Rodney Reeves is a heretic. The Dean of the Redford School of Theology and Ministry at Southwest Baptist University (an SBC school) in Missouri fired a whistleblower in order to protect both Reeves and their institution. But now, the heretical ex-professor has left the university (of his own free volition) to pastor a Cooperative Baptist Fellowship Church. The CBF is a group of liberal, non-Bible believing churches that split off of the Southern Baptist Convention in 1991.
Reeves, the theology dean in question, was teaching annihilationism (a belief that Hell is temporary), an odd purgatorial view (that it’s possible to go from Hell to Heaven), and taught a pseudo-Universalism (that maybe everybody will get into Heaven). The points at which Reeves departed from both the Bible and the Southern Baptist Faith and Message (2000) is multitudinous.
Concerned officials with the Missouri Baptist Convention—which has ownership and oversight of the University—asked professor Clint Bass to investigate. When SBU president Eric Turner discovered that Bass had compiled a list of evidence demonstrating heresy was being taught at the university, he fired Bass and not Reeves, claiming that Bass had somehow “undermined the integrity of the institution” by caring about doctrine.
The last post on the subject we posted was from a concerned Missouri Baptist who wrote The Evidence Against Rodney Reeves and Southwest Baptist University. In that post, you can see evidence that Eric Turner and the trustees at both SBU and the MBC failed Missouri Baptists terribly and are a part of a culture of corruption and cover-up.
We wrote about how Rodney Reeves viciously attacked his accusers here. We wrote about the widespread support for Bass from notable Southern Baptists, and SBU and the MBC’s unwillingness to listen. We also wrote about the SBU trustees and MBC trustees unwillingness to do their job and ensure the doctrinal fidelity of the university in the post, Missouri Baptists Stand Up for Heresy, Shame Jesus. After numerous investigatory panels, we wrote about how Eric Turner had finally admitted SBU’s doctrine was askew but acted like it was no big deal. Southwest Baptist University repeatedly used their friends at the liberal Baptist newspaperWord and Way, to attack Pulpit & Pen and Reeve’s critics (they even claimed we were anti-Semitic).
Eric Turner and the trustees at SBU fired Clint Bass for being concerned that theology dean Rodney Reeves was a heretic. After much public outcry, and after being forced to call for an “independent” investigation, SBU leadership admitted (in not so many words) that Bass was right. And now, according to Baptist News Global, Reeves has voluntarily resigned his position and has become the pastor of a liberal Cooperative Baptist Fellowship Church in Jonesboro, Arkansas. Now he’s among his fellow liberals and Bible-deniers, right where he belongs.
As Baptist News Global pointed out, “Southwest Baptist University announced a job opening for a new dean of theology and ministry in an employment opportunities section on the university website. Job requirements include “committed Southern Baptist and active in Southern Baptist church” and “personal affirmation of the Baptist Faith and Message 2000.”
UNRESOLVED ISSUES
Eric Turner fired a professor for caring about theology. It turns out that professor Clint Bass was correct in his concerns. Professor Bass should be re-hired or given a generous severance package equivalent to a least several years of salary, as well as an official apology from SBU.
Eric Turner has promised to fix the “trust issues” between SBU and the Missouri Baptist Convention. It’s not a trust issue so much as a theological issue. Turner didn’t know heresy when it was looking him in the face. Turner can’t fix the problem, because Turner is the problem.
SBU and the MBC let Reeves resign of his own free volition, instead of firing him with a public statement regarding their intolerance for abject heresy. Until these two institutions make a public statement—allowing Reeves to pass secretly in the dark to a CBF church—they are continuing in their culture of secrecy, corruption, and cover-up. It’s not political, it’s sinful.
Trustees of both Southwest Baptist University and the Missouri Baptist Convention should be held accountable for not doing their job in ensuring that only those things taught are “in accordance to sound doctrine” (Titus 2:1). All trustees of both institutions should be censured by their respective churches and admonished to never ever let that happen again. The trustees have proven themselves untrustworthy, and should publicly repent for their complicity in this scandal.
