“Four out of five faculty members supported the motion for a vote of no confidence in the commission,” committee chair Sandy Chaney said.

The Erskine College faculty issued a vote of no confidence Tuesday in the moderator’s commission on Erskine College and Seminary.

The vote of no confidence covered the commission’s work, its report and recommendations that have been central to controversy and legal actions during the past two months.

Brad Christie, outgoing chairman of the faculty executive committee, said the action by the faculty had been in the works since right after the March 2-3 General Synod meeting at Bonclarken in Flat Rock, N.C.

“The collective wisdom was it was better not to say anything then – there was too much still up in the air,” he said. “Over the better part of the last month, there has been a grassroots effort to compose a statement. A lot of fingerprints are on that resolution.”

The proposed resolution was eventually brought before the faculty executive committee, which Christie said proved to be the right thing to do. “They didn’t ask the committee to write the resolution or tinker with it,” he said. “They just asked for permission to put it on the agenda of the last faculty meeting of the (academic) year.”

The resolution didn’t come before the faculty Tuesday as a seconded motion and the final vote was not unanimous, but it was substantially in favor of the resolution.