Paige Patterson

Patterson served as the president of Criswell College in Dallas, Texas from 1975 to 1992.

Following his time at Criswell College, Patterson became president of two prominent Southern Baptist seminaries: first Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary (SEBTS) in Wake Forest, N.C., from 1992 to 2003, and then Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary (SWBTS) from 2003 to 2018.[11]

While Patterson was president of SWBTS, there were two female faculty members in the School of Theology: his wife, Dorothy, and Candi Finch, a loyal ally of the Pattersons.[15] Both Dorothy Patterson and Finch were fired in 2018 following Paige Patterson's ouster.[16]

Patterson was a defendant in a 2018 suit which alleged he assisted in covering up sexual abuse by fellow Southern Baptist Paul Pressler.[13] The claims against Patterson were dismissed as they exceeded the statute of limitations.[17]

On May 22, 2018, the board of trustees of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary (SWBTS) met to discuss "new leadership for the benefit of the future mission of the Seminary".[18][19] They removed Patterson as President[4] and conferred the title of President Emeritus upon him, with compensation, and provided for him and his wife to live in the seminary's Baptist Heritage Center as the school's first theologians-in-residence.[18]

However, on May 30, 2018, the seminary's executive committee made an abrupt change:

[N]ew information confirmed this morning was presented regarding the handling of an allegation of sexual abuse against a student during Dr. Paige Patterson’s presidency at another institution and resulting issues connected with statements to the Board of Trustees that are inconsistent with SWBTS’s biblically informed core values.[5][20]

Patterson was terminated "effective immediately"[21] in response to mishandling the investigation of the alleged rape of a student at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in 2003, based on their internal review reported to SWBTS.[5] During that investigation, Patterson had sent an email "to the Chief of Campus Security in which Dr. Patterson discussed meeting with the student alone so that he could ‘break her down’ and that he preferred no officials be present";[5] the SWBTS Executive Committee stated that the "attitude expressed by Dr. Patterson in that email is antithetical to the core values of our faith and to SWBTS".[5] The executive committee also found "undeniable" evidence that "contradicts a statement previously provided by Dr. Patterson in response to a direct question by a board member".[5] Patterson has denied any mishandling of any investigation.[22]

The SWBTS Executive Committee removed "all the benefits, rights and privileges provided by the May 22–23 board meeting, including the title of President Emeritus, the invitation to reside at the Baptist Heritage Center as theologian-in-residence and ongoing compensation".[5] The SWBTS trustees voted on October 17, 2018, to uphold the decision to fire Patterson, though 4 of the 34 trustees present voted against and claimed that the process of his firing was flawed.[23] At that same meeting, trustees voting by a similar margin to fire an SWBTS faculty member, apparently for voicing opposition to Patterson's firing.[24]

The firing also led to the termination of Dorothy Patterson's pet project of installing over 60 stained glass windows on the SWBTS campus to honor leaders in the conservative resurgence. The project was begun in 2013 as a 12-year project, and some 32 windows had been installed by April 2019, at which time the trustees decided to remove the windows in the best interests of the seminary. Two of the windows depicted Paige and Dorothy Patterson.[25]

Patterson's firing affected his standing in Baptist circles more broadly. Since 2003, Patterson had served on the board of trustees of Cedarville University, a Baptist institution. On May 30, 2018, Cedarville's president, Thomas White, who had worked with Patterson at both SEBTS and SWBTS, issued a statement that emphasized Cedarville's policies for reporting abuse and his uncertainty as to whether Patterson would continue to serve on the board.[7] By May 31, 1,300 people had signed a petition for Patterson's resignation from Cedarville's board of trustees, which Patterson submitted that day.[7]

Patterson's standing in the SBC was also affected by his firing. After receiving pressure from various Southern Baptist leaders, including SBC president Steve Gaines, Patterson announced in a letter to Gaines on June 8, 2018, that he was declining to give the keynote sermon at the annual meeting of the SBC the following week.[26] Patterson said his decision came from his desires "to protect my family as much as I can", "to contribute to harmony within the Southern Baptist Convention", and "to respond to the request that has come especially from you and other Southern Baptist leadership".[26]

Although Patterson did not attend the SBC annual meeting in June 2018, the scandal prompted a greater focus on gender for attendees, who passed two resolutions on gender. One of those resolutions affirmed roles for women in the church, while the other condemned all forms of abuse against women and insisted that Baptist leaders report alleged sexual abuse to police.[27]

Patterson is still revered in some Baptist circles. During a chapel service on March 12, 2019, Truett McConnell University (TMU), an SBC school in Georgia, the school's dean and president presented Dr. and Mrs. Patterson with a plaque that renamed TMU's annual spring lecture series after them and claimed that they "provide an exemplary role model of Christian living."[28]

About two dozen SBC donors attempted to return Patterson to his positions of president emeritus and theologian-in-residence at SWBTS and to punish those who fired him. At the SBC's annual meeting in June 2018, they brought a resolution to the floor to fire all the trustees of SWBTS who voted to fire Patterson; that resolution was "soundly defeated".[29] Then in early July 2018, several donors to SWBTS signed a public letter threatening to withhold funding from the seminary unless the SWBTS board reconsidered Patterson's firing.[29] Their letter called the SWBTS Executive Committee's firing of Patterson a "travesty" and stated: "Dr. and Mrs. Patterson continue to have our absolute and unwavering support. They are both esteemed scholars and were stately ambassadors for the Seminary".[29] Karen Swallow Prior, then a professor at Liberty University, said, "What we’re seeing is people who are committed to a person rather than to an institution or to the convention, putting their loyalty to a person ahead of their adherence to the principles of the institution".[29]

Since his firing, Patterson has received public criticism for two sermons at a revival in September 2018. In the first sermon, he repeatedly highlighted the weight of a "fat" female parishioner, which led to charges that he was "body-shaming women".[30] His second sermon referenced the biblical story of Joseph, who was falsely accused by a woman of sexual abuse, to criticize some women in the Me Too movement.[30] Some Baptists who had previously called for Patterson's removal from SWBTS argued that his sermons showed a lack of repentance for his previous comments about women.[31]

In mid-October 2018, Patterson accepted the opportunity to co-teach an ethics course at Southern Evangelical Seminary (SES). His co-teacher for the course was Richard Land, the former head of the SBC's Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission and presently the president of SES.[32] Richard Mouw, president emeritus of Fuller Theological Seminary, noted that Patterson was an odd choice to teach the class because he was not a specialist in ethics and suggested that Patterson's hire was "a political statement" by the very conservative SES that "He's one of us. We want to keep his voice strong."[33]

In October 2021, Patterson was elected to a three-year term on the board of trustees of Yellowstone Christian College in Kalispell, Montana.[34]