Southern Baptist Theological Seminary

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The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary (SBTS) is located in Louisville, Kentucky and is the flagship seminary of the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC). Southern is the oldest of the six seminaries related to the SBC, and is often referred to in Baptist circles as "the mother seminary." It was founded in 1859 at Greenville, South Carolina, with a half-dozen students and classroom space borrowed from Furman University, to serve the ministerial training needs of churches in the South. James Petigru Boyce, the first president, and his colleagues John A. Broadus, Basil Manly, Jr., and William Williams, launched what would become one of the world's largest theological seminaries, growing to a student body of more than 1,500 students in the 1950's and more than 2,500 by the 1970's. Since 1993, R. Albert Mohler, Jr. has been the seminary's ninth president.

In the beginning the seminary was an independent institution serving alongside the Southern Baptist Convention, with each of its trustees elected from among several nominees proposed by the Seminary and the Convention; in recent decades, the Convention's nominating committee -- appointed by the SBC president -- has designated a single slate of trustee candidates, thus controlling the governance of the institution.

Because Baptists historically have disavowed creeds and preferred "confessions" which are voluntary, the newly-established SBC did not have a controlling doctrinal document in 1859. To reassure the churches of its faithfulness to essential Baptist beliefs, Southern Seminary's faculty wrote its own Abstract of Principles and promised to teach "in accordance with and not contrary" to the document. The Abstract subsequently has been signed in a dramatic public ceremony by every tenured professor in the seminary's 150-year history.

Six decades later, in 1925, the Convention decided to adopt its own Baptist Faith and Message statement, responding in part to the evolution controversy. The statement was considered a guide and not a mandate, and it was not imposed on any church or institution. This would change in the 1990's, following the conservative takeover of the Southern Baptist Convention: in response to demands of the SBC, the seminary added the requirement that the faculty's teachings also conform to the Baptist Faith and Message, which has now been updated several times to reflect the increasingly restrictive theological views of the SBC's leaders.

Methodology

According to seminary officials, Southern Seminary currently practices "evangelical" apologetic religious training combined with practical ministerial experience. In this method, students are taught about Baptist theology and other religions so that future ministers, missionaries, and church workers can most effectively communicate and defend their faith to non-Christians. This method of teaching involves evaluating, with the purpose of validating, the Bible as the inspired and infallible word of the Christian God.

This understanding of religious education differs from higher criticism, also known as the historical-critical method of religious training, which is commonly taught in most contemporary seminaries and universities. The historical-critical method was also employed by many faculty of Southern Seminary for more than three decades, prior to the movement known by some as the "conservative resurgence" and by others as the "fundamentalist takeover" of the Southern Baptist Convention.

History and academics

The Seminary has been an innovator in theological education since its founding. James Petigru Boyce, the school's first president, dreamed of a school that would accept all God-called individuals for study regardless of their educational background, unlike the rigid pre-professional requirements of the prevailing ministerial schools of the day. In 1974, President Duke K. McCall and Dean Allen W. Graves launched the Boyce Bible School as a fulfillment of Boyce's dream -- to train pastors who did not have the college prerequisites to enter the M.Div. seminary degree program. In 1997, Southern expanded it further into an undergraduate program, The James P. Boyce College of the Bible, now simply known as Boyce College.

Though it prospered in its early years, the end of the Civil War found the seminary holding worthless Confederate war bonds, and located in newly impoverished South Carolina during Reconstruction. The school suspended classes for several years while searching for a solution to its financial problems. With the help of several wealthy Baptists including John D. Rockefeller and a group of Louisville business leaders who promised to underwrite the construction of a new campus, the seminary relocated to Louisville in 1877. It built a handsome all-purpose building in the downtown area, not far from the railroad station, from which young student preachers could travel to their weekend assignments all over the midwest.

This crowded downtown location was rapidly overtaken by growing enrollment. In 1926, during the administration of President E. Y. Mullins, the seminary occupied "The Beeches," a spacious, 100-acre suburban campus east of the city center that now contains ten academic and residential buildings in stately Georgian architecture and two housing villages for married students. Alumni Chapel was built in 1948 during the administration of President Ellis Fuller. The Boyce Centennial Library was added in 1958, and the Roy Honeycutt Student Center in the 1990's.

Through economic trials in the late 1800s (when Georgia Governor Joseph Emerson Brown rescued the school from bankruptcy), a Great Depression in the 1930's (during which the faculty went without salaries), a massive Ohio River flood, and two world wars, Southern Seminary has continued to pursue an ever widening vision for more than 150 years. Among its landmark achievements:

• Southern was the first SBC institution to open its classes to persons of all races. In 1951, President Duke K. McCall desegregated the campus in defiance of Kentucky state laws prohibiting blacks and whites from attending classes together. At the height of the Civil Rights movement, Southern was the only SBC agency to host a visit by Dr. Martin Luther King; many donors withheld their gifts to Southern because he spoke in the seminary chapel.
• Southern was one of the first seminaries in the nation to offer a Ph. D., beginning in 1895, and during the 1970's and 1980's had the largest accredited Ph.D. program in religion in the United States.
• Its department of missions is one of the oldest in the world, founded in 1908 by the legendary William Owen Carver.
• It was the first seminary in the nation to offer courses in religious education (1903) and in church social work (1953), and became one of the few seminaries to offer a full degree course in church music (1953).
• In 1994, Southern Seminary opened the Billy Graham School of Missions, Evangelism and Church Growth, the first program in the Southern Baptist Convention dedicated solely to training missionaries and evangelists.

The seminary was first accredited in 1938 by the Association of Theological Schools in the United States and Canada^[1] as one of its inaugural group of seminaries and divinity schools. In 1968, Southern was one of the first seminaries to be accredited by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools[1].

In 1993, the seminary's current president R. Albert Mohler, Jr. re-affirmed the Seminary's historic theological document, the "Abstract of Principles," which had been signed by every tenured faculty member since 1859. In keeping with the demands of the new inerrantist group which elected him, Mohler further required that current professors affirm the most recent revision of the 1925 Baptist Faith and Message Statement, a more restrictive version developed by the new conservative leaders of the SBC. When 96 of the more than 100 faculty members declined to sign the new creedal document, they were asked to resign or were forced into early retirement by Mohler and the trustees. They included most of the faculty members who had taught Mohler during all of his M.Div. and Ph.D. studies at SBTS. He described faculty members not personally assenting to the new doctrinal statement had come to the school "under false pretenses" and should leave^[2].

In 2005, Southern revised its counseling major to sweep out the nationally-acclaimed psychology-based counseling program it had been offering since the 1950's under Dr. Wayne Oates and his colleagues, and replaced it with the "Nouthetic Counseling" program, or Bible-based counseling program, one championed by Dr. 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 psychology and theology was not possible.^[3]

It was announced on December 16, 2008 that Southern would impose budget cuts, a hiring freeze, halting capital construction projects, and potentially laying off employees due to an anticipated budget deficit of $3.2 million.^[4] The deficit was caused by decreasing endowment funds and fewer donations in the wake of the economic crisis of 2008 and the steady decline of the Southern Baptist Convention, a primary source of financial support.^[4] On January 14, 2009, Southern announced that twenty full-time and fifteen part-time non-faculty employees would be laid off.^[5]

Notable people

Alumni

• Daniel O. Aleshire, executive director, Association of Theological Schools in the United States and Canada, Pittsburgh, PA, 1998-present; member of Southern Seminary faculty, 1978-90; research scientist at Search Institute, Minneapolis, MN.
• Millard J. Berquist, founding president of Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, Kansas City, MO, 1958-72.
• Olin T. Binkley, president of Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, Wake Forest, NC, 1963-74.
• Robert Bratcher, Greek scholar and translator of Good News for Modern Man, published by the American Bible Society.
• Douglas Carver, Chief Chaplain U.S. Army 2007-present
• John R. Claypool, author and pastor of Baptist and Episcopal churches; delivered the 1978-79 Lyman Beecher Lectures at Yale.^[6]
• W. A. Criswell, late pastor of the First Baptist Church of Dallas, TX; author; and former president of the Southern Baptist Convention
• R. Allen Culpepper, dean of McAfee School of Theology of Mercer University, Atlanta, GA.
• Wayne Dehoney, late pastor; president, Southern Baptist Convention; leader of travel programs for pastors and laity.
• Miguel A. De La Torre, prolific author on Hispanic religious life; social ethics professor at Iliff School of Theology in Denver, CO, 1999-present.
• Amzi Dixon, late pastor of Moody Church, Chicago, IL; and Metropolitan Tabernacle, London, England.
• William Dyal, Jr., president of St. John’s College, Annapolis, MD (1987-90); founding president of the Inter-American Foundation.^[7]
• Herbert H. Gabhart, president of Belmont University, Nashville, TN, 1959-82.^[8]
• David Garland, dean of Truett Theological Seminary and acting president of Baylor University, Waco, TX.
• Harold K. Graves, president of Golden Gate Baptist Theological Seminary, Mill Valley, CA, 1952-77.
• Thomas K. Hearn Jr., president of Wake Forest University, Winston-Salem, NC, 1983-2005.
• Kenneth S. Hemphill, president of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, Ft. Worth, TX, 1994-2003.
• Herschel H. Hobbs, theologian and pastor in Alabama and Oklahoma; author of the 1963 version of the Baptist Faith and Message statement.
• Clarence Jordan, late 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.
• Molly T. Marshall, president of Central Baptist Seminary, Shawnee, KS, 2004-present; first woman president of an accredited Baptist seminary.^[9]
• Grady Nutt, religious humorist and national television personality; died in air crash, 1982. ^[10]
• Raymond B. Rigdon, director of the Seminary Extension Division, Nashville, TN, 1969-81, through which the six SBC seminaries collaboratively provided distance learning to thousands of ministers across the nation.
• William Bell Riley, late founder of the World Christian Fundamentals Association.
• R. Philip Roberts, president of Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, Kansas City, MO, 2001-present.
• Sydnor L. Stealey, founding president of Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, Wake Forest, NC, 1950-63.
• Jeff Struecker, received his M. Div. from Southern, Current Army Ranger Chaplain U.S. Army [2]
• James L. Sullivan, president of Baptist Sunday School Board (now LifeWay Christian Resources), 1953-75, guiding its growth into the largest denominational publishing house in the world.
• Edwin O. Ware, Sr., Kentucky native who was first president of Louisiana College in Pineville, Louisiana

Faculty

• George Beasley-Murray, British scholar who taught at Southern following service as principal of Spurgeon's College in London, England.
• Joseph Atlee Callaway, noted Middle East archaeologist who worked with the Albright Institute, Johns Hopkins University and Harvard Semitic Museum, and was honored as a 1974 Guggenheim Fellow^[11][12].
• William Owen Carver, founding professor of Christian missions (1908) for whom the Carver School of Missions and Social Work was named.
• William A. Dembski - Professor in the Philosophy of Religion (June 2005–May 2006).^[13]
• Gaines S. Dobbins, founder of Southern's School of Religious Education (1953) and for 50 years a leading authority in Christian education among Southern Baptists.
• Findley B. Edge, author of A Quest for Vitality in Religion, Greening of the Church, the widely used Teaching for Results, and other popular books in Christian education and church renewal.
• William E. Hull, New Testament professor, Dean of Theology, and Provost of Southern Seminary; later Provost of Samford University.
• Donald Hustad, member of the Billy Graham Team, professor of church music at Southern, 1966-86; fellow of the Royal College of Organists, London.
• Basil Manly, Jr., author of the Seminary Hymn, was founding professor of Old Testament on the original faculty.
• Dale Moody, student of Karl Barth, Emil Brunner and Paul Tillich; the first Baptist to serve as a visiting professor at the Gregorian University in Rome; also taught at the Institute for Advanced Theological Study in Jerusalem; profiled in a 1960's Time Magazine report as one of America's leading conservative theologians.
• Wayne E. Oates, late author of best-selling pastoral care text The Christian Pastor, SBTS professor, 1947-74; first to coin the term "workaholic"; nationally known authority on theology and health care.
• Archibald T. Robertson, author of a widely used Greek grammar text.
• Eric Charles Rust, British Baptist scholar in philosophy of religion; pioneered Southern Seminary's curriculum in science and faith.
• Frank Stagg, noted Greek scholar and authority on the Book of Acts and the Gospel of Luke.
• Penrose St. Amant, church historian and dean of theology, 1959-71; later was president of International Baptist Seminary in Ruschlikon, Switzerland.
• Kurt Wise - Head of Center for Theology and Science (since August 2006 - August 2009)^[14]

Former presidents

• 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.

Current organization

Southern is currently structured under four schools:

• The School of Theology (Russell D. Moore, Dean)
• The Billy Graham School of Missions, Evangelism, and Church Growth (Charles E. Lawless Jr., Dean)
• The School of Church Ministries (Randy Stinson, Dean)
• Boyce College (Denny Burk, Dean)

Mission statement

References

External links

• The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary
• Unofficial SBTS Student metablog

Coordinates: 38°14′54″N 85°41′13″W / 38.24846°N 85.68689°W / 38.24846; -85.68689