Baptist Seminary Officials Quit; Cite Fundamentalism

In the first major change at a Southern Baptist seminary resulting from the gradual fundamentalist takeover of the denomination, the president and dean of faculty at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary have announced that they will resign rather than carry out the new board’s agenda.

After the announcements, the new trustee board chairman, Robert D. Crowley of Rockville, Md., said the replacement for seminary President W. Randall Lolley will be a fundamentalist who believes the Bible is “inerrant”--the literal word of God, historically and scientifically factual.

One of the prime goals of the fundamentalist coalition in the nation’s largest Protestant denomination, besides capturing the convention presidency and its appointive powers for nine consecutive years, has been to rid some of the Southern Baptists’ six seminaries of officials and faculty deemed less than fundamentalist in their biblical interpretations.

The so-called “moderates,” in what is still a conservative church within the Protestant spectrum, have appealed to the Baptist tradition against imposing creeds and doctrines but to no avail.

Lolley, who has been president for 14 years, announced his resignation Thursday at the end of a sermon delivered in Southeastern’s Binkley Chapel.

“I cannot fan into a flame a vision which I believe to be contradictory to the dream which formed Southeastern in 1951 and which has nourished me as a student and alumnus of the school,” Lolley, 56, said. “I have reached some conclusions that make it necessary to begin discussing with the appropriate persons the termination of my presidency.”

Lolley gave no date when the resignation will be effective. He has tentatively scheduled a Nov. 3 meeting with four members of the trustee board, including Crowley, to formalize plans and set a date.

Also Thursday, Professor Morris Ashcraft said he will resign as dean of the faculty because he could not implement the new trustee vision. He will continue as a professor of theology.