Southern Baptist Theological Seminary (Louisville, Kentucky : 1859-)

The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary (SBTS) is a Baptist seminary in Louisville, Kentucky. It is the oldest of the six seminaries affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC). The seminary was founded in 1859 in Greenville, South Carolina, where it was at first housed on the campus of Furman University. The seminary has been an innovator in theological education, establishing one of the first Ph.D. programs in religion in the year 1892. After being closed during the Civil War, it moved in 1877 to a newly built campus in downtown Louisville and moved to its current location in 1926 in the Crescent Hill neighborhood. In 1953, Southern became one of the few seminaries to offer a full, accredited degree course in church music. For more than fifty years Southern has been one of the world's largest theological seminaries, with an FTE (full-time equivalent) enrollment of over 3,300 students in 2015.

SBTS was founded by James Petigru Boyce (who served as its first president), John A. Broadhus, Basil Manly, Jr., and William Williams. Basil Manly, Sr. (a long-time advocate for a southern seminary to train ministers) was a founding chairman of the board of trustees of the SBTS. When it opened in 1859, 26 students were enrolled. The seminary offered eight areas of study: Biblical Introduction, Interpretation of the Old and New Testaments, Systematic Theology, Polemic Theology, Homiletics, Church History, and Church Government. In later years, the seminary added a class focused on study of the English Bible, the first of its kind in an American seminary. Two years after the school opened it was forced to close because of the U.S. Civil War. It reopened in Louisville, KY in 1877 with 89 students.

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