As we’ve reported at The Dissenter, Adam Greenway, the president of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, has been on a crusade to undermine the Southern Baptist Convention’s (SBC) long-held doctrinal position on women pastors. Greenway has been on social media for the last several weeks since the SBC’s annual meeting in June attempting to persuade Southern Baptists that the denomination’s statement of faith, the Baptist Faith and Message 2000 (BFM2K), allows room for cooperating churches to ordain women to the pastorate.
Greenway—who ran a public relations campaign for serial plagiarist and former SBC president, Ed Litton during his tenure as the denomination’s leader—took it a step further today and even attempted to use the words of Al Mohler, one of the framers of the BFM2K, against him knowing that Mohler’s position on women pastors is completely opposed to his.
Shortly after this debacle, Dr. David Allen, an 18-year tenured professor at Greenway’s Southwestern Seminary announced that he had been fired. Allen, a conservative and credentialed professor, served SWBTS for 18-years and held the title of “Distinguished Professor of Preaching.”
According to a press release on Allen’s Facebook page, Allen will not be retained past July 31st and will be stripped of his title for a lesser title that the press release states is a retirement position that is “void of full-time salary and benefits.”
“On May 28th,” the press release read, “Allen informed Dr. Greenway and the SWBTS’s Board of Trustees in a nine-page letter that he had no intention to retire or resign from his Distinguished Professorship at the Fort Worth, Texas seminary.”
“My full-time employment was terminated by Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary,” Allen said, according to the release. “Dr. Greenway’s letter states that my full-time status ends July 31st.”
Allen had “recently completed a year-long sabbatical after receiving an ‘excellent’ rating for his faculty evaluations over the previous two academic years.”
One has to wonder what the motivation is for firing a conservative, distinguished professor who has served the school for more than 18 years and even served on the board of trustees. Texas pastor, Tom Buck noted that Greenway’s “big tent” ideology is big enough for women preachers, but not big enough for Dr. Allen.
God’s hand of judgment on the SBC is long overdue and that it hasn’t completely burned to the ground is a demonstration of His mercy and grace.
