James Dunn, former director of the Baptist Joint Committee, “stand with humanists, homosexual activists, Unitarians and abortionists” because they have been associated with Americans United for Separation of Church of State, an interfaith religious liberty organization.

Both Tolar and Hemphill said they did not examine Streich’s material before passing it on for distribution to Southwestern students.

“I didn’t look at it. I didn’t read it,” Tolar said, noting that he thought it was simply a clarification of the church’s position. “I got blindsided by the whole thing.” Streich was out of his office for the remainder of the week and not available for comment.

Presentation Described

All three professors involved said they did not believe Strickland made any derogatory comments about First Baptist Church of Wichita Falls.

“On the contrary, Strickland was very affirming of First Baptist, Wichita Falls,” Dickens said, noting that Strickland specifically commended the pastor for the manner in which he stayed within the boundaries of acceptable political activity.

Strickland’s presentation was “innocent” and “well-intentioned,” according to Goff. “The illustration he used was not derogatory (of First Baptist Church) but illustrative of the issues that arose last year. I did not think the presentation was ill-intentioned.”

Holloway was absent from class the day Strickland spoke. But before he distributed the Moran and Streich materials, he asked his class if Strickland had referred to either First Baptist Church of Wichita Falls or the Baptist Joint Committee. Students said neither was even mentioned in Strickland’s presentations to their class.

”I find this amazing,” Strickland said. “The class presentations were purely to give information to students about legal issues they will face in their churches. It was then used to distribute information that is basically an irresponsible hatchet job.”

The BGCT provides the largest single state source of Cooperative Program funding to Southwestern Seminary, with gifts of about $1.3 million passed on to the seminary during the first 11 months of 1999.

December 1999