SBCOutpost

* On May 11, 2007, I noted that SWBTS was reaching the lowest numbers of graduates in eight years.

* On September 11, 2007, SWBTS noted that the school had reached the highest student enrollment in 5 years.

* On May 14, 2008, Baptist Press noted that SWBTS had conferred 239 degrees, including the first graduates of the College at Southwestern

Now back to our regularly scheduled programming…

**UPDATE**

SBCOutpost.com has just received homemade video footage from the SWBTS graduation ceremonies. I think you could say they had a rootin’ tootin’ Texas time.

Yesterday, Criswell College trustees voted to reject a proposal whereby the Dallas school would be subsumed into Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary.

Developing . . .

Read it here:  Patterson on his firing from Criswell College, on SNAP, on his “every man ought to own one” comment to the Atlanta paper, and on much, much more.  Over the next few weeks, we will dissect different aspects of this bizarre, convoluted testimony.  For now, just absorb in full the eccentricities of a Southern Baptist leader gone Coo-Coo for Cocoa Puffs.

Patterson Deposition Part-1

Patterson Deposition Part-2

Patterson Deposition Part-3

Patterson Deposition Part-4

Patterson Deposition Part-5

Question (Mr. Richardson): Do you know of any scriptures, Dr. Patterson, that are — were in support of Dr. Klouda’s election as a professor at Southwestern? Since you found — since you have a scripture that you say specifically is against it, do you know of any that would support it?

Answer (Defendant Patterson): First, in fairness, you recall that I said there is the one passage that’s very specific, but there is also the whole tenor of the biblical narrative is very consistent in all that is said about it. And so, in specific answer to your question, I cannot think of a passage, to my knowledge, that would support it.

Q. Was Dr. Klouda involved in church governance at all as a professor?

A. Only to the degree that she would be a participant in faculty meetings of the School of Theology.

Q. Was that in violation of anything as far as the BF&M is concerned?

A. Well, it’s not the best situation by way of example.

Q. Was it in violation of any — anything in the BF&M?

A. It could be?

Q. What?

A. It could be in violation, again, of a woman serving in a position ruling and teaching men. And she is serving as a faculty member, and therefore, conceivably voting on issues with regard to the School of Theology.

_______

Wait a minute? Did we just read that correctly? Paige Patterson believes that women voting on issues of church governance is a violation of the BF&M and/or the Scripture?

Here’s the logic:

1. The Bible prohibits women from teaching or exercising authority over men in the church.
2. The Baptist Faith & Message reflects this biblical teaching by confessing that only men may serve as church pastors.
3. Southern Baptist seminaries are obliged to implement the BF&M guidelines in their policies and procedures.
4. Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, while not a church, functions as one for purposes of legal classification and practical ministry training.
5. The professors of SWBTS who train pastors must be pastor-qualified — in other words, they must meet the biblical criteria for pastoral leadership, i.e., they must be men.
6. One of the functions of a professor of theology at SWBTS is to “vote” on matters pertaining to the seminary’s curriculum, coursework, etc.
7. Voting on such matters is a form of “exercising authority” in an ecclesial context?
8. Women professors would be allowed to vote on such matters in the school of theology, if they were tolerated on the faculty.
9. Women, therefore, should not serve on the faculties of the School of Theology because of the privilege of voting that is associated with that role.
10. Sheri Klouda is a woman.

Therefore, Sheri Klouda was usurping the authority of men by serving on the School of Theology faculty and exercising her responsibility to vote in faculty meetings.

But wait, kids, we’re left to draw certain conclusions:

1. Either Dorothy Patterson is not a woman, or she is prohibited from voting on matters as a faculty member. The first option is not something I wish to discuss, and the second would be very interesting to accreditation societies.
2. When Dorothy Patterson votes at the Southern Baptist Convention, she is usurping the authority of men.
3. When Dorothy Patterson attempted to speak at the 2006 SBC in Greensboro — hat and all — regarding the resolution on alcohol consumption, she was attempting to usurp the authority of men.
4. What does Defendant Patterson think about the women who serve on the Board of Trustees at SWBTS?

To be continued…..

Now that the Klouda lawsuit has moved to the inactive files in the federal courts, two accreditation societies have been notified that an investigation by those agencies may proceed.

Outpost contributor and the Southern Baptist responsible for filing two formal complaints against SWBTS, Benjamin Cole, was asked to provide a statement regarding recent developments in the Klouda matter. Cole provided the following statement:

“Those who celebrate this pyrrhic victory have forgotten that more than one egg is nesting under the seminary hen. It ain’t over ’til the hat lady sings.”

In recent weeks, Defendant Paige Patterson lost the seminary’s general counsel, who has resigned to accept a parallel position at another North Texas school alongside former SWBTS public relations director, Dr. Greg Tomlin. Joe Breshears began his service to SWBTS in the Office of Institutional Advancement under former veep, Jack Terry. He continued in that role until Defendant Patterson moved him to the President’s office around the time that Jack Terry’s administrative assistant was shuffled out by Patterson.

Breshears served as General Counsel to the President of SWBTS during the entirety of the Klouda ordeal until a few weeks ago, when he left the seminary to begin working at the University of North Texas, Dallas campus. According to reports, Breshears also directed the seminary’s planned giving and managed the seminary endowment. The degree of his involvement in orchestrating the $90 Million endowment boondoggle of 2006 is unknown.

On March 6, 2008, the Texas Secretary of State authorized a request from Defendant Patterson to change the seminary’s registered agent from Breshears to his Vice President for Business Administration, Greg Kingry.

Before coming to SWBTS, Breshears was suspended from practicing law by the State Bar of Texas for neglecting clients.

I wonder if Breshears was the one providing legal counsel to Defendant Patterson about how to get rid of Sheri Klouda?  The fact that he is no longer employed by the seminary could mean, of course, that Breshears is free to testify in the Klouda trial.

In June 2001, Tammi Reed Ledbetter published an article in Baptist Press entitled, ‘60 Minutes’ segment on Anne Graham Lotz muddied SBC stance on women in ministry.

To get a balanced perspective on Southern Baptists’ views about women in teaching roles, Ledbetter went to her old mentor, Dr. Dorothy Kelley-Patterson. When asked about Anne Graham Lotz’s apparent views concerning the BFM2000, Dr. Kelley-Patterson had this to say:

Praising Lotz’s ability as “a gifted expositor,” Patterson agreed that the conditions set forth in the Baptist Faith and Message were misrepresented to the popular Bible teacher. “The Baptist Faith and Message addresses what Scripture addresses. It is a confessional statement and we are not trying to address 50 situations,” Patterson explained. She said she does not believe the directives about women teaching or “ruling over men” cited in 1 Timothy 2, 1 Corinthians 11 or 1 Corinthians 14 address para-church organizations like seminaries, evangelistic organizations, or other ministries outside the church. “They are talking about church order.”

Does Dr. Kelley-Patterson hold a different view than that of her husband, who apparently believes that those precise passages do, in fact, address seminaries? Kelley-Patterson goes on to clarify that her own personal view does not allow her to teach men except on rare occasions, though she is careful to distinguish her personal view from the view adopted by the Southern Baptist Convention in the BFM2000.

I have forwarded the above quote to Klouda’s attorneys.

J. Shelby Sharpe, Esq., represents Defendant Paige Patterson in the Klouda lawsuit. In recent days, I’ve enjoyed becoming pen pals with Mr. Sharpe, who has taken issue with my insistence that his client has difficulty remembering the whole truth — or telling the whole truth — or both.

Speaking of lies, I’ve been directed to a Dallas Morning News article from 1986 where Mr. Sharpe is reported to have told a jury that sometimes — in certain circumstances — lying is legally permissible.

This, from the “Get To Know Your Lawyer” file:

Dallas Morning News
October 7, 1986

ABORTION CENTER JURY HEARS CLOSING PLEAS: Defense lawyer says not all lies illegal

FORT WORTH — The jury considering deception charges against a pregnancy center will have a “tremendous historical’ impact on the nation, a defense attorney said Monday.

Shelby Sharpe, in his closing statement to the jury, said the verdict could be a precedent-setting victory for free speech or become a national embarrassment like an 1850 Supreme Court ruling that denied citizenship to slaves.

“Your decision is going to make tremendous history,’ Sharpe said. “Either it will be a very good day, or a very sad day in our history, like the Dred Scott decision.’

Eliot Shavin, an assistant Texas Attorney General handling the lawsuit against the anti-abortion Problem Pregnancy Center of Fort Worth, urged the jury to reject a “right to lie’ and asked for fines and fees of about $100,000.

Shavin said center volunteers and president Chuck Pelletier use deception and misleading advertising to lure women seeking abortions to the center, then subject them to a a graphic anti-abortion film and confrontational counseling.

Ten women testified that they were tricked by advertisements and statements from volunteers into thinking the Problem Pregnancy Center was an abortion clinic.

“These lies are unlawful,’ Shavin said.

But Sharpe, telling jurors that the center has the free speech right to present its views on abortion in a manner of its choosing, acknowledged the possibility that a volunteer might have lied, which he said would be immoral, but defended its legality.

“God doesn’t approve of lying,’ Sharpe said. “It happens, but not every lie is unlawful.’

Pelletier has testified that center employees are instructed to avoid answering some direct questions, such as whether the center performs abortions, but are never instructed to lie.

The jury, which has heard five days of testimony, met behind closed doors for only a few minutes of deliberation Monday before deciding to resume work Tuesday morning.

Shelby Sharpe has apparently taken it upon himself — with no direction whatsoever from his client, Defendant Paige Patterson, who is completely truthful in his every word and honorable in his every deed — to correspond with one of our SBCOutpost.com contributors.

Shelby Sharpe letter to Benjamin Cole — March 12, 2008

And the response below:

March 14, 2008

Mr. Shelby Sharpe
Sharpe, Tillman, & Melton
6100 Western Place
Suite 1000
Fort Worth, Texas 76107

Dear Mr. Sharpe:

First, allow me to note that your letters to me (2-27-08 and 3-12-08) have both contained errors which are most evidently attributed to inadvertent secretarial oversight rather than your own carelessness. In both letters you reference a blog dated “February 27, 2007.” I’m certain that you must mean 2008 rather than 2007. I appreciate your referencing the title of the blog, “Breaking News: Patterson won’t take oath . . .,” so that I was able to discern what you meant to write.

Second, your most recent letter of March 12, 2008, represents that you intended to enclose copies of the first two pages of Paige Patterson’s deposition. Your office failed, however, to include the deposition pages. Perhaps this too is due to secretarial oversight rather than carelessness on your part. I have enclosed with this letter a self-addressed stamped envelope for you to send the deposition pages you reference. I would not want to ever fear that Cooperative Program dollars will be allocated for additional postage costs on account of your office’s error.

Third, you seem very concerned that I have accused your client of untruthfulness. Honestly, it would be better for him had he not provided assurance that his testimony in the deposition was “the truth and nothing but the truth.” In time – when the entirety of his deposition is in the public domain – I intend to demonstrate the great number of falsehoods, half-truths, inconsistencies, and feigned memory losses that your client has demonstrated in the course of this lawsuit. For now, however, I will wait to see if the case goes to trial.

Fourth, if your client has not instructed you to address these matters with me – but rather a “friend” has directed you to SBCOutpost.com – then I would encourage you to determine whether or not your client desires for you to get mired down in correspondence with me when more pressing issues of his defense are at hand. And if the pool of potential clients for Sharpe, Tillman, & Mellon has dwindled to the point that you must carve a niche practice for your firm by engaging bloggers, then by all means proceed.

So please bring whatever suit you wish. As it is, I have no desire to continue correspondence with you concerning threats of lawsuits that neither you nor your client intends to file.

Now, Mr. Sharpe, I do not make pretense to be an expert of the law. Neither can I claim to be uninformed or ill equipped to engage you in an argument concerning the law. You have an impressive resume of cases argued and won that involve basic constitutional guarantees. You have a long and distinguished career as a member of the bar. Please reconsider whether or not it is the wisest dispensation of your energies to become a pen pal to bloggers whose silly little satirical posts seem to frustrate your efforts to represent Leighton Paige Patterson.

I would only remind you of this, sir: Your client is a rather notorious public figure with decades of print and electronic media written about him. If he has not retained you to run down the authors and editors of various print and electronic media to correct perceived mischaracterizations of him, then I am at a loss to understand why you would have done just that. Nevertheless, if that is the nature of your work for Mr. Patterson, then I am confident you will have plenty of billable hours in the days ahead.

Should I receive another letter from you about this matter, I will not respond in kind. Rather, I will understand that letter to be an invitation to become pen pals, and I will begin forwarding to you monthly letters of a personal nature much like I would send my grandfather. In the meantime, let’s try to avoid fruitless banter. I’m confident your Sunday School teacher can help you locate the biblical support for such a proposal.

Sincerely,

Benjamin S. Cole

CC: Defendant Paige Patterson
Mr. Gary Richardson

**********

In related news, it seems that Shelby Sharpe likes to write letters about defamation.

SBCOutpost is having a splendidly good time covering the Klouda lawsuit. With unapologetic schadenfreude, I have learned of some interesting ties between Defendant Paige Patterson, Southwestern Seminary, Broadway Baptist Church, and the Catholic pedophile clergy scandal.

Most Southern Baptist observers are already aware of the fomenting scandal at Fort Worth’s Broadway Baptist Church, where pastor Brett Younger has recently survived an ouster vote. The boys over at SBC Toady have commented extensively about the “liberal left wing” theology of the church. Baptist Press has weighed in with considerable print on the issue.

What Southern Baptists might not know is that Defendant Paige Patterson has recently notified remaining faculty who are members of Broadway Baptist that the school will not long suffer them to remain in fellowship with the church. Defendant Patterson tolerates little compromise when it comes to such issues. Convention dollars should not, Patterson believes, be used to pay the salaries of men and women who maintain membership in churches that are not in compliance with Article III Section 1 of the SBC Constitution.

But he’s quite comfortable, it seems, with paying attorney’s fees to legal counsel whose theological persuasions are similarly compromised.

Mr. Roland Johnson has been retained to represent Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in the Klouda lawsuit. According to his firm’s website Mr. Johnson is not only a proud member of Broadway Baptist Church, but he served as Chairman of Deacons at the church and twice as Pastor Search Committee Chairman. But perhaps I’m the only one who finds it interesting that a man who’s a committed leader in a church known for supporting women who serve in clergy roles is now in the odd position of defending Southwestern Seminary for opposing that very thing.

Among Mr. Johnson’s clients there are some interesting personalities. In short, Mr. Johnson has a history of representing SWBTS during an earlier wrongful termination suit brought by former professor Farrar Patterson (858 S.W.2d 602). And when the Catholic sex scandal boiled over in Tarrant County, Mr. Johnson represented six priests accused of molestation by arguing that information about their histories and crimes should remain private.

Add to that the fact that Mr. Johnson, who is currently running for President Elect of the State Bar of Texas, credits Albert Schweitzer with his life commitment.

Can anybody say conundrum?

More on Farrar Patterson and other developments on the SWBTS legal team forthcoming . . .