Delegates from the Tennessee Baptist Convention rejected their executive board’s recommendation yesterday that would have officially accepted the TBC’s severed relationship with Belmont University. More than 17-hundred elected “messengers” from churches around the state gathered at Two Rivers Baptist Church to weigh-in on the issue.
Belmont Trustees disregarded a 1951-document and rewrote the school’s charter in November which allowed the university to have non-Baptist board members and essentially created distance from the convention. The TBC rejected a 5-million dollar offer from Belmont that partially repaid the nearly 58-million dollars the group has invested in the university over their 54-year relationship.
TBC President Philip Jett says the convention has a policy of total control or none at all. He added that Belmont Trustees did not seek input from the TBC.
“To put our name on an entity without giving leadership to that entity is a dangerous precedent. You saw a first vote was to totally dismiss our relationship because we could not go forward with the actions they took. That’s because even though they might consider themselves Baptist, there was no relationship there of trustees to guarantee the future connection with Tennessee Baptists.”
The “messengers,” instead, voted overwhelmingly to grant their Belmont Study Committee the power to pursue further action which could include a law suit, though officials say legal action will be held as a last resort. Convention delegates also approved a legal recommendation to declare 33 seats on Belmont’s Board of Trustees vacant.
No Belmont Trustees spoke during the debate. The school issued a statement at the conclusion of yesterday’s events saying Belmont was disappointed that the TBC did not accept the school’s offer and that the convention’s vote to remove Belmont trustees was invalid.
The Tennessee Baptist Convention includes 3-thousand churches and roughly 1-million members.
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