I believe it is right for the General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists to cultivate and monitor the theological integrity, loyalty, and unity of those who teach religion in our church’s colleges and universities, but wrong to do so with the methods that have recently been put in place.

As I see it, our church’s leaders have an obligation to make as sure as possible that those who teach religion on our denomination’s campuses are honest, intelligent, and effective in their support of our denomination’s views and values. Some may wonder if the General Conference, which provides overall leadership for our worldwide church, is the best place from which to make certain that this happens; however, I see no reason why it should not be at least one of the places at which qualified and consecrated people attend to this matter in a wise and helpful manner.

It also appears to me that encouraging and enabling SDA campuses to succeed as faithful and flourishing institutions of our church is one of the proper responsibilities of the Adventist Accrediting Association. I expect, for instance, that each time a campus seeks AAA approval, among other things this denominational body will assess the quality and loyalty of the institution’s religion faculty. Indeed, I would be disappointed if this did not happen. So far, then, so good!

As I now understand them, however, the current procedural guidelines of the General Conference International Board for Ministerial Training and Education are inadequate in at least twelve important ways, any one of which is more than enough to compromise the moral credibility of the entire process:

1. The IBMTE includes many ex offico members whose other responsibilities will not allow them to participate in its work in a regular and responsible fashion.
2. Many ex officio and regular members of the IBMTE are specialists in fields other than tertiary Seventh-day Adventist theological education and spiritual formation.
3. By inadequately clarifying procedural presumptions and burdens of proof, these guidelines place someone who has successfully taught religion in our church’s colleges and universities for many years in the same category as one who has never done so.
4. These guidelines do not anticipate that every regular member of the IBMTE, let alone every ex officio member, will independently examine every religion teacher’s application to begin or to continue serving on one of our church’s campuses. Instead, the IBMTE’s chair and secretary will appoint a subcommittee of two or more members to study the applicant’s record and affidavits.
5. The criteria that will guide this subcommittee’s work are procedurally and substantively vague, especially when compared to those of the Rank and Tenure and Peer Review Committees on most of our campuses.
6. This subcommittee will not report its findings to the IBMTE as a whole, but to its chair and secretary, who will decide whether to forward them to the entire IBMTE.
7. These guidelines do not specify what should happen if the chair and secretary find themselves deadlocked in disagreement regarding the subcommittee’s findings.
8. These guidelines provide inadequate opportunities for a candidate to appeal to the IBMTE as a whole if he or she receives a favorable review from the subcommittee but an unfavorable one from the chair and secretary.
9. These guidelines do not require each member of the entire IBMTE to vote by way of secret ballot on each candidate’s application.
10. These guidelines anticipate that the IBMTE will have access to a religion teacher’s student, peer, and administrative evaluations that now are and should remain confidential.
11. There are important tensions between these guidelines and our church’s positions on academic freedom that are included in the IBMTE’s procedural handbook.
12. The entire process complicates and frustrates the ability of members of each institution’s board of trustees, most of whom are full-time members of our denomination, to fulfill their fiduciary obligations in ethically and legally acceptable ways.

For all practical purposes, the IBMTE as now comprised and commissioned will function as a committee of two, its chair and its secretary. All other members of the IBMTE will be so dependent upon these two people for information and evaluations that it will be difficult for them to study the issues and options for themselves and to cast informed and independent votes in secret ballots.

The amount and kind of administrative power allotted by these guidelines to the IBMTE chair and secretary is unprecedented in the entire history of our church. It is also unjustified.

It is difficult to imagine methods that are more at odds with the warnings of Ellen G. White and many others in our church’s past against concentrating too much administrative and theological power in the hands of too few people.

Better ways can and must be found!

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