To those of you interested in the situation at Westminster Theological Seminary (and if you know others who are interested please share this with them): If you have been following my posts you know that a number of us have been protesting recent developments at Westminster Theological Seminary. If you do not have access to my previous posts, I will be happy to send them to you (please email me at [email protected]). These posts have raised ethical questions about recent actions of the administration and Board of Westminster. I have emailed all of my posts to Charles Dunahoo (Chair of the Board), Peter Lillback (President), Jeff Jue (Dean of the Faculty), Carl Trueman (former Dean of the Faculty), and Tim Witmer (Moderator of the Faculty). Others, including Sam Logan (past President), Will Barker (former Dean of the Faculty), Clair Davis (emeritus faculty having taught there for about forty years), and many others including former board members and alumni have registered their protests. We had hoped to hear from the Board after their meetings on November 21-22, but no public or private communications have been received. Indeed, reports are that these complaints were not even discussed at least outside of executive session of the Board. I wrote President Lillback and Chair of the Board Dunahoo a week ago asking whether we might hear from the Board. They have not even given me the courtesy of a response (which I expected). How are we to interpret the silence? There are several possibilities. (1) They have not read the posts and emails sent to them by me and many others to them and the Board. This is unlikely and if true shows incompetence. (2) They have chosen not to respond because they think these protests are coming from a small group of discontents. If this is why they have chosen not to respond, this is a tremendous miscalculation. I base this on the fact that I have gotten many responses to my emails. But even more, I just returned from the annual meetings of the ETS, IBR, and AAR/SBL in San Diego where it is very clear that an incredible number of people from around the world are reading the posts and came up to thank me for them. I received many expressions of gratitude and no negative statements. (3) They have chosen not to respond because they do not care what other people think. They believe it is better to be “pure in their own eyes” than to care what others may think. If this is the case, and I am not sure if it is true, then the word “cult” comes to mind. (4) They have chosen not to address the criticism or address the calls of unethical behavior because they think that eventually the criticism will go away. If this is their strategy, then I think they are mistaken. We may not continue to post weekly forever, but now many people will know what Westminster has become and this will effect their future enrollment, the hiring of their graduates, and the ability of their students to get into good graduate programs. They have enough “deep pockets” on the board to continue for some time into the future, but Westminster will never recover their original reputation. Many of us will go out of our way to dissuade people from going to the seminary, hiring the graduates of the seminary, giving to the seminary, or accepting the seminary’s graduates into advanced degrees. This is not a matter of revenge, but rather because we cannot imagine that the seminary is capable of producing students who are ready to pastor or to teach. My future posts will be to give advice to present students, alums, graduate schools, and the church as to what they should now do in the light of Westminster’s present situation.
Posted on: Tue, 02 Dec 2014 01:12:43 +0000
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