Tennessee Baptists, meeting in special session May 9, rejected a settlement offer from Belmont University, choosing instead to remove the school’s trustees and pursue a path that could lead to litigation against the school.
Messengers to the special called meeting at Two Rivers Baptist Church adopted a recommendation from the Tennessee Baptist Convention Executive Board empowering a special study committee to “carry out all rights, powers, actions and remedies of the convention” with respect to Belmont.
According to the recommendation, options available to the committee include “private negotiations/settlement, mediation, arbitration and/or litigation.”
That action in the afternoon session included a two-hour-long discussion on proposed amendments and amendments to amendments, all of which messengers eventually defeated before approving the Executive Board proposal as presented by a 1,383-103 vote.
The morning session ended with messengers rejecting, by a vote of 923-791, the Executive Board’s original recommendation dealing with a settlement offer from Belmont.
In that offer, Belmont offered to pay the TBC $2 million in cash, plus an additional $1 million per year for the next three years. That would have permanently ended the relationship between the two entities. By rejecting the offer, TBC messengers indicated they were not content to let Belmont walk away from its relationship with the TBC without a fight.
“This has not been a desire on our part to deal with this issue with Belmont … . But the convention had to respond to this,” James Porch, executive director-treasurer for the Tennessee Baptist Convention, said at a press conference following the meeting.
He added that the response by messengers was focused on what “could best be done” for the “kingdom of God and the Tennessee Baptist Convention.”
“We are family, and our great desire has been for all these years that Belmont, especially, be a great part of the ongoing Tennessee Baptist Convention,” he said. “But we came to a crossroads in which Belmont, by actions, had chosen not to participate in the family, according to the way that the family is structured. Every family has structure, and the same is true with a religious organization.”
All told, 1,754 messengers spent roughly seven hours debating how to handle the situation with Belmont.
The TBC action on May 9 follows a November decision by Belmont’s trustees to change the university’s charter and become a self-perpetuating board. Previously, the TBC elected the university’s trustees. – BP