WFAA-TV

Dr. Sheri Klouda

UPLAND, Indiana - The female professor who said her gender led to her to being unfairly let go from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth spoke out Tuesday from the school she now teaches at in Indiana.

Snowy Indiana is a little colder than the Holy Land, but Sheri Klouda said she has new-found empathy for Israelites wandering through the wilderness in the Old Testament. However, she is a Southern Baptist with a PhD who now teaches Hebrew at Taylor University in Upland, Indiana.

But last year, she was teaching at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth.

"I was told that I was a mistake that trustees needed to fix," she said. "Those are the exact words."

And she said she was told she could no longer teach at the seminary for one simple reason.

"Because I am a female," she said.

It goes back to the New Testament in 1 Timothy 2:11, which is where the Apostle Paul describes the role of women in the early church.

"I do not permit a woman to teach or have authority over a man," Dr. Klouda read from the Bible. "She must be silent, for Adam was formed first, then Eve, and Adam was not the one deceived. It was the woman who was deceived and became a sinner."

But Dr. Klouda said she was deceived as well by Seminary President Paige Patterson.

"Initially, I felt like Dr. Patterson lied to me as far as his intentions," she said.

In 2003, Dr. Klouda said she went to Dr. Patterson for reassurance after he had taken over the seminary.

Even though Klouda got her degree from Southwestern and had been teaching there for three years, she said she was troubled by Patterson's strict interpretation of the passage from Timothy.

"He told me I had nothing to worry about, his exact words," she said.

But two years later, she had plenty to worry about. She said while no one challenged her teaching, Dr. Patterson said she was no longer wanted at the seminary as a teacher.

"The idea was, professors should be qualified to be pastors," she said he told her. "Pastors are men, therefore I was no longer qualified to be a professor."

Dr. Patterson declined to comment on Klouda's departure.

The chair of Southwestern's board of trustees, T. Van McClain told the Dallas Morning News that hiring a woman to teach men was a "momentary lax of the parameters."

But many Baptist biblical scholars, including Professor Eugene Merrill of Dallas Theological Seminary, said Southwestern has gone too far in banning women from teaching theology.

"I think they did, but they did this years ago," Merrill said. "The new administration at Southwestern Baptist did not establish a new policy, they simply put into effect a policy that's been in effect since the founding of the school."

The pastor of Parkview Baptist in Arlington filed a formal complaint with the association that accredits the seminary.

Dr. Klouda said she's happy at Taylor University. But she said that the financial, emotional and even the physical burdens have become much more than she ever thought she would have to bear, or should have to bear, because of a passage in the bible.

"I love the Bible, and I know a lot of it," she said.

She said she knows enough to believe that the Apostle Paul never intended to keep her from teaching Hebrew to men.

E-mail jdouglas@wfaa.com