"This Seminary has a reputation for killing its Deans"

The unexpected, tragic death recently of Dr. Guy Lytle, 66, former Dean and Professor of Theology at Sewanee, University of the South, highlights more than two decades of conflict at the Episcopal Church's only university, which has seen the steady overthrow of orthodoxy and the entrenchment of liberal and progressive dogma and ideas.

Sewanee Seminary is an example of a place that has seen enough conspiracy, backbiting, sniping, bad theology and administrational dysfunction to last anyone's lifetime - and in one case, it cost a dean his life, according to another dean. That dean died of a stress-related aneurysm at the age of 50. Still the seminary carried on getting yet another dean - the sixth in 18 years. Dean Guy Lytel III- who lasted 11 years - the longest ever to hold the job, was forced to step down over phony complaints of sexual harassment and more. Now, he, too, is dead.

When VOL (then Virtuosity) broke that story in 2003, we discovered that it was only the tip of the proverbial iceberg. Beneath the stormy academic waves lay a mountain of ice that had dysfunction, sin and more written all over it.

Instead of murder, you have a dean dying in office because of the stress of his job. A report prepared by a conflict management specialist from the Alban Institute concluded that it was the worst scapegoat situation he had ever encountered and the worst case of a dysfunctional institution he had ever known in all his experience.

For Lytel, the issue was the advent of theological liberalism at the seminary, the college's stark embrace of views at odds with the plain teaching of Holy Scripture, and bringing in teachers who no longer accepted the authority of Scripture. Among the worst of them was the now retired Dr. Joseph Monti.

At the center of the storm, for the past 11 years, was the strong, able figure of Dean Guy Lytle III, who came under repeated hostile fire from a number of theologically liberal faculty who wanted him removed from the University of the South's seminary because of his orthodox views.

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