The longtime president of Mercer University said in a speech on Thursday that “Baptist politics are wreaking havoc on Baptist higher education,” which “has never been more fragile.” The president, R. Kirby Godsey, is retiring after 27 years at Mercer’s helm. He spoke at the annual meeting of a Baptist society, according to an article in The Baptist Standard.

Mr. Godsey said the crisis in Baptist higher education stemmed from the colleges’ financial dependence on their more-conservative state Baptist conventions and on those state groups’ efforts to exert control over the colleges, often through their trustees. The disputes have led some colleges to cut ties with their conventions—and even to lawsuits (The Chronicle, July 4, 2003). Just last month, Belmont College faced off against the Tennessee Baptist Convention (The Chronicle, May 12).

In his speech, Mr. Godsey said the confrontational course of events was “terrible” and raised the specter of Baptist educators’ having to “make the choice between being Baptists and being educators.” A commitment to academic freedom is key, he said, and “a college or university cannot be a good Baptist college or university without first being a good college or university.” He then suggested ways to calm the troubled waters.

Mr. Godsey is no stranger to conflict with conservative Baptists. In 1996 he wrote in a book that the Bible isn’t inerrant. The book set off a storm of protests, but he didn’t back down (The Chronicle, September 27, 1996). The Georgia Baptist Convention later said the book was “punctuated with heresy” (The Chronicle, September 19, 1997).