Saturday, October 17, 1998

Baptists criticize beer, wine sales on Wake campus

By YONAT SHIMRON

Raleigh News & Observer

WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. -- Forty years ago, North Carolina Baptists made national headlines when they protested a decision by Wake Forest University to allow coed dancing on campus. Now, they are gearing up for what looks like a similar protest: against the university's decision to allow the sale of beer and wine on campus.

A Baptist minister in Winston-Salem wants the university to stop selling alcohol to seniors, and will ask the Baptist State Convention at its annual meeting next month to penalize the university.

"I'm dead set against the sale of alcoholic beverages on any college supported by Christian money," said the Rev. Ray Davis, pastor of Green Meadows Baptist Church. "We have biblically and historically opposed the sale, manufacture and consumption of alcohol. This is a strong conviction that it's wrong."

Davis said he will propose a motion that North Carolina Baptists drop Wake Forest from all of their promotional publications.

His position has some support among Baptists. Although the Winston-Salem school is not governed by Baptists, it has a fraternal relationship with the state convention. It is among seven colleges the convention recommends to its youth, and many Southern Baptists have taken advantage of the school's commitment to the denomination. This year, the university awarded $524,000 in scholarships to 71 undergraduate Baptist students. Of that amount, the state convention contributed $28,500.

"If the convention does something to alter the relationship, they will think they are punishing Wake Forest University, but in reality they will punish North Carolina Baptist students," said the Rev. Michael Queen, pastor of First Baptist Church in Wilmington, N.C., and a trustee at Wake Forest who said he would oppose cutting ties between the convention and the university.

But other Baptists say the convention cannot sit by while beer and wine are sold on campus. They say Baptists pleaded with the school in private not to allow the sales. But this past summer, university officials told the convention they would not stop the sale of alcohol.

Two years ago, Wake Forest started selling beer and wine to give seniors an opportunity to drink in moderation. Each day, after 5 p.m., students can buy one beer or one glass of wine per hour at Shorty's, a small shop in the food court that sells Starbucks coffee in the mornings.

"We'd rather provide them with a safe environment on campus, if they choose to drink, than have them on the highways," said Sandra Boyette, vice president for university advancement. In 1996, two Wake Forest University students were killed in a car crash by a drunken driver.

Many Baptists, however, see alcohol as a taboo comparable to gambling and sex before marriage. Since the temperance movement of the late 1800s, Baptist churches have urged abstention from alcohol and have used grape juice in the sacrament of Holy Communion. The stance against drinking has been relaxed in recent years, but Baptist ethics still frown on it.

Many churches across the South have covenants that strictly forbid buying, producing or drinking alcohol.

"North Carolina Baptists ought to have enough conviction about this that they do not want their name associated with an institution that allows the sale of alcohol," said the Rev. Paige Patterson, president of the Southern Baptist Convention.

In years past, the Baptist State Convention had more muscle to flex at Wake Forest. The convention founded the school in 1834, and for nearly 150 years, all the trustees on the university's board were Baptists. In 1979 the school decided it wanted to elect its own trustees, and in 1986 the board became autonomous. It also forfeited an annual $1 million contribution to the university from the state convention.

In recent years, the number of Baptists attending the university has dropped. Last year, 22 percent of its student body was Roman Catholic; only 16 percent was Baptist. Despite the decline in Baptist students, the school and the state convention maintain friendly ties.

The university has the largest and most comprehensive Baptist historical archive in the state. And next year Wake Forest will open a divinity school.

"Regardless of what North Carolina Baptists decide, the divinity school has set its course," said Bill Leonard, the dean of the new school. "You can continue to be a Baptist even when your own family throws you out." Leonard described the divinity school as "Christian by tradition, ecumenical in outlook and Baptist in heritage."

Several in the state convention said that they want to maintain the fraternal relationship and hope that messengers, or delegates, to the annual meeting in Winston-Salem will not irrevocably damage the ties.

"I hope against hope the university will re-evaluate its experiment with Shorty's and suspend the sale of alcoholic products," said Wayne Wike, executive director of the state convention's Council on Christian Higher Education. "I also hope the convention won't take any action to sever the relationship with Wake Forest in the meantime."

(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service.)