Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, 1859-2009

By: Gregory A. Wills

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Paperback | 24 February 2011

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592 Pages

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23.39 x 15.6 x 3.0

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With 16.3 million members and 44,000 churches, the Southern Baptist Convention is the largest Baptist group in the world, and the largest Protestant denomination in the United States. Unlike the so-called mainstream Protestant denominations, Southern Baptists have remained stubbornly conservative, refusing to adapt their beliefs and practices to modernity's individualist and populist values. Instead, they have held fast to traditional orthodoxy in such fundamental areas as biblical inspiration, creation, conversion, and miracles. Gregory Wills argues that Southern Baptist Theological Seminary has played a fundamental role in the persistence of conservatism, not entirely intentionally. Tracing the history of the seminary from the beginning to the present, Wills shows how its foundational commitment to preserving orthodoxy was implanted in denominational memory in ways that strengthened the denomination's conservatism and limited the seminary's ability to stray from it. In a set of
circumstances in which the seminary played a central part, Southern Baptists' populist values bolstered traditional orthodoxy rather than diminishing it. In the end, says Wills, their populism privileged orthodoxy over individualism. The story of Southern Seminary is fundamental to understanding Southern Baptist controversy and identity. Wills's study sheds important new light on the denomination that has played - and continues to play - such a central role in our national history.

Industry Reviews

''Southern Baptist Theological Seminary has been a pivotal institution in American education for the Christian ministry over a century and a half, both shaping and being molded by its constituency in the largest Protestant denomination in the country. Gregory Wills is sensitive to the two processes: he is aware of the profound influence of his predecessors who served on the institution's faculty, but he also documents the sway of the denomination's popular conservatism over the seminary, not least in the painful controversies of the 1980s and 1990s. Thorough research in a wide range of sources has provided a revealing and scholarly history.'' --David Bebbington, Professor of History, University of Stirling, Scotland and Author of The Dominance of Evangelicalism ''In this detailed, comprehensive, thoroughly-researched study of the seminary from its origins to the present, Gregory Wills has done far more than chronicle the story of an institution. He has presented a lens through which to view a region that has, especially during the last decade, influenced the whole nation. Wills depicts a long history of often bitter struggle between moderate and conservative voices at the school and beyond. It is a colorful history, filled with intrigue and idealism, church politics and religious devotion. Readers interested in American religious conservatism will find it invaluable.'' --E. Brooks Holifield, Author of God's Ambassadors: A History of the Christian Clergy in America

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