Missouri Baptists Hold Wm. Jewell College Accountable to Scripture

by Jim Brown
November 13, 2003

(AgapePress) - The Missouri Baptist Convention has ended its 154-year relationship with William Jewell College.

The MBC has voted to de-fund the Liberty, Missouri-based school of more than $1 million because of its support over the past several years for homosexuality and sexually explicit theatrical presentations on campus. Productions like The Vagina Monologues and Best Little Whorehouse in Texas were condoned by school administrators, despite the objections of MBC leaders. According to an Associated Press report, the school had anticipated the cut in funding and over the past three years cut 35 faculty and staff positions while trying to recruit more students.

The Convention's associate executive director, Kenny Qualls, says the move to cut ties with William Jewell was never a conservative-vs.-liberal issue, but simply a right-and-wrong issue based on scripture.

"We want to send a very clear message in this culture that we live in that the Missouri Baptist Convention has absolutely defined itself -- and we're defining ourselves by the inerrant Word of God -- [and that] serious departures from biblical standards will never be tolerated," Qualls says.

According to Qualls, the school's administrators have chosen to ignore scripture. "All through this process, we met [and] had discussions, and we tried to get the leadership of William Jewell to take a stand based on scripture on the issues of family, on the issues of morality, on the issues of homosexuality -- and we never heard a single stand by any trustee or by [anyone] in leadership of that university," he says.

Qualls adds that as a parent of a teenager, he would never send his child to William Jewell College.

Funds that would have gone to William Jewell are going to be redistributed to a Baptist children's home and other Baptist colleges in the state. The MBC's financial contributions to the school amounted to about 3% of the school's annual budget.