A woman who had held a tenure-track position was denied tenure at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in 2004, according to a Jan. 19 Dallas Morning News story.
The professor, Sheri Klouda, was given a tenure-track position to teach Hebrew in Southwestern’s school of theology when she received her Ph.D. at the Fort Worth, Texas, campus in 2002, according to the newspaper report.
Klouda, who also is a Criswell College graduate, now teaches at Taylor University in Indiana. She confirmed the paper’s report and several Web blogs bearing the same news.
Van McClain, chairman of Southwestern’s board of trustees, told The Dallas Morning News that the seminary has returned to its "traditional, confessional and biblical position" that a woman should not instruct men in theology courses or in biblical languages.
McClain also told the newspaper, "I do not know of any women teaching in any of the SBC (Southern Baptist Convention) seminaries presently in the area of theology or biblical languages. In my estimation all of the seminaries have sought to be more consistent with most Southern Baptists’ understanding of Scripture on the matter."
Paige Patterson, president of Southwestern, declined comment on the issue, the newspaper said.
Klouda, contacted by the newspaper, said, "I don’t think it was right to hire me to do this job, to put me in the position where I, in good faith, assumed that I was working toward tenure, and then suddenly remove me without any cause other than gender."
When Klouda was hired for the tenure-track position in 2002, Ken Hemphill was the seminary’s president.
At that time, "[t]here was not a policy where [women] would not be able to teach church history or the (biblical) languages," Hemphill told the newspaper. Hemphill resigned as Southwestern’s president in 2003. (BP)
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