Years ago while I was a master of divinity student at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in Wake Forest, N.C., I took a New Testament Survey class taught by a man who was a notorious "moderate" among Southern Baptists.
This professor had been fired from Southern Seminary in 1958 because of his views on the nature of Scripture, and he was teaching adjunctively at Southeastern that year (1987-1988) as a substitute for one of the regular faculty members who was on sabbatical. Many believe that the teaching invitation extended to him by the then-current administration of Southeastern was an act of protest, as it were, against the Conservative Resurgence in the Southern Baptist Convention. What better way to thumb one's nose at the conservatives than to hire someone who had been fired by Southern Seminary for doctrinal reasons nearly three decades earlier?
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