Five N.C. colleges want out of convention

Five colleges and universities in North Carolina are on the path to divorcing the Baptist State Convention.

The five -- the last holdouts of a once-proud assemblage of Baptist schools that included Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem and Meredith College in Raleigh -- have chafed under increasingly tight restrictions imposed by the state convention.

According to a plan approved by the convention's executive committee, the colleges and universities would be allowed to start choosing their own trustees in 2009. Meanwhile, the state convention, which gives each school about $1.2 million a year, will begin phasing out its monetary contributions, eliminating them altogether by 2013.

The plan must be approved by the convention's board of directors and the convention in general, which must pass it at two consecutive annual meetings.

The agreement is part of a broader realignment in which a dozen Baptist-affiliated colleges and universities have cut their ties to state conventions over the past two decades. In North Carolina, Wake Forest and Meredith split from the convention years ago. In other states, Furman University in Greenville, S.C., and Mercer University in Macon, Ga., also severed ties to Baptist conventions.

At its heart, the struggle is over control of the schools' governance. Many schools worry that the increasingly conservative direction of Baptist life might limit academic freedom. Last year, North Carolina Baptists approved a motion to ban gay-friendly churches from the convention.

The schools, which increasingly attract students who have no Baptist background, also want to pick trustees from other denominations and other states.

"The denominations continue to set boundaries that are ever-changing, and it makes it difficult for universities to negotiate," said Bill Leonard, dean of Wake Forest University divinity school.

The Baptist State Convention of North Carolina gives about $6 million to the five colleges and universities each year.

Under the agreement, schools that begin to elect their own trustees would forfeit one-fourth of that sum in 2009 and forgo all of it by 2013. Right now, the Baptist State Convention must approve each trustee.

The colleges affected include Campbell University in Buies Creek, Chowan University in Murfreesboro, Gardner-Webb University in Boiling Springs, Mars Hill College in Mars Hill and Wingate University in Wingate. Among the oldest are Wingate University, bought by the state convention in 1923, and Campbell University, bought by the convention in 1924, said Norman Jameson, a spokesman for the state convention. None of the schools' presidents responded to phone messages Thursday.

"They're working with us in a gracious way that seems to be effective," said the Rev. Allan Blume, a Boone pastor and president of the convention's executive committee. "They want to have a different kind of relationship. I think it can be very successful."

The executive committee unanimously agreed to the colleges' proposal earlier this month.

Blume said the schools' presidents asked that part of the money the convention will keep be used to set up a scholarship fund to help Baptist students defray tuition. The presidents also asked to stay on as members of the convention's council on higher education.