Simmons Retires at Southern

                                                                                                                                                                         Vol. VI, No. 2, March 1993

Controversial professor of Christian ethics Paul Simmons has announced his early retirement. The January 1993 Banner noted that trustees had rejected a proposed buyout of Simmons' contract and quoted a few examples of his liberal views on abortion and homosexuality. Now comes the next and hopefully final chapter of this sad saga. Simmons came under renewed fire when four of his students lodged an official complaint because he had shown in class a video graphically portraying sex between a paraplegic woman and her husband. The Courier-Journal newspaper of 11 January reported that since 1991 at least nine have left Southern or announced plans to leave in the face of criticism from the recently-acquired conservative majority on the school's board of trustees. The only example of oppressive conservative policies cited by the paper was "requiring new faculty to ‘reflect a clear evangelical orientation' in their view of the Bible."

[The BANNER wonders what else a Southern Baptist seminary professor should display other than a "clear evangelical orientation" or, indeed, how an honest man could remain at a Southern Baptist school knowing that his beliefs differ from those he was hired to proclaim.]

The Rev. Jerry Johnson, a pastor in Aurora, CO, and one of Simmons' most vocal critics on the board of trustees, said he doesn't believe Simmons had been harassed in the least. "The only intolerance that there has been has been an intolerance for a pro-life position," Johnson said. "There were no other ethics teachers who were pro-life. There wasn't one. Trying to make (Simmons) accountable for what he had written and said is harassment to him."

[Editor's Note: No pro-life ethics professors at a Southern Baptist seminary? How can that be? Praise the Lord, the situation is rapidly changing, note the turnover reported among professors leaving because they do not like the biblical orientation of the school's trustees. Any professor has the right to teach as he sees fit. But he does NOT have the right to take the tithes and offerings of Southern Baptists to teach doctrine contrary to the inerrant, infallible Word of God. TCP]