Ever notice that when a discussion turns to a recently deceased celebrity, someone invariably says, “I know he’s looking down on us right now”? It doesn’t matter how godless the person was, his peers refer to him as being in a better place and then gesture skyward.

The Righteous Brothers’ 1974 hit tune, “Rock and Roll Heaven,” illustrates such misconceptions: “If you believe in forever / Then life is just a one-night stand. / If there’s a rock and roll Heaven / Well you know they’ve got a h*ll of a band.” The song venerates several rock singers who’d died, including pill-popping, pot-smoking, promiscuous Janis Joplin, along with Jim Morrison, lead singer of The Doors, whose public antics got him arrested for lewd behavior, and whose illicit drug habits put him in an early grave like so many of his peers. What parents and preachers in the ’50s, ’60s and ’70s called the devil’s music turned out to have some hellions singing it. Why would anyone, therefore, believe that those whose lifestyles reflected their hearts’ condition are in Heaven?

Conversely, society is unified about the eternal states of villains like Stalin, Hitler, Idi Amin and Pol Pot, a terrorist on the most-wanted list or even a less menacing drug abuser.

TRONG>Secular misrepresentation
“Far more dangerous, however, is the happy-talk universalism you find in the public square,” said Mark Coppenger, professor of Christian apologetics at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.

Lamenting a portion of the poem “High Flight” read in tribute to the space shuttle Challenger’s victims, Coppenger said not all the astronauts were Christians. “But, we were told that they ‘slipped the surly bonds of earth to touch the face of God.'” Coppenger recalled a cartoon from a Chicago newspaper depicting sports announcer Harry Caray at the pearly gates, where Saint Peter welcomed him gladly, even though “there was no evidence that Caray was redeemed. Everywhere you turn, culture ignores the Bible to make gassy pronouncements on the afterlife.”

Such secular, cultural perceptions are uninformed by the truth, and seem based on the delusion that one’s eternal state is earned through heinous deeds on one hand, or good poll numbers on the other.

One may surmise that those who assume the dearly departed are in Heaven, because they weren’t nearly as evil as more notorious sinners, do so because they, themselves, are promiscuous, greedy miscreants, but not bad enough for Hell. It’s the old “I’m not as bad as the other guy” reasoning, or God will somehow understand in the end that we were pretty good people, and based on our overall behavior he should let us into Heaven.

Then there’s the late John Lennon’s lyrics: “Imagine there’s no Heaven / It’s easy if you try / No Hell below us / Above us only sky.” Lennon’s musings of 37 years ago are yet contemporary.

“Even those who retain some vague idea of heavenly bliss beyond this life are slow to acknowledge the reality of final judgment and condemnation. Modern men and women live with the mindset that there is no Heaven, no Hell, and therefore no guilt.” David Dockery, president of Union University in Jackson, Tenn., said in a 2004 address at New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary.

TRONG>Why so much error?
Steve Lemke, New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary provost, said it’s because there’s “less preaching now about Heaven and Hell than in previous eras,” and that trend is due to “the upward social mobility of Southern Baptists.”

Lemke said Southern Baptists were mostly rural, small-town folks until the 1950s, with many poor people whose only respite from hardscrabble was Heaven. “So we lived with hope and our eyes on the skies, awaiting Christ’s return,” Lemke said.

But with increased education and income, Southern Baptists inhabit suburbia with “a fairly comfortable lifestyle” and a “focus on coping in this world. We don’t give nearly the attention that we should to eternity. Popular preaching focuses on how to have a better marriage, better relationships and how to cope with struggles,” Lemke noted. “It is important that we address these topics in preaching and teaching, of course, but not to the neglect of a focus on eternity. By this very focus on meeting needs in this world?to the neglect of preaching on Heaven and Hell?we are showing by our actions that this world is more significant than the world to come.”

Malcolm Yarnell, associate professor of systematic theology at Southwestern Baptist Theological
Seminary, said there are two causes for the neglect of preaching on matters of eternity, and “both of them reflect the power of contemporary culture to distort the message once-for-all given to the saints.”

“First, our people and pastors are increasingly interested in making Heaven here on Earth. The modern pursuit of material wealth and comfort, alongside the overarching desire to avoid pain or physical problems of any type, is a longstanding and pervasive influence in our culture. Rather than challenging such a mindset, some of us quietly cave into the demand for sermons to consider primarily mundane matters,” Yarnell said.

“Second, the subject of Hell is not exactly the most comfortable subject to address. Postmodernism with its attendant religious inclusivism and aversion to judgment is the dominant outlook of our cultural elite, especially in the media; to condemn non-Christians to an eternity in Hell is considered impolite, even rude.”

TRONG>The church under secular influence
“I think some in our churches are influenced by pop notions of Heaven, with thoughts of a fantasy world filled with humans who have become angels,” said David Nelson, theology professor and academic vice president at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in Wake Forest, N.C.

“Certainly, where the doctrine of Hell is deemphasized, there’s a good chance that this is influenced by the popular rejection, which is more broadly a rejection of the very notion of evil. There is a certain psychological comfort that accompanies one’s forgetfulness about evil and Hell, but of course we know that it’s not really a comfort at all, but is rather a deadly doctrinal amnesia.”

TRONG>Historical and contemporary perspective
“In the 1950s of my childhood,” Coppenger added, “it was easier to preach on Hell because there was more widespread conviction that the Bible was true. Or perhaps it worked the other way around: There was greater respect for the Bible because ministers preached the whole counsel of God, including the reality of Hell, without embarrassment, mumbling, or marketing spin.”

Coppenger said people think about the afterlife, but they need to hear the truth in the midst of the eschatological blather espoused by the New Age movement, Mormonism, universalism, and other false religions.

“Unregenerate cultural elites are masters at coining expressions designed to ridicule or marginalize biblical teaching, and unfortunately,” Coppenger said, “many church members are eager to use these expressions to gain credibility with secularists. Just as ‘homophobia’ is used to denigrate legitimate opposition to the homosexual agenda, ‘pie in the sky’ pictures Heaven as the laughable dream of weak sisters on earth, and ‘Hellfire and brimstone’ is applied to all preaching on Hell, making it seem hateful and wild-eyed. Such stereotypes sting, and the church has often muffled its prophetic voice to escape such hurtful labels.

“Taking our cue from the stylistic churches, we might think that emotional authenticity, artistic prowess, relational intensity, and cultural winsomeness are just the ticket,” Coppenger said. “We’re spending a lot of time on this-w

If you heard about a church that totally ignored the subjects of Heaven and Hell in its preaching, what would you think of that congregation?

Most of us would think the church was shirking its responsibility to declare the entire Word of God and demand a correction. Yet many of us do not seem to mind that the music in hundreds of churches makes the same mistake week after week?failing to offer substantive teachings on eternity.

According to one group of Southern Baptist music experts, the lack of singing about eternity ought to bother us and drive us to use songs as opportunities to teach the full counsel of God.

Church music should declare “both the breadth of Bible knowledge and the depth of Bible knowledge,” Carl Stam, associate professor of church music and worship at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and minister of music at Clifton Baptist Church in Louisville, Ky., told the TEXAN. “We want to teach (with our worship songs). It’s not the kind of teaching that does away with teaching and preaching, but it’s the kind of teaching that happens when we sing and pray faithfully.”

A recent study by Ed Steele, assistant professor of music at New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary’s Leavell College, attempted to quantify the lack of teaching about eternity in many modern worship songs. Steele conducted a comparative study of the 1991 edition of the “Baptist Hymnal” and two of the most popular collections of contemporary worship songs on the market?Word’s “Songs for Praise and Worship” and Maranatha’s “Praise Hymns and Choruses.”

Steele found that the “Baptist Hymnal” had approximately three times as many songs on eternal life, twice as many songs on Heaven and twice as many songs on the return of Christ as the nearest bestselling book of contemporary choruses. While choruses express many biblical thoughts about worshipping God, he said churches must not assume they are getting a balanced diet of biblical theology when they use the most popular chorus books.

Churches need “careful selection of relevant texts that do not compromise biblical theology,” Steele wrote in a lecture titled “Feast and Famine: Doctrinal Topics Addressed in Published Collections of Contemporary Choruses.”

Jerry Fleming, minister of music and senior adults at First Baptist Church in Wills Point, said churches do not need to abandon contemporary worship choruses, but they would do well not to ignore older hymns. He cited several hymns as teaching the doctrine of Heaven particularly well?”When the Roll Is Called Up Yonder,” “When We All Get to Heaven,” “Face to Face with Christ, My Savior” and “On Jordan’s Stormy Banks” among others.

“One of the reasons that I enjoy and use hymns is that they do teach doctrine,” Fleming said. “There may come a time when choruses fall into this category too, but for now, it is hymns that seem to do a better job of teaching doctrine. Not all, of course, but many.”

Many times a solo can be the most effective musical tool for teaching about Heaven, he said, noting that “I Bowed on My Knees and Cried ‘Holy'” and “Wish You Were Here” are among his favorites.

“Music should do more than just prepare people for a sermon in which they are taught doctrine,”
Fleming said. “Sometimes I will stop before a verse and just read the verse to help us focus on what it says about Heaven or some other distinctive doctrine. Sometimes I let the choir or a soloist sing a verse for the same reason.”

Will Langstaff, pastor of Servant House in Lewisville, said contemporary worship songs can also do an excellent job of teaching about Heaven. He cited “I Can Only Imagine” and “The Days of Elijah” as examples of worship songs teaching about Heaven.

While finding songs about Hell is more difficult, Stam offered several suggestions. A collection of modern hymns written by Keith Getty and Stuart Townend provides more than a dozen hymns that speak biblically on eternal life, he said, including hymns mentioning Hell. Additionally, hymns written during the era of the Great Awakening in the 1700s tend to teach biblical doctrine about eternal life, Stam said. Isaac Watts, Charles Wesley and William Cowper are three hymn writers from the 18th century whose works are helpful today, Stam said.

Stam added that while some churches shy away from singing about Hell, celebrating God’s eternal damnation of Satan and his just judgment against sin should be a part of Christian worship. Both the modern hymns by Getty and Townend and the Great Awakening hymns depict the justness of God’s judgment, he said.

Watts wrote in a hymn, for example, “But vengeance and damnation lies on rebels who refuse the grace; Who God’s eternal Son despise, The hottest Hell shall be their place.” More than 20 Getty hymns speak about Heaven or Hell.

Stam cautioned that churches should not sing every song that speaks of eternal life. A certain “breed of gospel hymnody” tends to trivialize the glory of God in Heaven and depict judgment too lightly, he said.

“Look for texts that are substantive in their views on what Heaven is like for the believer and on the judgment of God,” Stam said.

Ultimately Stam, Fleming and Steele agree that whether a church uses contemporary songs or traditional songs is not the important issue. Rather, the important issue is that congregations sing songs that match the teaching of the Bible both in their tone and their content.

“Can these new texts be used in worship?” Steele asked. “The fact is they already are. Nevertheless their use should not be without filters. The first filter must be a theological one.”

DALLAS?Two professors with ties to Baptist higher education are featured in an upcoming big-screen documentary that aims to expose the scientific establishment’s scorn toward academics who question Darwinian evolution.

“Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed” is scheduled for theaters in April and stars comedic actor and conservative activist Ben Stein as he travels the world interviewing intelligent design (ID) proponents whose careers have been threatened, as well as prominent neo-Darwinists who hold ID in contempt, including Richard Dawkins, author of the best-selling book “The God Delusion.”

A rough cut of the film, screened Jan. 10 in Dallas, featured interviews with William Dembski, a research professor of philosophy at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary and a leading ID proponent whose books include “The Design Inference” and “No Free Lunch,” and Robert Marks, who holds the title of distinguished professor of engineering at Baylor University.

Marks is a co-laborer of Dembski’s whose ID research raised the ire of Baylor’s administration last year.

Dembski’s trials at Baylor from 1999-2005 are not documented in the film?among other things, he drew the wrath of the science, philosophy and religion departments early in his tenure there when it was learned that he was heading up an ID think tank on campus?but Dembski appears several times on screen as an ID apologist.

Dembski told the Southern Baptist TEXAN that those who most need to see the movie are “parents of children in high school or college, as well as those children themselves, who may think that the biological sciences are a dispassionate search for truth about life but many of whose practitioners see biology, especially evolutionary biology, as an ideological weapon to destroy faith in God.”

Marks appears in the film as one of the “expelled” academics. Although he remains at Baylor as a tenured professor, Baylor officials last year forced Marks to return grant money it received related to ID research and forced his ID research website to an off-campus server.

Marks appears in the movie with Stein near the Brazos River in Waco. Stein interviewed Marks’ engineering dean, Ben Kelley, on film, but attempts to interview Baylor President John Lilley and other administration officials failed.

Marks said of the film: “I sat there and I laughed. I laughed because I have seen this atheistic, big-science mafia squad come out and kill the careers of many of my friends. Guillermo Gonzalez, who I knew at the University of Washington. Richard von Sternberg, who I recently met. And to see their motivation and goals so clearly exposed in a Ben Stein sort of dry humor was incredible. I really, really enjoyed the movie. I think it is going to have an enormous impact. I hope it does.”

Logan Craft, co-executive producer of the film and chairman of the film’s production company, Premise Media, told the TEXAN that though most of the expelled academics in the film are affiliated with secular institutions, he is not surprised that ID is controversial at schools with religious roots.

“To me, the long history of religiously founded universities and colleges in the United States is typically one of the ultimate capturing of the colleges and universities by the progressive secularists. I think you see that at Baylor partly. You see that at SMU almost entirely.” Craft commented.

“What we see here is a struggle for a religiously founded university to maintain its credibility to the larger academic world and frequently that has come by simply being co-opted by whatever the zeitgeist of the day is, in this case, this commitment to scientific materialism,” Craft said.

One of the first interviews in the film is with Richard von Sternberg, a research associate at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History in Washington. With two Ph.D.s in biology, von Sternberg’s academic credentials were unquestioned until he allowed the publication of a peer-reviewed article questioning neo-Darwinism to appear in a Smithsonian-related biology journal he edited.

An investigation into von Sternberg’s treatment at the Smithsonian after the article appeared by the U.S. Office of Special Counsel (OSC) found that he was subjected to a “hostile” work environment, even to the point of Smithsonian officials peering into his religious and political affiliations and scouring his library records for infractions.

But Craft said perhaps the most egregious example of persecution against an ID proponent is that of Guillermo Gonzalez, a highly lauded astronomer who is also featured in “Expelled.”

Even though Gonzalez has been credited with discovering two planets and making other notable contributions in his field, Iowa State University denied him tenure last year after months of controversy surrounding his co-writing of the book “The Privileged Planet: How Our Place in the Cosmos Is Designed for Discovery.” After the book’s publication, 120 Iowa State University professors signed a statement published in the ISU student-run newspaper denouncing intelligent design.

Craft said he believes the modern icons Karl Marx and Sigmund Freud have been rightly relegated to non-iconic status, with Charles Darwin trailing closely behind as the last standing icon of modernity.
“And nobody has a credible theory, scientifically, of how life originated. No one. The Darwinists admit it on the phone.”

At one point in the film, Stein nudges Dawkins, the well-known Oxford evolutionary biologist, into offering a guess that perhaps some unknown intelligence planted the first seeds of life in our galaxy, but Dawkins quickly insisted that such intelligence would necessarily have needed to arise from Darwinian processes.

Stein, an economist, actor and conservative commentator whose previous work ranges from a memorable role in the 1980s hit movie “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” to speechwriter for presidents Nixon and Ford, was recruited to the film after Premise Media created a template for its lead character: “a person, first of all, who wasn’t easily identified as overtly Christian or overtly religious and also someone who had a comic element to their personality or their repertoire, but also an intellectual,” Craft explained.

“That kind of limits the field,” Craft remarked. “There aren’t that many of those folks out there.

“Once Ben became acquainted with what we were doing, he got excited because he began to see a connection between our exploration and sanctity of life issues. He’s a very, very strong pro-life advocate. He has a high view of human dignity and human sanctity. And he saw a connection between what we were exploring, and sanctity of life issues and the historical elements of the eugenics movement, and especially as a Jewish person, the eugenics movement as it morphed into the Nazi racial cleansing laws.”

Craft added, “I think the public, once they understand more and more what Darwinian evolution represents, I think they will reject that and move against it.”

“Expelled” has received endorsements from evangelical Christian leaders such as J.I. Packer, Chuck Colson and James Dobson. Craft said Premise Media would be screening the film for some Southern Baptists leaders in Houston and Louisville, Ky., soon. A trailer of the movie is accessible online at expelledthemovie.com.

To read transcripts of the TEXAN’s interviews with Logan Craft of Premise Media and Robert Marks, one of the professors interviewed in the film, visit sbtexas.com or texanonline.net. Baptist Press reported on Marks’ case in an article last fall, accessible online at bpnews.net/bpnews.asp?id=26372.

Helping churches become more effective in winning people to Christ and in discipling the people they win are the purposes of a new initiative of the SBTC evangelism team. Empower Evangelism Strategy Consultations are designed to assist churches in developing approaches, ideas, and plans for reaching their communities with the gospel.

“The most effective evangelistic churches in Texas keep evangelism at the forefront of virtually everything they do,” said SBTC Ministry Strategist Jim Gatliff, who coordinates the Empower consultation project. “We look at the many things that make the main thing happen.”

Empower Consultations are free of charge to any SBTC church.

“For the investment of a few hours, a pastor and his church can get clearer insight into the community, a better awareness of the church’s needs and opportunities, some dynamite evangelistic ideas, and a plan that will really work,” Gatliff said.

Gatliff said more than 13 million people in Texas are spiritually lost and almost 45 percent of the 24 million people in the Lone Star State are not claimed by any church. The number of adults not attending church has more than doubled in the last 15 years.

“The huge majority of Baptist churches today, however, do not have healthy and effective approaches to winning people to Christ,” said Gatliff, citing a recent study conducted by the Landrum Leavell Center at New Orleans Seminary that found 89 percent of Southern Baptist churches are not experiencing healthy evangelistic growth. “Lost people are everywhere, but Southern Baptists have been flat-lining on baptisms for almost 50 years.”

“Most would agree that we are falling behind in reaching the growing population of Texas,” said Don Cass, SBTC director of evangelism. “Vance Havner once stated, ‘The great tragedy today is that the situation is desperate, but the saints are not.’ Desperate situations move us to take desperate measures.”

“Never has there been a greater need for intentional evangelism,” Cass said. “Intentional evangelism requires an intentional plan. It is impossible for the church to take on the likeness of our Heavenly Father and not plan. From the foundation of the world, God planned our redemption. Jesus came to fulfill the Father’s plan, ‘to seek and save those who are lost.’ Show me a church that is serious about reaching the lost and I will show you a church and pastor with a visionary plan to win their area of influence to the Savior.”

“I found that time spent with Jim Gatliff was rewarding,” said Charles Grasty, pastor of First Baptist Church of Neches. “He was well informed, shared great ‘do-able’ ideas and helped by bringing a demographic of our area. He listened to Kevin Simmons, our minister to students, as much as he talked. He was determined to find our spiritual blood pressure. He opened our eyes to some of the pitfalls we were facing, the holes in our bucket and prioritized ideas to plug the holes.”

Empower Evangelism Consultations are designed to help pastors and their churches better see and understand their mission field, discover methods that maximize the evangelistic impact of their churches, and fully mobilize their people for a great harvest.

“We feel that there is a great opportunity for many SBTC churches to rise to a new level of evangelistic effectiveness and kingdom impact,” Gatliff said.

“Mounds of research have documented what effective evangelistic churches do to reach people. These same things are also demonstrated in the pages of the New Testament. Churches, however, must do them in the Holy Spirit’s power,” Gatliff said. “Embedded in every aspect of our approach is a call to SBTC churches to seek the Lord and to experience spiritual renewal. Without him we can do absolutely nothing.”

The SBTC’s Empower Consultations focus on eight key dynamics that stimulate and support the evangelistic effectiveness of a church: environment, emphasis, events, example, enlistment, equipping, empowerment, and engagement.

“The first four dynamics emphasize the creation of an evangelistic atmosphere in a church. The latter four center on the mobilization of church members to evangelize the community,” Gatliff said.

The simple Empower Consultation process begins with a survey completed by the pastor and staff to indicate the strengths, needs, and opportunities of the church related to each of the eight key dynamics.
“The survey helps us see, for example, how evangelistic the Sunday School program is, what kind of evangelistic examples are being set by leaders of the church, and what the church is doing to equip its members to share their faith,” Gatliff said.

Next, an SBTC evangelism consultant will meet with the pastor, and anyone else he wants to include, for an on-site consultation.

“We look at the church’s current evangelism strategies and go over key demographics regarding the church’s mission field. We also suggest ways the church can continually improve its evangelistic impact,” Gatliff said. “Sometimes pastors are aware of some of the demographic and psychographic data regarding their community, but they don’t fully understand what it all means or what to do reach different groups in their mission field.”

“We bring to any church another pair of ‘evangelism eyes’ and a fresh set of proven-yet-innovative ideas for reaching people.”

SBTC churches may schedule an Empower Evangelism Strategy Consultation by contacting Jim Gatliff at 817-552-2500 or sending an e-mail to empower@sbtexas.com.

FORT WORTH — A Fort Worth attorney representing Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary President Paige Patterson filed two motions in U.S. district court Jan. 23 seeking dismissal of a former professor’s wrongful termination suit and also limiting discovery until a ruling is made on this latest effort.

Attorneys for the seminary, Roland K. Johnson and Shannan E. Goss also filed a motion for a summary judgment, and a brief in support of that motion. A summary judgment contends that all necessary factual issues are settled or so one-sided they need not be tried.

The motions by attorney J. Shelby Sharpe seek dismissal of a lawsuit in the alleged wrongful termination of Sheri Klouda, former professor of Hebrew at the seminary’s school of theology. The other seeks to limit discovery in the original case until a ruling on the dismissal is forthcoming. The 2007 lawsuit charged Southwestern and Patterson with breach of contract, fraud and defamation, and sought unspecified damages because Klouda was terminated from her position.

Klouda later alleged she was denied tenure, and that her teaching contract was not renewed because she is a woman. Klouda’s attorney amended the suit to include discrimination. The additional complaint necessitated a second motion to dismiss since the original complaint was changed.

Patterson told Baptist Press last March that the seminary does not employ women to teach men, with a desire to “model” the practice of the local church as outlined in Scripture.” The Baptist Faith and Message, adopted by messengers to the Southern Baptist Convention in 2000, states that the role of senior pastor in local churches should be held by men. Patterson, according to the suit, believes that same standard applies to the seminary’s School of Theology.

Sharpe’s motion to dismiss counters the suit, essentially saying that the court has no jurisdiction in such an ecclesiastical matter.

The motion to dismiss asks: “Since all claims set out in [Klouda’s] second amended complaint are predicated on an ecclesiastical decision not to continue [Klouda’s] employment as a member of the faculty of the School of Theology and the communications of the theological reasons for the decision in response to plaintiff’s public statement about the employment decision, are all of these claims in the “realm where the Constitution forbids” the “federal judiciary” to “tread” requiring dismissal for lack of subject-matter jurisdiction?

The Jan. 23 motion also states: “The judicial admissions in the amended complaint and the admissions in two prior complaints along with the accompanying evidence establish that all of [Klouda’s] claims against the Seminary and its president pertain to matters of ecclesiastical administration and government making them peculiarly ecclesiastical in nature and thereby placing them outside the subject-matter jurisdiction of any civil court based on the longstanding doctrine of ecclesiastical abstention or church-autonomy doctrine, which includes the ministerial exception doctrine.”

On Jan. 24, the judge responded by signing an order that Paige Patterson’s motion to dismiss should be re-filed as a motion for summary judgment. He gave Patterson and his lawyers until Feb. 4 to re-file the motion. Shelby Sharpe told the TEXAN that he planned to comply with the judge’s order well in advance of that deadline.

The seminary’s brief supporting their motion for summary judgment also attacks the court’s jurisdiction in “an ecclesiastical decision which is protected by the church autonomy doctrine under the First Amendment.” The brief claims that that the seminary’s relationship with its faculty is similar to the relationship between a church and its ministers.

Plano, Texas, attorney Kelly Shackelford, who has argued numerous religious liberty cases in federal court, said issues “that touch in any way on the seminary’s right to follow doctrine in hiring its religious instructors” are constitutionally protected.

Sharpe’s limitation of discovery motion asks: “Because a motion to dismiss all claims for lack of subject-matter jurisdiction is pending a ruling before the Court, which, if granted, will make discovery on the merits of the claims a complete waste of time and money for all parties, should all discovery be limited to those matters relevant to a decision of the jurisdiction issue until that issue is decided?”

Van McClain, chairman of Southwestern’s board of trustees, told the Dallas Morning News last year 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 said the seminary was gracious to Klouda as she looked for a teaching position elsewhere. “The administration … allowed her to teach a full two years after she was told that whe would not have tenure.”