Mohler shakes up Southern Baptists

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LOUISVILLE, Ky. -- In beginning his 10th year as president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, R. Albert Mohler Jr. delivered a convocation speech that rang off the walls of the school's chapel with evangelistic fervor.

"The task for Southern Seminary in the years ahead," Mr. Mohler told students and faculty, "is to stand on the faith ... without compromise."

That's certainly been the way Mr. Mohler has seen his mission so far at the Louisville school, a 144-year-old training ground for pastors in the Southern Baptist Convention. His unbending conservatism has helped school enrollment reach record heights ("a sign of God's great blessing," he says), but it also has brought criticism and suggestions of intolerance.

When Mr. Mohler took over Southern, the oldest of six seminaries in the SBC, his ascension cemented a sharp rightward shift as conservatives took control of a seminary where moderates once flourished. It also reflected a larger realignment within the Southern Baptist Convention, the nation's largest Protestant denomination.

Mr. Mohler, handpicked by conservatives on the seminary's board of trustees, had already gained a reputation as an outspoken conservative voice while editor of a Southern Baptist newspaper in Georgia.

The conservative swing prompted an exodus of faculty at odds with Mr. Mohler's strict ideological stands over such issues as women in the pastorate -- he's against women's admission -- and the infallibility of Scripture. The faculty underwent a near-complete turnover after Mr. Mohler's arrival.

Wade Rowatt, one of those who departed, said Southern once projected a "symphony of voices" across the philosophical spectrum. Now it clings to a rigid theology, its leaders "a Baptist version of the Taliban," he said.

"They were able to take over the buildings, they were able to take over the endowment, they were able to take over the curriculum," said Mr. Rowatt, who left in 1995 and has taught psychology of religion, pastoral care and family counseling since the early 1970s. "They are occupying institutions that they didn't build and enjoying the spoils of the conquer."

Bill Leonard, who departed Southern just before Mr. Mohler's rise to president, said Mr. Mohler completed the school's redirection onto a narrowly evangelical course.