Baptists vote to slash ties to Mercer University (GA)

[Charlie Brown]

http://www.ajc.com/metro/content/metro/1105/15mercer.html

The Georgia Baptist Convention voted Tuesday to sever ties with Mercer University because it no longer shares "common values and mutual trust" with the Macon-based school.

"The relationship seems void of common values and reflects a lack of mutual trust," Evers said, addressing the assembly.

Mercer, founded in 1833, has been the leading Baptist school in Georgia. The liberal arts university, which has an enrollment of 7,300 and an annual budget of $139 million, also has a campus in Atlanta.

R. Kirby Godsey, the school's president, pleaded with convention members not to sever ties, saying they should not misread the existence of a gay rights group on campus. The group, called the Mercer Triangle Symposium, was formed in 2002 but disbanded Monday after convention leaders complained.

EDITED BY ADMIN: COPYRIGHT

[Thom Little]

1. Just part of a trend that's been happening for two decades

As the radical right has seized control of state and national Baptist conventions they've demanded that their super-fundamentalist theology be an acid test applied to academic freedom so they can run off the professors and administrators they don't like at Baptist colleges and universities. As a result, more and more Baptist schools have cut ties with the conventions.

The net effect is the conventions are losing control of the larger schools and keeping a grip on only the smallest ones. One of their biggest losses was when Wake Forest cut all ties. IIRC, the only big Baptist school left with major ties to the conventions is Baylor. Literally dozens of schools have already chosen to distance themselves just like Mercer instead of submit to the dictatorship of the conventions. Every one of the schools that's cut ties is doing just fine.

Just one more example of how the radical religious right is destroying itself in its own backyard. I love America so much because it does such a great job of pushing radical extremists to the fringe. It's nice to see the conservative stupidity nonsensically shooting itself in the foot once again. They are sowing the seeds of their own destruction.

[ThoughtCriminal]

2. There's also Samford U. in Alabama

Undergrad enrollment around 3000. My experience thre in the late 70's was that the students were way more fundy than the faculty.

[HereSince1628]

3. It seems to me that lots of private school with religious affiliation

are caught in the same circumstance.

From the late 70's to the late 90's "tolerance" and "compassion" were more than buzz words on campuses. They were considered the basis of a Christian ethos. They were worked into lectures and decision making about student activities.

Since Bill Bennet and Lynne Cheney undertook to drive private colleges into conservative politics the words tolerance and compassion have come to be ensigns of an unsavory acceptance or affiliation with issues that are considered sinful.

[yellowcanine]

4. "Hudson, a fifth-generation Baptist,...." It's INHERITED? Things are

worse than I'd imagined. Being Baptist has a genetic component? We are doomed.

[Gogi]

5. William Woods College's president worked hard to get alternative...

funding sources, which he succeeded in doing, and then told the Southern Baptist Convention to take a hike.

[CatholicEdHead]

6. Also happening to Catholic colleges

This idological crackdown. The fundie nuts of any religion seem to demand idological purity.

The Cardinal Newman Society is the "offical" (still mosty unoffical) enforcer with a narrow set of what should and should not be mentioned in "Catholic" colleges..

http://www.cardinalnewmansociety.org/

Demanding idological purity with any idology is over the top.

[proud2BlibKansan]

7. Same thing happened here at a local university

Must be a trend.

[TrogL]

8. Baptist and University in the same breath is a contradiction in terms

Anything the Baptists are associated with should be labelled a "Bible College". I've met some of their graduates. They're not qualified to tie their shoes.

[Southpaw Bookworm]

9. You got that right

Anecdote:

My friend is a music teacher in the sixth largest school system in the country. A few years ago he was directing a middle school orchestra, and the part time choral teacher was a graduate of one of these institutions. He has no idea how this woman managed to get hired, even if she was a graduate of county high schools (county residents get preference in hiring). Pretty much all of her choral classes used the singer Jewel's music as a teaching tool (in a school where 75 percent of the students were not native English speakers and likely had no idea who Jewel was), and one day she asked him "How does cut time work again?" (something you learn in your first or second year of middle-school band class).

The department director managed to get rid of her after a year, but what a year it was.