N.C. Baptist Board Approves Autonomy for Final Five Colleges
Five colleges in the Baptist State Convention of North Carolina are on their way to having complete autonomy in governance but without direct financial support.
The state convention's board of directors approved this week a proposal to create a new relationship with its five affiliated universities and colleges – the last of higher education institutions that have remained with the conservative Baptist body.
Increasingly discontent with the conservative direction of the Baptist state convention, the five schools – Campbell University, Chowan University, Gardner-Webb University, Mars Hill College and Wingate University – proposed a four-year plan, which would begin in January 2009, to elect their own trustees and phase out the convention's $6.2 million funding. A scholarship fund by the convention would instead continue to aid students from North Carolina Baptist churches.
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The proposal was overwhelmingly approved Tuesday. It must be now be approved by messengers of the Baptist State Convention of North Carolina in both the 2007 and 2008 meetings.
"The denominations continue to set boundaries that are ever-changing, and it makes it difficult for universities to negotiate," Bill Leonard, dean of Wake Forest University divinity school, had told The News & Observer. Wake Forest along with Meredith College were two Baptist convention-founded schools in North Carolina that had left the convention.
Unlike Wake Forest and Meredith, however, the five schools seeking more autonomy still plan to continue affiliation with the state convention. Although the approved proposal severs ties and begins a new relationship, representatives from four of the five schools assured the board of directors that they do not plan to change their focus on Christian commitment and Baptist principles as basic elements of their school's identity, according to the Associated Baptist Press.
Milton A. Hollifield Jr., BSC executive director-treasurer, had called the changed relationship a move from "a sense of obligation to a spirit of cooperation" or one of "trust" and "faith."
The approved proposal comes as the five schools are seeing more students who have no Baptist background in their enrollment. In the wake of such diverse enrollment, the schools also want to appoint trustees who are non-Baptists.
