Southern Seminary’s Anniversary and a Question of Honor

This has been a big week in the history of the Southern Baptist Convention. On Tuesday, messengers at the annual meeting passed an important resolution that could help shape the future of the Convention for the better. On Wednesday, Southern Seminary celebrated its 150^th Anniversary. During the celebration, Southern’s current president, Al Mohler, honored former president, Duke McCall, by naming a new welcome pavilion after him. Dave Doran, the president of one of fundamentalism’s flagship institutions, Detroit Baptist Theological Seminary, has written “Honor to Whom Dishonor is Due,” in which he criticizes Mohler and Southern for honoring a heterodox leader like McCall:

This is what boggles my mind. Here you find a staunch theological conservative (Al Mohler), backed by other staunch conservatives (e.g., chairman of the SBTS board, Mark Dever), naming a pavilion in honor of a man whose service at SBTS produced the mess which Mohler is credited for reversing. Recognizing him at the event is one thing, but naming a pavilion after him? What biblical justification can there be for something like this?

Symbolic gestures are important. Naming schools after new evangelicals like Billy Graham and buildings after liberals like Duke McCall are symbolic gestures that mean something. And they mean something bad to many of us.

I just don’t get it.

Let me say this first. I do not know Dr. Doran, but I have heard wonderful things about him from good friends of mine. From what I hear, Dr. Doran is my superior, both in biblical wisdom and spiritual maturity. But I do not understand the fundamentalist viewpoint on this, and hope to better understand it through further dialogue.

This is what I don’t get. Where is the biblical verse, passage, theme, or inference that teaches us to dishonor, kick dirt on, or otherwise humiliate those we have defeated? Honor to whom dishonor is due? How is that?

Duke McCall was a moderate. He was a politician who fired the twelve most liberal professors in 1958. He was essentially a-theological, like much of the SBC at that time, and allowed a lot of heresy to go on during his watch. He was unfaithful in many ways, and it hurt a lot of people. But he was the president of SBTS for over thirty years. He gave the best years of his life to raise money, to lead, and to build the school. Every other president of Southern has a substantial building named after him, and McCall is getting  a welcome center. Should Southern Seminary erase all memory of moderates from their history?

Where is the article from fundamentalists criticizing Bob Jones University for continuing to carry the name of Bob Jones Sr., who held unbiblical, racist views that undermine the gospel and deeply hurt the cause of Christ? Where is the article against Southern for having buildings named after slave-holders? Does racism not undermine the gospel? Is the view that white and black people should not mix in a school or be married, evangelical? Should we not separate from those who justify the subjugation or separation of one race from another? I fail to see how naming a building for Duke McCall is any less problematic than naming a university for Bob Jones, Sr.

Just as Dr. Doran “doesn’t get it,” I don’t get his viewpoint either. Rather than an article rejoicing in the strong, uncompromising stance that SBTS has come to have after years of heterodoxy (it is a miracle of God), we get (what seems to me like) nit-picking? Southern has named a pavilion after a former president—nobody at SBTS, nobody in Louisville, nobody in the entire SBC world is going to be confused on Southern’s theology by this honor of a man who led the Seminary for 20% of its history.

One last thing: Al Mohler took hard shots for years. He received regular death threats and had to have bullet proof windows installed on his house. His children were mistreated. An entire city was against him. Professors that he had fired slandered him and wished him dead. But he engaged in the battle, rather than withdrawing. As a result, a place that once preached a false gospel now trains more faithful pastors than anywhere on earth. Then, rather than kicking dirt on the grave of those he fired, Mohler reached out to them. Mohler and others in leadership at SBTS have reached out to elderly former professors and presidents. They have cared for them and visited them as they were sick. Mohler and others have cared for President Honeycutt’s widow since he died a few years ago. They have continued to engage former professors on matters of truth and the gospel. Mohler and others have, behind the scenes, demonstrated incredible grace and Christ-likeness to their enemies, continuing to befriend and share the gospel. Yesterday Mohler and SBTS honored a dying man on the day they celebrated what God has done at Southern–and it is amazing. I wish all Christians could celebrate with them.

–See also, “Mohler, McCall, Truth, and History,” which Greg Gilbert (former assistant to Dr. Mohler) posted today over at the 9Marks blog.