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

<p>“And may the men be always ready, as the years come and go, to carry on, with widening reach and heightened power, the work we sought to do, and did begin!” John Broadus, Memoir of James P. Boyce</p>

<p>That work memorialized by Broadus began formally in 1859 in Greenville, South Carolina. The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary opened that fall with a class of twenty-six students. Southern Baptists like Charleston pastor Basil Manly, Sr., had long sought a seminary of the South that would train ministers. When South Carolina Baptists met in Greenville in 1856 at their annual gathering, James P. Boyce, a professor of theology at Furman University, challenged attendees to finance a Seminary. Southern Baptists answered the call, pledging one hundred thousand dollars toward the venture. Boyce then called other Southern Baptists to pledge another hundred thousand dollars. The momentum begun, attendees of the 1857 Education Convention in Louisville formally approved the motion to begin The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. One year later, Convention members selected the Seminary faculty.</p>

<p>The first faculty possessed strong minds and devoted faith. James P. Boyce, a native of Charleston, South Carolina, finished seventh in his undergraduate class at Brown University and later earned the Master of Arts degree from Brown. John A. Broadus began teaching classics at the University of Virginia just a year after he earned his master’s degree from the same. Basil Manly, Jr., Boyce’s childhood friend, graduated as valedictorian of the University of Alabama and later earned an M.A. from Princeton Seminary. William Williams, the fourth founder, successfully completed studies at the University of Georgia and the Harvard School of Law.</p>

<p>Boyce gave Southern its institutional vision. In his inaugural address to the Furman community in 1856, Boyce called for “Three Changes in Theological Education.” First, the seminary ought to provide opportunity for theological study for men without college degrees; second, that the curriculum should also meet the needs of the most advanced students; and third, that the faculty should solemnly pledge their commitment to a Scriptural “abstract of principles” to guard truth and counter heresy. The 1858 Education Convention voted to make this vision a reality.</p>

<p>Boyce coupled his educational philosophy with practical wisdom. He and Broadus agreed with southern educator Thomas Curtis, who said that most seminaries wrongly prioritized “the three b’s of institutions of learning: bricks, books, and brains.” First seminary location, FBC GreenvilleMany institutions, said Curtis, “spend all their money for bricks, have nothing for books, and must take such brains as they can pick up.” (1) Boyce was determined not to repeat this mistake. Instead of buying property, he located the school in the old meetinghouse of the First Baptist Church of Greenville, which granted its use rent-free. The seminary commenced with two classrooms and a library of two thousand volumes.</p>

<p>Southern offered its students a course of study organized into eight areas: 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. Passing classes of any kind was no easy feat at Southern. Examinations often centered in recitation of memorized material and frequently lasted for ten hours.</p>

<p>Just two years after Southern’s founding, the Civil War swept over the nation, taking with it the student body of Southern. The seminary drew only twenty students in 1861. Southern closed in the fall of 1862 for the remainder of the War. Its endowment was lost and its survival in doubt. But the faculty pledged themselves to the seminary. Broadus spoke for them all: “Suppose we quietly agree that the seminary may die, but we’ll die first.” (2)</p>

<p>In order to secure a new endowment, the seminary would have to relocate. Boyce and the trustees considered Chattanooga, Atlanta, Memphis, and Louisville. They chose Louisville because Louisville’s civic leaders promised strong support and Kentucky Baptists offered to pay the lion’s share of the endowment. When the seminary moved to Kentucky in 1877, a remarkable 89 students registered for classes, proving the wisdom of the move.</p>

(1) Mueller, A History of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, 15.

<br>(2) Broadus, Memoir of James P. Boyce, 239.

<p>In 1893 Whitsitt anonymously published an article in Johnson’s Universal Encyclopedia in which he argued that Roger Williams, founder of the first church in America, was baptized by sprinkling. Whitsitt also claimed that immersion as a practice among Baptists originated among English Baptists in 1641. When his authorship became known, the Landmark Baptists roared in response. Landmarkers believed that a succession of immersionist Baptists was necessary for the existence of true churches, and that this succession in fact existed from apostolic times until their day. Whitsitt’s claim that the practice of immersion debuted sixteen centuries after the apostles would mean that true churches no longer existed.</p>

<p>In public literature, Landmarkist leaders T. T. Eaton, pastor of Louisville’s influential Walnut Street Baptist Church, and B. H. Carroll, pastor of the First Baptist Church of Waco, denounced Whitsitt’s view. Taken aback, Southern’s faculty rallied to their president’s aid and publicly declared their support in September 1896. A year later, however, the powerful Carroll revived the controversy in an article entitled Back to the Realm of Discussion published in the Western Recorder. The author proposed that the convention sever Southern from the SBC for serving as a nursery for heretical ideas. Four SBC state conventions aligned with Carroll and called for Whitsitt’s resignation.</p>

<p>Though Whitsitt himself wished to stay at the seminary, many forecast that his presence at Southern would cause great damage to the institution. In May 1899, the trustees accepted Whitsitt’s resignation.</p>

<p>Following the retirement of President McCall in 1981, Roy Honeycutt, Southern’s eighth president, took office in 1982. Two years later, Southern celebrated its 125th anniversary and opened the Carver School of Church Social Work. Anne Davis directed the school and became the first female departmental dean of the Seminary. Enrollment reached an all-time peak in 1986. In 1990, Southern saw its twenty thousandth graduate receive his diploma. Southern’s endowment reached roughly 56 million dollars in 1992, a remarkable advance from the six hundred thousand dollars President Mullins set out to raise at the turn of the century. This income allowed Southern to open a new 104,000 square foot campus center, replete with classrooms, cafeteria, bookstore, and gymnasium.</p>

<p>Statistics aside, the mission and message of Southern had changed. Although professors like Timothy George Timothy Georgeand David Dockery defended the inerrancy of the Bible and other conservative doctrines, most professors repudiated biblical inerrancy. Many rejected such doctrines as the sanctity of unborn life, the sinfulness of homosexuality, and the call of qualified men only to the pastorate. The faculties of the other SBC seminaries held similar views.</p>

<p>The movement that reversed this trend and restored biblical faith and practice at Southern began in a battle for control of the SBC in the 1980s. Conservative leaders Paige Patterson and Paul Pressler organized Southern Baptists of all backgrounds to reclaim control from denominational progressives. While moderates, who had controlled the SBC for decades, called for accommodation within the SBC, the vast majority of Southern Baptists had grown weary of paying the salaries of professors who undermined student’s confidence in the Bible and taught them error. Conservatives insisted that belief in the inerrancy of the Bible was prerequisite to denominational service. Most Southern Baptists agreed and elected inerrantists to the presidency of the SBC, who in turn appointed inerrantists to the Committee on Committees, who in turn nominated inerrantists for the Committee on Nominations. The Committee on Nominations then proposed inerrantists to serve as trustees. These moves, based in the ballots cast by thousands of laypeople, turned the direction of the convention. After Rogers was elected president of the convention in 1979, conservatives won the SBC Presidency in every successive year.</p>

<p>In the years following World War I, an ambitious vision hastened the seminary’s advance. When the Southern Baptists launched their great fundraising effort, the “75 Million Campaign,” in 1919, Mullins announced his own campaign to raise an additional two million dollars for the seminary. While the 75 Million Campaign ultimately failed to reach its goals, Southern obtained sufficient funds from it and from its own campaign to begin several building projects, each accomplished through Mullins’s enterprising spirit.</p>

<p>Mullins intended above all else to relocate Southern’s campus to a thirty-four-acre estate on Lexington Road, six miles away from the Seminary’s downtown location. “The Beeches,” as it was called, did not come cheaply, however. By the time the Seminary moved from its downtown spot, the cost of the building plan had ballooned to nearly three and a half million dollars. Though some questioned the wisdom of Mullins’ push in light of the financial risk it represented, the growth of the student body, at a high of 442 in 1923-1924, necessitated action.</p>

<p>The seminary began a new course of study in this era, calling on Gaines Dobbins to begin teaching on church efficiency, a forerunner to the church growth movement, and Sunday school pedagogy. Southern also kept pace with the growing interest in sociology, enlisting W. O. Carver and C. S. Gardner to develop the subject’s curriculum.</p>

<p>In the 1920s, as evolution spread to the public schools and liberalism spread in the denominations, Southern Baptists responded by forming a seven-person committee to draft a confessional statement for the Convention, called the Statement of Baptist Faith and Message. Mullins, President of the SBC from 1922 to 1924, chaired the committee. Under his leadership, the group produced a statement that expressed Southern Baptists’ commitment to traditional Baptist orthodoxy, including God’s special creation of humanity and scriptural miracles. Mullins sought to integrate objective Bible truth with subjective Christian experience. Some Baptist leaders took Mullins’s emphasis on experience to establish a shift toward conscience as the arbiter of truth. Years later, the shift would balloon to alarming proportions.</p>

<p>In late November 1928, the convention leader and seminary president suffered a stroke. After several days in bed, Mullins passed away on Friday, November 23rd, leaving his city and school in mourning.</p>

<p>The seminary community faced other challenges. The faculty carried out constant fundraising efforts in the 1880s and traveled extensively to solicit donations. Notable successes included fifty thousand dollars from U.S. Senator Joseph E. Brown of Georgia and twenty five thousand dollars from prominent Baptist oilman J. D. Rockefeller. On the strength of these gifts, the seminary constructed its first major building, New York Hall, in 1888 in downtown Louisville. The building housed 200 people and had room for classes, dining, and personal study.</p>

<p>The sustenance of Southern involved continual sacrifice for the founding four. Boyce above all exhausted himself for the seminary. Having served as chairman of the faculty from Southern’s founding, the trustees elected him president in 1888. In his role, he would “for weeks in succession, begin work at five a.m., and continue, with variety, but no intermission, till eleven p.m.” (2) This schedule not only sparked the seminary to life, it spent Boyce’s own. In 1889, on vacation in Europe to restore his health, Boyce passed away.</p>

(1) Mueller, A History of Southern, 137.

(2) Broadus, Memoir of James P. Boyce, 367.

<p>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.[5]</p>

History
19th Century to Early 20th Century (1856–1950)
<p>In 1856, South Carolina Baptists gathered together and met in Greenville, South Carolina with James P. Boyce to discuss the need to finance a seminary. In that meeting, Southern Baptists agreed to pledge $100,000 in the establishment of a theological school. In 1857, Boyce convinced members of the convention in Louisville, KY to approve a motion to establish The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. In the fall of 1859, Southern began its first academic year with 26 students. The seminary continued to grow until it temporarily closed from 1861 to 1865 due to American Civil War. After the war, the seminary had to recover at a different location. The Board of Trustees along with Boyce decided the new location would be the seminary's current location of Louisville, Kentucky.[6]</p>

<p>In 1889, John A. Broadus became the seminary's second President. Attendance and enrollment continued to grow and the Master of Divinity (M.Div.) and Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) began to be offered as graduate degrees starting in the early 1890s.[7] After Broadus, William Whitsitt became the third President of Southern in 1895.[8] After a difficult tenure along with controversy dealing with Landmarkism amongst Baptists during that period, Whitsitt was succeeded by E.Y. Mullins (Boyce's College main dormitory is named after him) as president. Under Mullins, the seminary reached an endowment of an estimated 1.8 million dollars. It was during the early 1900s when women were beginning to be admitted to the classes.[9]</p>

Modern History (1950s–present)
<p>In 1951, Duke McCall became the President of Southern. Under McCall's leadership. the School of Religious Education was established to prepare students for Christian education. Three academic schools were organized: School of Religious Education, School of Theology, and the School of Music. A chair in evangelism was dedicated to the American evangelist Billy Graham in 1966. Southern began to offer the Doctor of Ministry (D.Min.) program in 1970. Enrollment under McCall reached an estimated 1,500 students. Boyce College (known as Boyce Bible College at the time) was established as an adult education program in 1974. McCall retired in 1981 and his legacy has drawn praise and controversy.[10]</p>

<p>Roy Honeycutt succeeded McCall as the 8th President of Southern in 1981. Under his leadership, the seminary opened the Carver School of Church Social Work and reached an all-time peak in enrollment of students in 1986. Honeycutt also oversaw the leadership of the seminary during a tumultuous time within the Southern Baptist Convention, now known as the Southern Baptist Convention conservative resurgence. After the election of Adrian Rogers as the President of the Southern Baptist Convention, the school began to slowly return to its traditional theological positions such as the inerrancy of Scripture. Honeycutt retired in 1992.</p>

<p>The seminary Board of Trustee's then elected R. Albert Mohler as the 9th President of Southern in 1993. Under Mohler's leadership, every member of the faculty was required to sign the confession of the seminary known as the "Abstract of Principles" and the "Baptist Faith and Message". They were also required to believe that the Bible is without any error. Boyce Bible College, then an adult education program, was reorganized and established as an undergraduate college.[11] In 2017, the seminary experienced the largest enrollment of students ever in the school's history.[12]</p>

Campus
<p>In the wake of the Civil War, the seminary suspended classes for several years.[13] With the financial help of several wealthy Baptists, including John D. Rockefeller and a group of Kentucky business leaders who promised to underwrite the construction of a new campus,[14][15] the seminary relocated to Fifth Street and Broadway in downtown Louisville, Kentucky, in 1877.</p>

<p>In 1926, during the administration of Southern president Edgar Y. Mullins, the seminary occupied "The Beeches", a 100-acre (0.40 km2) suburban campus east of the city center[16] designed by the Frederick Law Olmsted firm. The campus now contains 10 academic and residential buildings in Georgian architecture and three housing villages for married students.</p>

Civil rights history
Main article: Civil rights movement
<p>In 1951, President Duke Kimbrough McCall integrated the campus, in defiance of Kentucky state laws that established segregation at public facilities. At the height of the Civil Rights Movement, Southern would become the only SBC agency to host a visit by Baptist minister and civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. (1961).[17] During King's address at SBTS, he mentioned he had been to the seminary's chapel several times in the past when accompanying his mother since King's mother was an organist for the Women's Auxiliary of the National Baptist Convention.[18]</p>

<p>As a result, many donors withheld their gifts to Southern, and some demanded McCall's resignation for letting King speak in the seminary chapel.[19]</p>

<p>In 2018, a report was released about its connections to slavery. Controversy regarding this subject was circulated and interracial ministers coalition requested The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary to financially support nearby black colleges as a result. Despite the request, The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary denied the request. As a response to the request, President R. Albert Mohler Jr. and board Chair F.Matthew Schmucker released the following statement:
“We agree with the policy of the Southern Baptist Convention in this regard, and we do not believe that financial reparations are the appropriate response,”</p>

<p>There are claims stating that the founders owned more than 50 slaves.[20]</p>

Administration and organizational structure
<p>In 1938, Southern was among the first group of seminaries and divinity schools accredited by the Association of Theological Schools in the United States and Canada.[21] Thirty years later, in 1968, Southern was one of the first seminaries to be accredited by its regional accrediting body, Southern Association of Colleges and Schools.[22]</p>

<p>Throughout its history, Southern has been an innovator in theological education, establishing one of the first Ph.D. programs in religion (1892), the first department of Christian missions (1902), the first curriculum in religious education (1925), and the first accredited, seminary-based social work program (1984).</p>

<p>In 1953, President McCall and the trustees reorganized the institution along the lines of a small university. The curriculum was distributed among three graduate-professional schools—Theology, headed by Dean Penrose St. Amant; Religious Education, led by Dean Gaines S. Dobbins; and Church Music, under Dean Forrest Heeren.</p>

<p>In 1984, Anne Davis became founding dean of the Carver School of Church Social Work, which launched the first seminary-based Master of Social Work program to be accredited by the Council on Social Work Education (1987). The school was disbanded in 1997 by a subsequent seminary administration.[23] It decided that secular social work was inappropriate for a seminary, and replaced the program with a school for training evangelists, missionaries and church-growth specialists.</p>

<p>In 1968, Southern helped establish Kentuckiana Metroversity, a local consortium of two seminaries, two state universities, a community college and two private colleges. They offer a joint library catalog, cross-registration of any student in any member institution, and faculty and cultural exchanges. In 1970, Southern helped create the Theological Education Association of Mid-America (TEAM-A), one of the United States' first seminary "clusters," a consortium of five schools related to the Presbyterian, Wesleyan Methodist, Disciples of Christ, Roman Catholic and Baptist traditions. They provide inter-institutional team teaching, cross-registration among students, and a joint library catalog.[24]</p>

<p>The seminary is governed by a board of trustees[25] nominated and elected by the SBC. It receives almost one-third of its $31 million annual budget from the SBC Cooperative Program, the unified financial support system that distributes gifts from the congregations to the agencies and institutions of the denomination. In fiscal year 2007–08, Southern received $9.5 million through the Cooperative Program. Its endowments and invested reserves totaled $78 million.[26]</p>
Southern is currently organized into three schools:
<br>-The School of Theology
<br>-The Billy Graham School of Missions, Evangelism, and Ministry
<br>-Boyce College</p>

Academics, philosophy and faculty
<p>The seminary's mission statement is: "Under the Lordship of Jesus Christ, the mission of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary is to be totally committed to the Bible as the Word of God, to the Great Commission as our mandate, and to be a servant of the churches of the Southern Baptist Convention by training, educating, and preparing ministers of the gospel for more faithful service."[28]</p>

<p>Southern was one of the first seminaries in the nation to offer the PhD degree, beginning in 1892.[citation needed] During the 1970s and 1980s, it had the largest accredited PhD program in religion in the United States. It was the first seminary in the nation to offer courses in religious education, beginning in 1903. This program ultimately expanded into a School of Religious Education in 1953.</p>

<p>In 1907, William Owen Carver founded the Women's Missionary Union Training School, which eventually became the Carver School of Missions and Social Work.[29]</p>

<p>In 1910, Southern established the Norton Lectures, a series of lectures on "Science and Philosophy in their Relations to Religion."[30] Speakers have included conservative scholars William A. Dembski, Marvin Olasky, Gregory Alan Thornbury, and Alvin Plantinga.</p>

<p>In 1953, Southern became one of the few seminaries to offer a full, accredited degree course in church music.</p>

<p>After endowing the Billy Graham Chair of Evangelism in 1965 (the first such professorship in any Baptist seminary), Southern expanded it in 1994 into the Billy Graham School of Missions, Evangelism and Church Growth.[31] It is the first program in the SBC dedicated solely to training missionaries and evangelists.</p>

<p>In the 1980s, Southern became the first seminary or divinity school to establish a school of church social work offering an accredited, seminary-based M.S.W. degree.</p>

<p>In 1993, the seminary's president Albert Mohler came into office re-affirming the seminary's historic "Abstract of Principles", part of the original charter of Southern created in 1858. The charter stated that every Professor must agree to "teach in accordance with, and not contrary to, the Abstract of Principles hereinafter laid down" and that "a departure" from the principles in the Abstract of Principles would be grounds for resignation or removal by the Trustees.[32]</p>

<p>Mohler, following these instructions, required that current professors affirm, without any spoken or unspoken reservations, the Abstract of Principles. Professors were also asked to affirm the Baptist Faith and Message (BF&M, the doctrinal statement of the SBC), since Southern is an agency of the SBC and the SBC mandated affirmation of the BF&M as a requirement for continued employment. An overwhelming majority of faculty affirmed the Abstract of Principles, but declined to affirm some of the doctrines stated in the BF&M which had recently been amended to bring it in line with more conservative positions held by the SBC.[33] In the wake of the subsequent dismissal or resignation of a large percentage of the faculty, Southern has replaced them with new professors who agree to adhere to the BF&M in addition to the seminary's Abstract of Principles.</p>

<p>In 2005, Southern revised its pastoral care and counseling major. It ended the counseling program which it had been offering since the 1950s, under Wayne Oates and his colleagues. It replaced it with the "Nouthetic Counseling" or Bible-based counseling program, championed by Jay E. Adams since the 1970s. The dean of Southern Seminary's school of theology stated that the change was necessary because a successful integration of modern psychology and theology was not possible.[34]</p>

<p>In 2009, Southern Seminary expanded its doctoral program to include a Spirituality PhD. Students pursuing this degree try to incorporate their Christian-based spirituality with research for a dissertation.[35]</p>

Notable Associates
<p>Alumni
Jason K. Allen, President of Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary 2012–Present
Charles C. Baldwin, Chief of Chaplains of the United States Air Force 2004–2008
Reginald Bibby, sociologist
LaVerne Butler, pastor of 9th & O Baptist Church in Louisville, 1969–1988; president of Mid-Continent University in Mayfield, 1988–1997, leader of conservative resurgence in Southern Baptist Convention in the 1970s and 1980s[36]
Douglas Carver, Chief of Chaplains of the United States Army 2007–2011
Chris Clarke, missionary to the equestrian community in Kentucky and neighboring states
W.A. Criswell, pastor of the First Baptist Church of Dallas, Texas; author; and president of the Southern Baptist Convention (1969–1970).
Miguel A. De La Torre, author on Hispanic religious life; social ethics professor at Iliff School of Theology in Denver, CO, 1999–present.
Mark Dever, pastor of Capitol Hill Baptist Church; well-known speaker, author, and theologian, who is a proponent of elder-led ecclesiology
Amzi Dixon, pastor of Moody Church, Chicago, IL (1906–1911); and Metropolitan Tabernacle, London, England (1911–1919).
Wilmer Clemont Fields (1922–2018), vice president for public relations for the Southern Baptist Convention; editor of Baptist Record and Baptist Program; director of the Baptist Press.[37]
Steven Furtick, pastor of Elevation Church; well-known pastor, speaker, and author.
Jimmy Scroggins, Pastor of Family Church in West Palm Beach (multi campus neighborhood strategy church), creator of 3 Circles Evangelism Tool, former Dean of Boyce College.
David P. Gushee, Christian ethicist, historian, public intellectual, and Holocaust scholar.
Paul R. House, scholar, author, and seminary professor.
Ben Campbell Johnson, Professor Emeritus at Columbia Theological Seminary, author
Clarence Jordan, founder of Koinonia Farm (forerunner of Habitat for Humanity) and Greek scholar who translated the New Testament into a Cotton Patch version using the vernacular of the Civil Rights era in the South.
R.T. Kendall, pastor of Westminster Chapel, London, England, 1977–2002.
Pleasant Daniel Gold, Baptist pastor and newspaper publisher
Matt Lockett, member of the Kentucky House of Representatives for the 39th District, 2021–Present
David Gordon Lyon, Hollis Chair at Harvard Divinity School and founding curator of Semitic Museum
James Merritt, pastor, president of the Southern Baptist Convention from 2000 to 2002
Grady Nutt, religious humorist and national television personality; died in air crash, 1982.[38]
Wayne Oates, an American psychologist and religious educator who coined the word 'workaholic'.
Luis G. Pedraja, Latino theologian, philosopher, author, scholar and educator
Cicero Washington Pruitt, missionary to Northern China.
Bronson Ray, Executive Secretary of the Foreign Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention (1928–1932).
William Bell Riley, late founder of the World Christian Fundamentals Association
Lee Roberson, founder of Tennessee Temple University, influential leader in the Southwide Baptist Fellowship, and former pastor of Highland Park Baptist Church in Chattanooga, Tennessee
Gregory Alan Thornbury, president of The King's College in New York City (2013–2018).
Jeff Struecker, pastor, author, and former US Army Ranger Chaplain.
Ed Stetzer, author, speaker, researcher, pastor, church planter, and Christian missiologist.
John D. W. Watts, Old Testament Scholar and Theologian, Old Testament Editor for the Word Biblical Commentary, Professor.
Edwin O. Ware Sr., Kentucky native who was first president of Louisiana College in Pineville, Louisiana
James Emery White, pastor, author, and Professor of Theology and Culture
Steve Willis, pastor and health activist
Bryant Wright, pastor, president of the Southern Baptist Convention from 2010 to 2011.
J. Frank Norris, fundamentalist Baptist pastor, trustee at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, established Arlington Baptist College.
Russell D. Moore, second president of the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission.</p>

Faculty
<p>Peter Gentry, Old Testament scholar and Semitic linguist.
Michael Haykin, Professor of Church History.
Timothy Paul Jones, apologist and C. Edwin Gheens Chair of Christian Family Ministry (2007–present), noted for his response to Misquoting Jesus by Bart D. Ehrman and for his critique of family integrated church.
Thomas R. Schreiner, New Testament scholar.
Crawford Howell Toy (1869 - 1879), Hebrew and Old Testament scholar. Dismissed for his views on biblical inspiration and evolution.
Bruce Ware, theologian, former Chairman of the Department of Biblical and Systematic Theology at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School[39] and former president of the Evangelical Theological Society.[40]</p>

Presidents
<p>1888 James Petigru Boyce (titled Chairman of the Faculty, 1859–87)
1888–1895 John Albert Broadus
1895–1899 William Heth Whitsitt
1899–1928 Edgar Young Mullins
1929–1942 John Richard Sampey
1942–1950 Ellis Adams Fuller
1951–1982 Duke Kimbrough McCall
1982–1993 Roy Lee Honeycutt
1993–present R. Albert Mohler Jr.</p>

<p>The trustees determined that two-time alumnus Dr. R. Albert Mohler, Jr., editor of Georgia’s Christian Index, possessed the conviction, courage, and vision necessary to lead Southern. Elected in 1993 to serve as the seminary’s ninth president, Mohler had a profound trust in the Bible, a bold vision for the seminary, and a deep devotion to the SBC.</p>

<p>Mohler’s election signaled the reemergence of commitment to Scriptural inerrancy at Southern. Mohler gave first priority to the Word of God. Under his leadership, all faculty would be required to believe that the Bible is without error and that the Abstract of Principles, the seminary’s confession, and the Baptist Faith and Message, the SBC’s confession, faithfully expressed the teaching of the Bible. Second, Mohler sought to draw faculty to Southern who excelled both as scholars and as servants of Christ. Mohler added such distinguished professors as Dr. Tom Nettles, Dr. Bruce Ware, Dr. Tom Schreiner, and Dr. Robert Stein to the faculty. Third, Mohler oversaw the formation of the Billy Graham School of Evangelism, Missions, and Church Growth and the reorganization of the School of Church Music into the School of Church Music and Worship. Dr. Thom Rainer served as the Graham School’s first dean. Fourth, Mohler spearheaded the transformation of the physical plant, the renovation of Norton Hall, Alumni Chapel, the construction of a new cafeteria and banquet hall, and the transformation of Rice and Judson Halls into a conference center.</p>

<p>In another significant move, Mohler restructured Boyce College, which had since 1974 functioned as an adult education center. Under Mohler’s direction, Boyce became a four-year accredited Bible college that now draws growing numbers of students training in their collegiate education that is founded on the Bible and oriented toward Christian service.</p>

<p>In 1889, shortly after Boyce’s death, Dr. Broadus accepted the call to the presidency. The seminary set a steady pace under Broadus as attendance rose and Southern inaugurated a postgraduate studies program. In the early 1890s, the school began offering both a Master of Divinity and a Doctor of Philosophy, in place of the “Full Graduate” degree of the past.</p>

<p>Under Broadus, the seminary drew a talented group of professors that constituted the second generation of Southern faculty. The group included A. T. Robertson, professor of New Testament and Greek; E. C Dargan, professor of Homiletics and Latin Theology; W. J. McGlothlin, assistant professor of Old Testament Interpretation; H. H. Harris, professor of Biblical Introduction and Polemic Theology, and W. O. Carver, professor of comparative religion and missions. John Sampey, professor of Old Testament Interpretation, had joined the faculty just before the passing of Boyce, as had F. H. Kerfoot, professor in systematic theology. These scholars shaped the denomination as they taught and worked alongside several generations of SBC leaders on various boards and agencies.</p>

<p>These professors began their careers in a season of change for the Christian church. Many evangelicals embraced liberal theology that recast Christian doctrines. This body of thought emphasized man’s autonomy, reason’s potency, and truth’s subjectivity. In the years that followed, numerous professors adopted aspects of its system.</p>

<p>In 1890, the seminary named James L. Sampey, father of professor John R. Sampey, the seminary’s first salaried librarian. Sampey administered a collection of fifteen thousand volumes, a large portion of which came from the estate of James P. Boyce, who gave five thousand books and pamphlets to the Seminary upon his death. Fellow founder Basil Manly, Jr. also gave a personal library of thirty-five hundred books to the seminary. Dr. Sampey tended the collection in the seminary’s first library, Memorial Library, following its construction in 1891.</p>
</p>

<p>After Sampey’s resignation, Ellis A. Fuller, returned to his alma mater to serve as its sixth president. He soon inaugurated a series of building projects that changed the Seminary’s campus, adding a student center, cafeteria, post office, seminar rooms, bookstore, radio studio, and classrooms during his term. Of all his projects, however, the community valued none more than the Alumni chapel, described as “a Georgian colonial structure with imposing spire,” by historian William Mueller. This initiative provided the campus with a worship place of stately simplicity. (1)</p>

<p>Southern’s faculty grew rapidly in this era, from eleven full-time faculty members in 1942 to fifteen in the School of Theology alone during Fuller’s tenure. Two notable additions were Dale Moody, renowned professor of New Testament Interpretation, and Wayne Oates, professor of pastoral theology. Along with these changes to the seminary’s corps of faculty, the seminary expanded its academic program when it opened the School of Music in 1943.</p>

<p>In 1948, the seminary transgressed the social codes of the South when it granted African-American student Garland K. Offut a degree at the fall convocation. Awarded the doctor of theology degree, Offut won a standing ovation from the seminary community. Prior to this occasion, Southern had not allowed students of color to enter a formal academic program, a practice in accordance with Kentucky state law. Seminary faculty members J.B. Weatherspoon and E.A. McDowell led Southern to reconsider its racial policy and break state law in granting Offut his degree.</p>

<p>The presidency of Dr. Fuller met a tragic end in 1950 when the President suffered a heart attack while preaching in California. One year later, trustees named another Southern alumnus, Duke K. McCall, as Southern’s next president.</p>

(1) William Mueller, A History of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, 218.

<p>The Great Depression involved Southern in profound financial strain. In the 1930s, the spirit of America sunk into silence in the face of the Great Depression. Southern Seminary felt its full effects. Old Testament professor Dr. John Sampey, elected president in 1929, led the seminary through this difficult period.</p>

<p>Sampey’s leadership style differed drastically from Mullins’s. Where Mullins’s predecessors had worked closely with other faculty members to run the school, Mullins preferred the role of chief executive. Sampey, on the other hand, soon concluded that this approach did not suit his setting. He enlisted several faculty members in the tasks of administration, calling on Gaines S. Dobbins, professor of Church Efficiency and Sunday School Pedagogy, to serve as treasurer of the Seminary. Dobbins engineered the refinancing of the seminary’s debt through Mutual Benefit Life Insurance Company of New York, an act that alleviated the Seminary’s financial strain.</p>

<p>The number of students attending the institution dropped from 435 in 1929 to a low point of 343 in 1933. As the depression subsided, enrollment rose as Southern drew 520 students in 1941. During this academic year, President Sampey resigned his presidential duties. He gave up his professorial work a year later. He had carved out a legacy of service at the school, having taught Old Testament for fifty years. Sampey and his associates had rescued the Seminary from bankruptcy.</p>

One of the early Baptist leaders for education, Basil Manly, Sr. (1798-1868) served as pastor of First Baptist Church, Charleston, South Carolina from 1826 to 1837. He left the church to serve as president of the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa, a position he held from 1837 to 1855. During that time, he was also involved in the creation of the Southern Baptist Convention in 1845. He later served Wentworth Street Baptist Church in Charleston and First Baptist Church, Montgomery, Alabama. Manly also supported the creation of Furman University and served as the founding chairman of the board of trustees of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.

<p>Duke McCall began his long tenure as president in 1951. In 1952, Southern opened the School of Religious Education, designed to prepare ministers for education, and secretarial work. A year later, McCall organized the academic program into three schools: Religious Education, Theology, and Music. McCall also oversaw the formation of a school for wives in the late 1950s and directed attention to the construction of a campus library. In 1957, Southern alumni promised to raise five hundred thousand dollars for the construction of the James P. Boyce Memorial Library. Completed in 1959, the new library came at a cost of 1.75 million dollars and provided the campus with a modern home for its rich repository of theological resources. Librarian Leo Crismon presided over the facility and shelved the first book in the building, a copy of the Geneva Bible donated by President Boyce.</p>

<p>The advent of new disciplines such as pastoral care and clinical training for chaplain candidates contributed to a rift in the school of Theology. Part of the faculty wanted the Department of Psychology of Religion to expand, while others resisted this trend, urging for the centrality of the classical theological track and pressing for more aggressive adoption of liberal scholarship. </p>

<p>This conflict reached its peak in 1958, when a bloc of thirteen professors opposed President McCall and his vision for the school. The seminary trustees remained supportive of McCall and in April 1958 registered their confidence in him by a 42 to 7 vote. The thirteen were unwilling to submit to McCall’s leadership and were dismissed shortly thereafter. One, J. J. Owens, gained reinstatement.</p>

<p>The seminary changed its doctoral program in 1974, replacing the Doctor of Theology degree with the Doctor of Philosophy degree. Boyce Bible College also opened in this year and offered adults who had not completed a collegiate degree the opportunity to prepare for ministry. In 1975, Roy Honeycutt, formerly dean of Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, became the dean of the School of Theology. Honeycutt presided over a talented faculty that counted scholars Findley Edge, Glenn Hinson and Frank Stagg among its key members.</p>

<p>In 1981, McCall retired. He had long mediated the uneasy discourse between Southern Baptists’ commitment to traditional orthodoxy and the faculty’s commitment to modern theology. For almost thirty years, he led Southern in a moderate direction that he thought honored both parties.</p>

<p>Following Whitsitt’s departure, the seminary trustees sought a leader possessing a statesman’s tact and a moderator’s balance to guide the seminary past the smolder of the Landmark controversy. In June of 1899, the trustees called pastor E. Y. Mullins of the Newton Centre Baptist Church of Massachusetts as Southern’s fourth president.</p>

<p>A distinguished graduate of Southern, Mullins oversaw shifts in the school’s academic policy as the seminary scheduled exams to last for two hours rather than for five. Despite the changes, roughly fifteen percent of all students failed. At Mullins’s instigation, in 1904 the faculty founded a journal, the <i>Review and Expositor</i>. According to Mullins’s biographer William Ellis, the “Seminary organ,” headed by W. O. Carver, spoke in a tone “generally friendly to liberalism” by giving positive reviews to such liberal thinkers as Walter Rauschenbausch, Washington Gladden, and Edmund A. Ross.(1)</p>

<p>Several other key events occurred in the 1900s. A. T. Robertson published an editorial in the Baptist Argus, a local paper friendly to the seminary, in which he called for a worldwide conference of Baptists. Though others had tentatively discussed the matter, Robertson’s article served to jumpstart the effort. In July 1905, the first conference met in London under the banner of the “Baptist World Alliance.” In this same period, Mullins set out to raise a more adequate endowment for Southern through the Twentieth Century Endowment Campaign, hiring fundraising agents to solicit donations. By the time Mullins’s presidency ended, the endowment had reached a hefty 1.8 million dollars.</p>

<p>Southern began admitting women to seminary classes in the 1900s, though they could not register as official students. The school made provision for women’s education through the Woman’s Missionary Union Training School, which later became the seminary’s Carver School of Church Social Work. Seminary enrollment climbed to 300 in 1909, representing the seminary’s full recovery from the Whitsitt affair. WMU Training SchoolThe faculty produced a good deal of literature in this period, including Mullins’s own Why is Christianity True? and the Axioms of Religion. In 1914, the community celebrated when Robertson published his Grammar of the Greek New Testament in the Light of Historical Research, a project that took twenty-six years to write and a lifetime to fund. The book established Robertson as one of the world’s finest New Testament scholars.</p>

<p>During the First World War, Camp Zachary Taylor trained soldiers in Louisville. Members of the seminary community went there to minister to young soldiers. Old Testament Professor Sampey wrote letters for soldiers unable to pen their own thoughts and received a letter twenty-seven years later from a Kentucky veteran. In a testimony to the character of Southern men, the soldier thanked Sampey for writing to his family during his infirmity. The same spirit of vitality that spurred Sampey to minister characterized the seminary at its fifty year mark.</p>