After Replac­ing Con­ser­v­a­tives at South­west­ern, Green­way Leaves

Adam Green­way, who has served as Pres­i­dent of South­west­ern Bap­tist The­o­log­i­cal Sem­i­nary (SWBTS) for approx­i­mate­ly three-and-a-half years, has offi­cial­ly resigned from his posi­tion. On Thurs­day, Sep­tem­ber 22nd of 2022, the Exec­u­tive Com­mit­tee of the Board of Trustees of South­west­ern Bap­tist The­o­log­i­cal Sem­i­nary met and accept­ed his res­ig­na­tion.

Dr. Robert Lopez, a for­mer SWBTS pro­fes­sor who was inter­viewed in Ene­mies With­in: The Church, had the fol­low­ing to say about Greenway’s actions as Pres­i­dent in an inter­view with Woke­pe­dia (now EWTC News) con­trib­u­tor Mic­ah Sam­ple:

“I was work­ing at that sem­i­nary, to be clear– I was a pro­fes­sor there– and we were assured over and over again that every­thing was fine, that there wasn’t going to be any major changes– and then in Feb­ru­ary of 2019, they announced that Adam Green­way comes on board. Very short­ly after he was named as the new [Pres­i­dent], they fired Charles Patrick, who was one of pro­fes­sors who was also an admin­is­tra­tor. They soon fired all of the admin­is­tra­tors. One by one, they were all gone: the Dean of Stu­dent Life, all the asso­ciate Vice Pres­i­dents, et cetera… They pulled back the provost. And they replaced all of these peo­ple with new peo­ple, all of whom had rela­tion­ships to South­ern [Bap­tist The­o­log­i­cal Sem­i­nary], maybe with the excep­tion of two or three peo­ple. They were peo­ple who knew Adam Green­way and Al Mohler because they were all work­ing at South­ern Bap­tist The­o­log­i­cal Sem­i­nary.”

-Dr. Robert Lopez

Not only were admin­is­tra­tors replaced in quick suc­ces­sion, Dr. Lopez explained, but rumors about poten­tial fir­ings of pro­fes­sors across var­i­ous depart­ments were spread­ing like wild­fire: 

“Between Feb­ru­ary and about April [of 2019], there were wide­spread rumors on the cam­pus that they were going to fire a large num­ber of peo­ple. They blamed Paige Pat­ter­son, who had been removed, say­ing that he had left a huge finan­cial hole. And because of that, they ‘had to’ trim the fac­ul­ty. They fired 26 peo­ple in one day… It’s a reflec­tion of such un-Chris­t­ian cru­el­ty, the way that they did it. It was a total dis­re­gard for human dig­ni­ty… Then there was a trick­le of peo­ple who were fired, and then in the Spring of 2020, then they fired a huge crop of peo­ple.”

-Dr. Robert Lopez

Dr. Travis Dick­in­son, a phi­los­o­phy pro­fes­sor who served at SWBTS, took to Twit­ter to high­light the fact that there were cuts after Green­way took office.

“I hope and pray that fac­ul­ty are treat­ed well in this tran­si­tion. The very worst thing that could hap­pen, in my opin­ion, is to clean house again the way Greenway’s admin­is­tra­tion did when he came in as pres­i­dent. By my count, with­in the first year of Greenway’s pres­i­den­cy, 40 fac­ul­ty mem­bers were cut in two rounds less than a year apart. His admin­is­tra­tion was still cut­ting as of this sum­mer, bring­ing the count up to 46.”

-Dr. Travis Dick­in­son

Will McRaney, for­mer researcher and writer for the North Amer­i­can Mis­sions Board and the South­ern Bap­tist Con­ven­tion, expressed his feel­ings on the sub­ject:

“I am con­cerned about the 45 pro­fes­sors whose employment[s were] ter­mi­nat­ed. They may have got lit­tle finan­cial­ly and were not giv­en jobs to con­tin­ue in min­istry, while the Pres­i­dent is accused of over­spend­ing and dam­ag­ing fel­low ser­vants and secured a job with an SBC enti­ty to soft­en his land­ing. Those pro­fes­sors may have been mak­ing 1/4 to 1/3 the amount of the President[‘s pay].”

-Will McRaney

Read­ers who have viewed our film, Ene­mies With­in: The Church, will recall that Green­way peti­tioned for Mid-Amer­i­ca Bap­tist The­o­log­i­cal Sem­i­nary Pres­i­dent Michael Spradlin to refuse to allow EWTC to be shown on his cam­pus. In a Tweet, he plead­ed:

“It is with deep dis­ap­point­ment but strong con­vic­tion that I have sent the fol­low­ing let­ter to Dr. Michael Spradlin, prayer­ful­ly request­ing him to recon­sid­er the deci­sion of MABTS to host the pre­mier [sic] of a film whose trail­er con­tains scan­dalous and scur­rilous slan­der against @SWBTS.”

-Adam Green­way

We strong­ly rec­om­mend that our view­ers take a look at our Mas­ter Notes & Bib­li­og­ra­phy, which pro­vides pri­ma­ry source doc­u­men­ta­tion for our film, demon­strat­ing that Greenway’s claim that the trail­er con­tains “slan­der” was false. Green­way opposed the show­ing of the film due to the appear­ance of Dr. Lopez, who explained how he was fired from South­west­ern because of his Bib­li­cal stance on homo­sex­u­al­i­ty as abuse.

Green­way has been offered a posi­tion at the Inter­na­tion­al Mis­sions Board of the South­ern Bap­tist Con­ven­tion. This is anoth­er exam­ple of what Pas­tor Cary Gor­don dubs the “Social­ist Shuf­fle.” When a Woke indi­vid­ual with­in the hier­ar­chy is forced out of a posi­tion at a Chris­t­ian insti­tu­tion, that indi­vid­ual is, more often than not, offered a posi­tion else­where with­in the sphere of Chris­t­ian insti­tu­tions– while some­one who is just as sold on Left­ism, if not even more so, takes that person’s ini­tial posi­tion. [UPDATE: Green­way will no longer be tak­ing a posi­tion at the Inter­na­tion­al Mis­sions Board, accord­ing to Bap­tist Press.]

Chris­tians can take heart at the fact that the Lord will not allow the wicked to go unpun­ished for­ev­er, while simul­ta­ne­ous­ly pray­ing for the wicked to repent. In the case of Adam Green­way, it is our desire at Woke­pe­dia that he would see the errors of his ways, pub­licly apol­o­gize, and turn and live right­ly before the Lord.