I undertook this Seminary Study Committee responsibility with the same attitude I had brought to two other committee assignments for the BGCT.

I sat through some long meetings in which they bombarded me with more information than my mind could absorb. I really had no idea what awaited me besides the opportunity to work with some of the finest servant leaders of the kingdom.

I have spent the past 25 years in the pastorate. When I left the seminary, I began my pastoral ministry in a small church in Ballinger, Texas. I completed three units of Clinical Pastoral Education and earned a degree in marriage and family counseling. During those years, I was insulated from changes sweeping over our seminaries and the human toll they took.

I believe the essence of the Christian ethic: In everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets. (Matthew 7:12 NIV) I still believe the real indicator of our Christianity is how we treat people both those with whom we agree and those with whom we disagree.

I came face to face with three realities. First, I heard the voices of the abused. Imagine my dismay when I began to listen to those who had been swept out of our seminaries when Patterson-Pressler fundamentalism took over.

I recall visiting with one man over the phone. He said he had previously agreed to an interview only to spend a sleepless night reliving the nightmarish experiences of personal and professional accusations and attacks.

I felt sympathetic to his troubled heart and mind. I tried to make our interview as painless as possible by reading of his ordeal in the press accounts. I believe few people without the personal experience of being attacked by religious people know how such traumas reach deep into a person's soul.

The abused told me about being violated and watching the destruction of all they had built. Their spouses suffered in ways they could not express. They voiced fears for their children's faith and wondered if they could ever recover. Everyone I visited expressed all these feelings and fears.

Twice, I heard the abusers. At Midwestern, I sat across the room from a man whom they had implicated in several faculty removals. I had never seen his picture or met him.

Yet, when he and 10 other strangers walked into the room, I knew him instantly. Our conversation showed he was ready to defend his Christ-less actions because he believed the professor was teaching error.

At Southeastern, Dr. Paige Patterson was responding to some comments I made to him about the way people were treated during his movements overrunning the seminaries. He cited several historical references and then dismissed his victims' suffering by saying, "These are casualties of war."

Casualties of war! Did anyone tell those violently ejected faculty members they were in a war? When right doctrine is all that is important, people become secondary against a larger, higher good.

Fundamentalist leader, Roger Moran, gave a most chilling definition of holiness when he said, "Project 1000 is about holiness. Holiness is rooted in sound doctrine." All these years, I thought holiness was rooted in and defined God's character! Moran, from Missouri, is a member of the SBC Executive Committee.

What was the third reality? I have been able to clarify differences between the SBC I grew up with and the fundamentalist convention it has become under the dark leadership of the Patterson-Pressler years.

Dr. Jimmy Draper helped me understand the shift in the seminaries with his excellent exposition of fundamentalism. "To the Fundamentalists, the test of fellowship is correct doctrine. If you do not agree with his doctrinal position, he writes you off and will not have fellowship with you. There is no room in his world for these who have a different persuasion. He feels threatened by diverse convictions and writes them off as sinister and heretical."

Draper could have gone one step further and added, "When the Fundamentalist brands you as a heretic, one is no longer entitled to be the recipient of common Christian courtesy. In fact, the heretic is no more entitled to Christian charity than a cockroach."

I told several committee members: "as near as I can tell, the only difference between what happened in our seminaries and what happened during the inquisitions of the middle ages is that in the middle ages, before they put the match to the fire, they offered the accused the opportunity to repent!"

Two things should profoundly trouble Baptists related to the inexcusable mistreatment of former faculty and staff persons.

First, Baptists ought to ask if such behavior really expresses the teaching of the Scripture regarding how other believers treat people. To me the answer is self-evident.

The Gospels teach such tactics and behaviors pour from the Pharisees, not Jesus.

Second, Baptists ought to wonder if they really want a pastor that has been taught at a seminary where Bible-toting fundamentalists have abused and bludgeoned faculty and staff persons.

Seeing one's church members as casualties of a war for doctrinal purity takes little imagination. A war initiated by a new pastor who has learned his theology and methodology from seminary leaders who learned their leadership skills from the bloody inquisitions of ages past.

October 2000