First Baptist Church

This year (2009) marks the 150th anniversary of the establishment of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary located in Louisville, KY. The seminary has enjoyed a long and unique history in the face of a rapidly and radically changing world. It’s mission today is hardly different from the original mission of training persons for ministry by intense instruction in the theological disciplines. These disciplines include biblical hermeneutics, biblical languages, Old and New Testament history and backgrounds, biblical theology, church history, evangelism/missions, counseling, church music, apologetics, Christian education, etc. This institution is near and dear to my heart as I hold a Master of Divinity degree from it and will, Lord willing, complete a Doctorate as well in 2010.

In the 1850s, only a few years after the formation of the Southern Baptist Convention in 1845, Southern Baptists were recognizing a need for an educated and well trained pastorate. In those days they were not really thinking about more specialized fields which dominate today, but their primary focus was to train pastors who would, in turn, train and equip their congregations.

James Petigru Boyce, who ultimately became the first president of the seminary, had an unwavering desire to see this dream become a reality. As you read the detailed history of the founding and early years of the seminary captured so well in Southern Baptist Theological Seminary 1859-2009 by historian and current seminary faculty member Gregory A. Wills, you see there is no other explanation for it’s survival apart from God’s unrelenting providence. Almost immediately after it’s founding the nation became enthralled in the Civil War, forcing the seminary to close for a while. All the groundwork which had been done prior to it’s opening in 1859 seemed to be destroyed. Committed financial support for the institution dried up as the war was on everyone’s mind. After the war, the south was devastated and thinking only of reconstruction, and theological education was far from the minds of most. During this critical period, Boyce himself receives all the credit for not losing sight of the dream. He worked hard at securing the faculty and finances for keeping things going.

The original home of Southern Seminary in Greenville, South Carolina was a modest building with only two classrooms and a small library with about two thousand books. In the 1870s the seminary, in a bold move, relocated to Louisville, KY to a downtown location. In 1926 it moved out to it current location on Lexington Road.

The seminary’s first four faculty members James P. Boyce, John A. Broadus, William Williams, and Basil Manley Sr. were solidly conservative. Early on, Boyce foresaw the need to hold faculty members accountable for their teaching and a document known as The Abstract of Principles was adopted. Each professor would be expected to teach within the bounds of this outline of key doctrine. Not too many years down the road the seminary would indeed be challenged by the controversies surrounding President William H. Whitsitt and modernistic faculty member Crawford H. Toy (who incidentally was at one time engaged to Lottie Moon). Toy was one of the first in a long line of those who would later question the inspiration of scripture.

Throughout the long tenure of E.Y. Mullins, who served as president from 1899-1928 the seminary began a very slow drift toward the growing influences of theological liberalism which was becoming so dominant in theological thought. By no means was Southern experiencing the theological turmoil which was going on in several institutions such as Princeton, however Southern Seminary was not completely immune. Under Mullins’ leadership the seminary began to move slowly away from it’s solidly Calvinistic roots and embrace a more progressive and ultimately humanistic point of view rooted in a much more Arminian strain. His “modified Calvinism” would set the stage for an unraveling to take place over the next several decades in Southern Baptist doctrine. In an issue of the seminary’s Journal of Theology devoted to E.Y. Mullins in the winter of 1999, Dr. Albert Mohler shared that the real change in the direction of the seminary and ultimately, the whole denomination, came during Mullins’ 29 year tenure as president.

Throughout the 1930s, 40s, and 50s the seminary continued to slowly embrace more liberal theological viewpoints as faculty were added which did not really hold to the theological viewpoints of the institutional founders nor the mainstream of Southern Baptist which made up the churches to whom they were supposed to be accountable. The Abstract of Principles had become a relic of the distant past. The situation only got worse as the seminary entered the 60s, 70s, and 80s. Duke McCall’s leadership in the 50s, 60s, and 70s is largely responsible for allowing this digression. When Roy Honeycut became president in 1982, the seminary already had a slate of faculty, many of whom openly were of the belief that Jesus Christ was not the only way to salvation, that hell was merely a state of mind and not a literal place, that women should be allowed to serve as Sr. pastors in Baptist churches, that abortion was far more a social issue than a biblical one, etc. The W.O. Carver School of Social Work at the time, was reported to have rampant instances of homosexuality among it’s student body, and multitudes of female students complained of sexual harassment on campus, including cat calls, groping, and frequent propositioning by male students. During this period, Molly Marshall served as a tenured professor of theology and served adjunctively as the Sr. Pastor of a local church.

By the 1980s the slow progression had reached a boiling point not only at the seminary itself but across the convention. The election of Adrien Rogers as SBC president in 1979 had opened a whole new chapter in the history of Southern Baptists. His election began what would be described later as a “domino effect,” which ultimately changed the entire landscape of the convention indescribably. In general terms the battle for the control of the convention raged throughout the 1980s, the battle for the six Southern Baptist seminaries raged during the 1990s, and this past decade has seen multiple battles for control of state conventions. Roy Honeycut found that the board of trustees was increasingly being overrun by those not supportive of his direction of leadership at the seminary. Ultimately he was fired and replaced in 1993 by R. Albert Mohler Jr. at the young age of 32. The task he faced was daunting! Dr. Mohler, a gifted scholar extraordinaire, was up for the challenge!

In those early months, Mohler recounts receiving death threats from anonymous students, frequent disruptions in chapel services when he spoke, picketing on campus, even being spat upon in the hallway outside his office and being burned in effigy on the campus lawn. The tumultuous situation was so bad it garnered some national attention and PBS actually put together and aired a documentary about what was going on at the Louisville campus. Thankfully Dr. Mohler survived but his first several years were filled with one ugly situation after another. Now, 17 years into his tenure as president (and now only 50 years old) Dr. Mohler’s legacy at the seminary will likely be felt for generations to come. Once again Southern Seminary is Boyce’s institution! More importantly, it is an unmistakably Southern Baptist institution once more! The seminary continues to expand and is now once again able to claim the largest enrollment of any of the six Southern Baptist seminaries! The real legacy is not in it’s size or it’s long history but in it’s particular influence in training people for ministry in a broken world.

Truly the seminary being what it is today is a testimony to the grace and providential watch-care of God. When you consider the details of how many times the seminary was on the precipice of failure for several different reasons you begin to realize how God has unmistakably guided. I see it’s success as nothing short of miraculous, especially when you consider that if James P. Boyce walked on to the campus today, talked with faculty and students, browsed the bookstore, audited some classes, and walked through the library, I believe he would be well pleased and thankful! God is truly good! May God continue to bless The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary as it commemorates this significant milestone!

In Christ,

Pastor Allen Raynor