CEDARVILLE, Ohio (BP)–The president of Cedarville University says his school is glad to be endorsed by Southern Baptists despite a recent decision by the General Association of Regular Baptist Churches (GARBC) to sever ties with Cedarville because of perceived liberalism in the SBC.
In June the GARBC voted 311-283 at its annual meeting in Lansing, Mich., not to allow Cedarville to set up a display at the GARBC Conference or participate in a GARBC scholarship program. The decision came in response to a 2002 decision by the State Convention of Baptists in Ohio to recommend Cedarville to the state’s Southern Baptists.
Bill Brown, president of Cedarville, said Southern Baptists long have enjoyed a cordial relationship with Cedarville and that the GARBC decision is difficult to understand.
“We’ve always had Southern Baptist students at Cedarville,” he told Baptist Press. “We’ve had Southern Baptists on our board for 40 years. So it’s not like there hasn’t been some relationship with Southern Baptists that goes way back.”
At its June meeting the GARBC approved a statement entitled “Ecclesiastical Separation and Its Associational Applications” outlining the body’s commitment to separate from those who compromise the truth or practice sin.
John Greening, GARBC national representative, recommended to messengers at the annual meeting that they sever ties with Cedarville in accordance with the fellowship’s commitment to “biblical separation — from sin and error and unto holiness and truth.”
Expressing thankfulness for the SBC’s conservative resurgence, Greening added, “It is obvious that the SBC is a work in progress” and cited alleged examples of perceived problems in the SBC.
“The newly elected SBC president describes himself as a conservative inerrantist, yet he has issued a call for more open dialogue on theological issues,” Greening said in a statement of SBC president Frank Page. “A 15-foot statue of Billy Graham was unveiled two weeks ago at the SBC meeting in North Carolina. We praise the Lord for many who have come to faith in Christ through Billy Graham’s preaching. However there is no one in evangelical circles who has done more to blur the lines of distinction between Evangelicals and Catholics than Billy Graham.”
At a press conference following his election in June, Page affirmed the SBC’s conservative resurgence and said as president he would seek to “reach out to godly, conservative men and women who perhaps have not been utilized in the past.”
Greening commended the decision by the SBC’s International Mission Board not to permit missionaries to practice a private prayer language but cited as problematic the lack of unanimous support for the policy in the SBC as well as IMB president Jerry Rankin’s practice of a private prayer language.
“When you change the boundaries, you change your identity,” Greening said in the statement. “It may appear in the short term you are making gains, but in the long term you jeopardize your organizational integrity. It is the position of our constitution that a church’s dual affiliation with both the GARBC and the SBC is not permissible.”
When contacted by Baptist Press, a GARBC spokesman declined to give any comment beyond what the group had already put in print.
Despite the officially severed partnership, a significant number of GARBC students remain at Cedarville, Brown said. He estimated that more than 50 percent of the university’s 3,100 students are Baptist and said a majority of that group attends GARBC churches.
“There are 50 years of history between Cedarville and the GARBC,” Brown said. “We’ve developed a lot of friendships over the years, and frankly a lot of the pastors in GARBC churches are Cedarville grads, and a lot of the people attending the churches are Cedarville grads. We’re always going to have a strong tie to the churches in the fellowship.”
After the GARBC’s decision this summer, Brown wrote a letter to GARBC churches expressing support for them and a commitment to continue supporting their ministries. Many of the churches responded positively, Brown said.
“We have a lot of GARBC churches that have written me expressing support and encouragement, saying, ‘We’re still with you. We don’t care what they say.’ That’s been encouraging,” he said.
Jack Kwok, executive director of the State Convention of Baptists in Ohio, said the relationship between Cedarville and Ohio Baptists began after Ohio Baptists conducted a study on starting a college.
“At the conclusion of that study we determined that if we were to start a school, it would be just like Cedarville University,” Kwok, who serves on the Cedarville board of trustees, told Baptist Press. “So why reproduce something that was already there? They were biblically sound [and] a high academic quality school. So we endorsed officially at our convention Cedarville University, recommending Cedarville to all Southern Baptists in our state and any Southern Baptists anywhere.”
Kwok stressed that Cedarville does not receive any Cooperative Program money. He also expressed respect for GARBC believers and affirmed their right to make decisions as an autonomous fellowship.
“We wanted to come along and join people that we considered in like theological positions and having a heartbeat for winning people to Jesus that shared our calling,” Kwok said of Cedarville. “In no way do we want to reflect anything negatively on the GARBC.”
Through the conflict Cedarville remains committed to its doctrinal statement and to serving Baptists, Brown said. Cedarville’s doctrinal statement affirms inerrancy.
“It’s like we’ve been sailing through these choppy waters but we’ve been very steady because we haven’t changed our doctrinal statement,” he said. “We haven’t changed anything. We’ve just said, ‘Yes you can send your students here.’ And all of the sudden this broke out around us. We’ve just kind of been slow and steady through all of it.”
Cedarville has been associated with the GARBC since 1953. —30–
