Facing fresh evidence of an alleged rape cover-up by its former President Paige Patterson, the board of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary voted to strip Patterson of the title and benefits it had granted him while ushering him out of the seminary’s leadership a week ago.
In a statement posted to its website Wednesday (May 30), the executive committee of the Fort Worth, Texas, school’s board of trustees took away “all the benefits, rights and privileges provided by the May 22-23 board meeting, including the title of President Emeritus, the invitation to reside at the Baptist Heritage Center as theologian-in-residence and ongoing compensation.”
Patterson’s swift firing represents the most dramatic turn in the #MeToo movement’s effects on the Southern Baptist Convention, the largest Protestant denomination in the United States.
The new evidence, the statement said, related to an allegation that in 2003 Patterson, then president of Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in Wake Forest, N.C., incorrectly handled an allegation of sexual abuse.
It did not specify further. But The Washington Post reported last week that while Patterson was president of Southeastern, he told a female student not to report an alleged rape to the police and to forgive her assailant.
The about-face from the board caps a dramatic fall for Patterson, one of the…
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