A LETTER FROM DAN AND BARBARA KENT

Barbara served as Director of Student Housing at  Southwestern  Theological Seminary in Fort Worth.

Dan served as Professor of Old Testament at  Southwestern Theological  Seminary in Fort Worth.  He recently retired after  refusing to sing the 1998  family amendment to the Baptist Faith and Message  that requires wives to  submit to their husbands.

Dear Friends,

Many of you are aware of considerable changes in our  circumstances in  the past year.  We feel the need to give you, our  family and friends, a detailed  explanation of what has been going on and why.

For the past 20 years the Southern Baptist  convention has been in  turmoil.  An extreme right wing group successfully  took over the convention and  has almost completely ousted everyone who would not  get in a lock step with them.

For Southwestern Seminary, where we worked for a  combined total of 34  years, the major blow came in March of 1994 when  they fired our effective and beloved  president, Russell Dilday.

It was a traumatic time.  Some of our colleagues  resigned in protest  over what had been done.  We admired their  convictions and understood their  feelings.

However, we felt led to do the opposite. We stayed  on in protest.  We  felt that someone had to try to keep things going as  best they could.  We made a  commitment to each other and to the Lord. We would  serve until we could  no longer do our work with integrity.  We would  serve until we were asked  to do things that would violate our convictions or  violate Southwestern's character.  For Barbara  that time came in July 1998, and for Dan in 1999.  We retired,  and have never had a moment of doubt that our  decisions were right.

Southwestern has radically changed.  It is nothing  like the place it  was.  We have been associated formally with the  seminary since 1957.  During those  years, through the middle 1990s, it was the most  wonderful place, academically  and spiritually that you can imagine.

The Convention takeover group, their trustees, and  their administrators  did something that we could never have believed  possible.  They made it easy  to leave.

October 1999