Paige Patterson
“If you stand up to sexual abuse, you must remain standing,” Susan Codone recently told me. She’d said the same thing on Twitter in response to news that Paige Patterson, former president of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, was slated to preach at the “Great Commission Weekend” at a church in Immokalee, Fla. Patterson was fired from SWBTS in 2018 after trustees learned that he planned to meet privately with a rape survivor because, “I have to break her down and I may need no official types there.”
Photo by Lea Fabienne on Unsplash
I have the right degrees from the right institution and I hold the right theological positions. I’m an inerrantist, I hold to the Baptist Faith and Message 2000, and I am gravely concerned that our history of political maneuvering has cloaked a love for power in the language of right theology.
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Pence’s speech turned the SBC annual meeting into a Trump rally. According to Eastern Illinois University political scientist Ryan Burge, the Vice President used the word “president” 61 times in his speech and “Trump” 12 times. He used the word “God” 9 times and “Christ” only twice.
Vice President Mike Pence, projected on video screens, addresses the Southern Baptist Convention’s annual meeting on June 13, 2018, in Dallas. RNS photo by Adelle M. Banks
Vice President Mike Pence touted President Trump’s meeting with North Korean President Kim Jong Un in a speech before Southern Baptists and urged their continuing prayers as the administration moves ahead with negotiations to seek peace on the Korean Peninsula.
Women greet Dorothy Patterson, seated with hat, before the Tea at 3 women’s event prior to the Southern Baptist Convention annual meeting in Dallas. RNS photo by Adelle M. Banks
In the hallways of the Kay Bailey Hutchinson Convention Center and in eateries and hotel lobbies nearby, messengers, as delegates to the meeting are known, are having heart-to heart discussions about future possibilities for women in a denomination that walks a “complementarian” line: the belief that women and men are equal before God but have different roles in church and home life.
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To be sure, Greear doesn’t advocate for women’s ordination. At his church, a woman would never appear onstage by herself to deliver a sermon. Neither does he support revisiting the Baptist statement of faith requiring wives to submit to the leadership of their husbands.
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“He’s placed on an emphasis on women’s role in the church that is fast being questioned, even in the confines of the present-day convention, as that letter signed by women asking for something to be done attests,” Leonard said. “These were not moderate, liberal women. These were women who came of age in the SBC and who challenged his particular theology of marriage and spouse abuse.”
Image via RNS/Adelle M. Banks
The letter was published May 6 in the wake of a video of Patterson making objectifying comments about a teenage girl in a 2014 sermon and the surfacing of an audio recording of Patterson advising victims of domestic violence not to divorce their spouses.
Image via RNS/Philip Bethancourt
After a fierce backlash on social media, Southern Baptists reversed course and adopted a statement denouncing “alt-right white supremacy,” calling it “antithetical to the Gospel of Jesus Christ.”
The unusual move on June 14 was a shift from the previous day, when the Southern Baptist Convention’s Resolutions Committee declined to bring to a vote a Texas pastor’s proposed resolution condemning the “alt-right” movement, whose members include white supremacists.
Paige Patterson, president of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. Photo via Matt Miller via Baptist Press/RNS.
The trustees of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary have affirmed the school’s president, Paige Patterson, after investigating his decision to admit a Muslim student into the school’s Ph.D. program.
Patterson, one of the most revered Southern Baptist figures and an architect of the conservative resurgence of the Southern Baptist Convention a generation ago, faced heavy criticism from some Baptists who accused him of violating the standards of his school in Fort Worth, Texas.
“We join with our fellow Southern Baptists in appreciation for and admiration of the evangelistic heart of our president, Paige Patterson,” the trustee board said in a statement Oct. 22 as it concluded its fall meeting.
“Any violations of the seminary bylaws were done in a good-faith enthusiasm to pursue the seminary’s purpose, as set forth in its articles of incorporation.”
The trustees have closed their investigation, and Patterson explained after the meeting that the Muslim student, Ghassan Nagagreh, is no longer enrolled at the seminary.