Southwestern officers to consider conduct of Arlington trustee

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McKissic responds to SWBTS trustee Chairman Van McClain4:33 pm, March 5)
Chairman responds to McKissic’s statement4:20 pm, March 6)

McKissic issues apology4:04 pm, March 7)

UPDATED:3:57 pm,March 7

A trustee of the board at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary apologized Wednesday to the board’s chairman after comparing scrutiny of his conduct as a trustee to a lynching.

Arlington pastor Dwight McKissic, who is black, issued an apology to board Chairman Van McClain of New York after accusing McClain of seeking his removal and likening it to “a 21st-century lynching of an independent-thinking black man who has demonstrated strong support for the Southern Baptist Convention.”

The TEXAN broke the story March 5 that the board’s officers planned to meet privately with McKissic to address what McClain deemed possible trustee policy violations during McKissic’s first year on the board.

McKissic has publicly criticized SBC agency policies against the charismatic use of tongues and private prayer language, the latter of which he said he practices in his personal devotions.

After McKissic released his initial statement on Monday, McClain responded in an e-mail to the TEXAN, stating the meeting planned next month of board officers and McKissic, if he attends, has “nothing to do with his race or his beliefs or his right to appropriately express his beliefs” and that he was “grieved” by McKissic’s comments.

“It was not my intent to bring grief to you,” McKissic wrote Wednesday in a letter to McClain and posted at www.praisegodbarebones.blogspot.com, a site hosted by First Baptist Church of Farmersville Pastor Bart Barber. “It was simply to point out the inequities and injustices I am experiencing by being asked to come to trial without specific charges and to have my trusteeship put on the line with no policy or law violations being cited as specifically being applied to an action or inaction on my part.