For today’s readers, we offer the first of several forthcoming installations in a little series we are calling “Tea Talk with Dottie P.”
In Episode 1, viewers will hear Southwestern Seminary President Paige Patterson, his wife, and another prominent SBC leader discuss the existence of a whites-only “secret society” at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, KY. With occasional interruptions and interjections from the famously submissive First Lady of Southwestern, viewers get to eavesdrop on a fascinating conversation with wide-ranging ramifications on current conflicts in the Southern Baptist Convention.
And just for fun, you get to hear Paige Patterson assert how Twitter promotes transparency in Southern Baptist seminaries.
*Can you find the Easter Egg?
The Baptist Blogger 
Don’t know if this is the Easter Egg, but one line at the end immediately jumped out at me: “Once they ask the wrong person to join and he refuses, it’s all out in the open.”
That bothered me as well.
Do you have moles everywhere Baptist Blogger?
How is that club spelled? “Dodeka” ?
Machiavelli could have learned a thing or two from this bunch.
Southern Seminary professor of Church History Gregory Willis seems to confirm the existence of the club in his work on the history of Southern Seminary. As far as who was in it, he is not explicit on the point. He states:
Other students opposed the rebellious mood of their fellows and were distressed by the impiety and worldliness they discovered in many of them. They respected their teachers and quietly attended to their studies. Many accepted pastorates in the area and preached three times a week, made hospital visits, conducted funerals, and led business meetings. They looked to the day of graduation, when their ambition to become pastor of a great First Baptist Church might begin its march. Southern Seminary had long attracted many of the brightest ministerial students in the denomination. Many aspired to become great preachers, denominational leaders, and scholars. One group of these students in particular came to represent the highest denominational ambition – a secret society of twelve students known as Dodeka, after the Greek word meaning “twelve.” Other students heard rumors of the club’s existence and resented the idea of a club that seemed to thrive on elitist appeal.
Source:
Gregory Wills, Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, 1859-2009 (Oxford University Press, 2009), 422
Who is the 4th voice in the audio?