Board to Decide Missionary’s Status : Southern Baptists Question Teacher’s Theological Views

The Southern Baptist Foreign Mission Board has asked a newly appointed missionary to resign because of what the board called a lack of clarity in his views on the deity, miracles and resurrection of Christ.

The Rev. Michael E. Willett was asked to resign in June, two months after he was appointed by the board to serve as a seminary teacher in Venezuela. He submitted his resignation June 18 but rescinded it in a July 7 telephone call to the mission board in Richmond, Va.

The agency will decide on Willett’s status at a previously scheduled meeting in Glorieta, N.M., next week.

Training in Costa Rica

The Rev. Don Kammerdiener, board vice president for the Americas, said concern about Willett’s theological views were expressed by missionaries in Costa Rica, where Willett has been undergoing language training.

Baptist Press, the news service of the Southern Baptist Convention, reported that one of Willett’s fellow missionaries wrote a letter to a friend in the United States expressing concern about Willett’s doctrinal views. The news service said the letter “received some circulation” before being forwarded to the Rev. R. Keith Parks, president of the mission board.

In a July 6 telephone interview with Baptist Press, Willett said he believes in “the possibility that some miracle stories were expanded, perhaps even created, in the early church as the Gospel was proclaimed.” He said the stories of Jesus’ miracles that he questions “are a small number compared to those I accept.”

Asserting that his views are “consistent with the mainstream of Christian scholarship,” Willett said, “If only the (biblical) inerrantist position is going to be acceptable on the foreign mission field, that needs to be stated. I am deeply saddened and hurt because I feel that the work to which God has called me has been taken from me.”

In asking for Willett’s resignation, the Rev. J. Bryan Brasington, director of Southern Baptist work in Spanish-speaking South America, wrote to the missionary: “I think you realized that if you had expressed these same doubts in your doctrinal statement prior to appointment, you would not have been approved for appointment.”

Article Published

Just before rescinding his resignation, Willett told Baptist Press that an article he wrote in the April issue of SBC Today, a publication representing Southern Baptist moderates, was a major reason for the resignation request. He said he was told a number of trustees of the mission board began demanding his resignation after the article appeared.

In the article, titled “Opposition to Women Is Unforgivable Sin,” Willett wrote that “like the scribes, critics of women ministers say they have the unclean spirit of feminism and that is why they are pursuing ministry. In making such accusations, do such people not flirt with the unforgivable sin, blasphemy against the Holy Spirit?”

Brasington acknowledged that the article did raise questions among a number of board trustees, but he insisted that doctrinal issues were the primary reason for requesting Willett’s resignation.

Willett earned a doctorate at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville in 1985. He taught there during 1983 and 1984, was an instructor at William Jewell College in Liberty, Mo., during 1985 and was an adjunct professor at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Kansas City, Mo., in 1986.