Since 1951, Southeastern Baptist Seminary in Wake Forest has been a leader in the cultural and theological changes within Baptist churches, especially those affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention.
Baptists in the United States formed the General Missionary Convention of the Baptist Denomination in the United States of America for Foreign Missions in 1814. Also known as the Triennial Convention (because the group met every three years), this group of Baptists partnered to send missionaries overseas. By the mid-nineteenth century, sectional tensions over slavery led to the Triennial Convention’s schism.
Wishing to send slaveholders as missionaries, Baptists in the South split from the northern-dominated Triennial Convention in 1845 and formed the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC). In 1859, the SBC established the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Greenville, S.C. (now in Louisville, Kentucky). The convention added two more seminaries in the early twentieth century: Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, TX, in 1908 and New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary in 1917.
Following the end of World War II, a group of pastors in Buncombe County, North Carolina, requested the convention’s executive committee to consider the Ridgecrest Baptist Assembly in Black Mountain as a possible location for a new seminary. Instead, the SBC placed the new seminary on the campus of Wake Forest College (WFC), which had begun relocating to Winston-Salem. The Wake Forest campus in the town of Wake Forest held 480 acres of land with classrooms, campus housing, and administrative buildings—everything a new seminary needed. The Southern Baptist Convention purchased the WFC campus for $1.6 million and arranged to share the campus with WFC until it relocated to Winston-Salem.
In 1956, the college relocated, and Southeastern had full control of the campus. Southeastern’s professors sought to teach an enlightened form of Christianity that addressed the social, political, economic, and theological needs of modern society, thereby gaining the reputation of being the “progressive” Southern Baptist seminary. The seminary exhibited a distinct brand of social Christianity that addressed the needs of Southerners and rural communities.
President Sydnor Stealey and Dean Olin T. Binkley led the school to become one of the more socially progressive Southern Baptist seminaries. Binkley offered courses on the ethics of race prior to the Supreme Court’s decision Brown v. Board of Education, which ordered desegregation of public schools. Once the still-segregated Wake Forest College moved, SEBTS opened its doors to African American students. James H. Costen became the seminary’s first African American applicant (1957) and graduate (1964). In 1995, the Southern Baptist Convention issued a formal apology for its racist founding. Southeastern’s openness and advocacy for African American equality from the 1950s is notable.
Southeastern exhibited another progressive trait: advocacy for women in pastoral ministry. In 1952 five women were enrolled (out of 100 students). Southeastern graduate Addie Davis became the first female ordained in the Southern Baptist Convention, at Watts Street Baptist Church in Durham in1964. Conservative Southern Baptists, holding to a more literal interpretation of the Bible, frowned upon women serving in pastoral ministry and accused the school of “theological liberalism” for taking that position. Regardless, Southeastern championed women in pastoral ministry until the 1990s.
An era of theological and denominational turmoil ensued. Olin Binkley served as president from 1963 through 1974, guiding the school through these thickets. A Southeastern alumnus, W. Randall Lolley, succeeded Binkley as president in 1974. Under his leadership, the seminary became a leading producer of moderate and progressive Southern Baptist ministers.
However, by 1979, conservative Southern Baptists had initiated a plan to reclaim the seminary as a socially and theologically conservative denomination committed to the inerrancy of the biblical text. Biblical inerrancy served as a dividing line separating the factions of the convention.[1] By October 1987, conservatives held a majority on Southeastern’s board of trustees, causing the president, dean, and several other key administrators to resign.
At the recommendation of Billy Graham, the conservative board elected Lewis Addison Drummond as the fourth president of the institution. Drummond found himself mediating between the seminary’s faculty and its board of trustees. Nevertheless, Drummond emphasized world missions and evangelism during his contentious tenure as president. Though president for four only years, Drummond made some progress in turning the school toward theological conservatism by hiring L. Russ Bush, III, as the dean of faculty. Widely known as a scholar committed to the inerrancy of the Bible, Bush’s deanship led to more faculty resignations, allowing more conservative scholars to be hired.
In May 1992, the Board elected conservative leader Leighton Paige Patterson as president. Patterson’s reputation loomed large within the Southern Baptist Convention as one of the architects of its conservative takeover. Though the seminary was founded as the SBC’s theologically progressive seminary, Patterson’s leadership marked an even more decisive turn toward social and theological conservatism. Indeed, one of Patterson’s first hires was former George H.W. Bush White House staffer Daniel Heimbach as professor of Christian Ethics. Patterson’s faculty were committed to the inerrancy of the Bible, complementarian gender roles in the home and the church, and a form of evangelism focused on personal conversion rather than social justice.[2]
One month after Patterson’s election, Southeastern’s accrediting agency placed the school on probation, though full accreditation was restored two years later. Patterson rebuilt the faculty, hiring 57 professors during his 11–year tenure. Patterson led the seminary to offer the Ph.D. degree and established an undergraduate institution. Patterson resigned to become president of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, Texas, in 2003.
In January 2004, the Board elected Daniel L. Akin as the seminary’s sixth president. Akin emphasized the Great Commission: Matthew 28:19-20: “Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe everything I have commanded you….” (Christian Standard Bible). Akin led the school to emphasize world missions and church planting.
[1] Conservatives affirmed inerrancy. Those who questioned or opposed the doctrine self-identified as “moderates.” The Southern Baptist Convention comprises a spectrum of theological beliefs.
[2] Complementarianism holds that men and women are spiritually equal yet possess different, complementary functions in the home and church. Generally, complementarians allow only men to serve as a pastor.