DALLAS (AP) - A former seminary president dismissed over his response to two rape allegations made by students says he won’t give the featured sermon at the Southern Baptist Convention’s annual meeting next week in Dallas.
The convention’s news service, Baptist Press, says Paige Patterson withdrew Friday.
Patterson was invited last year to give the sermon. If he hadn’t withdrawn, meeting participants would’ve had to vote next week to block him.
Patterson was dismissed last month from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, Texas.
A seminary official says in one case, Patterson wanted to meet with a student who’d told him she’d been raped in order to “break her down.”
Patterson also was accused of saying women should almost always stay with abusive husbands.
Patterson says the allegations aren’t being accurately portrayed and some are false.
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