Baptists and Higher Education

Baptists and

HigherEducation

Baptists and Higher Education

I. Introduction A. Content B. Baptist Diversity

Pamela R. Durso

“Many Baptists have long valued education. They have built Baptist colleges, universities, and seminaries, sent their sons and daughters off to those Baptist schools, hired ministers trained in Baptist seminaries, and given and continue to give money to Baptist educational institutions. Yet, other Baptists have long feared education. They have been suspicious of educational institutions and their faculties, kept their children from obtaining degrees from such institutions, refused to hire educated ministers, and declined to participate in financially supporting colleges and universities.”

Daniel O. AleshireThree Patterns

a. A suspicion of the ability of an academic institution to instill or enhance criteria Baptists consider must crucial for their ministers.b. A tendency to value the learning that comes from intimate participation in a congregation.c. A desire for the social recognition and status of higher education degrees

Baptists and Higher Education

II. Historical Overview A. William H. Brackney B. England and Canada C. America

William H. Brackney

“The establishment of schools, colleges, universities, and theological schools are marks of maturity of the tradition of denominations”

Leon McBeth

Samuel HoweThe Sufficiency of the Spirit’s Teaching without Humane Learning: or A Treatise Tending to Prove Humane Learning to Be of No Help to the Spiritual Understanding of the Word of God

Bill J. Leonard

“’It is the spirit of Antichrist that seeks after humane help [education] to supply the room or want of his Spirit of Christ and having gotten it they grow proud of it, are self-conceited in it, make it their idol and dare reproach the Spirit and power of the Lordand His saints.’”

Bill J. Leonard

“Baptists, kept out of establishment colleges, moved slowly but surely to develop their own institutions.”

Robert G. Torbet

“The English Baptists’ chief accomplishments in the field of education have been in the training of ministers and in the safeguarding of the public schools against sectarianism.”

Robert G. Torbet

“Baptists had suffered too many educational restrictions at the hands of state churches to inflict the same kind of treatment upon others.”

Morgan Edwards

“The first mover for it in 1762 was laughed at as a projector of a thing impracticable. Nay, many of the Baptists themselves discouraged the design (prophesying evil in the churches in case it should take place), from an unhappy prejudice against learning, and threatened (not only non-nonoccurrence but ) opposition.”

Leon McBeth

“Next to foreign missions, no cause aroused more Baptist effort and opposition in the early nineteenth century than theological education.”

The Triennial Convention

In 1817, Richard Furman presented a resolution on theological education to the Triennial Convention, “having for its object the assistance of pious young men designed for the gospel ministry, which were laid before the Baptist Convention at Philadelphia, in May, 1817.”

The 1818 Report of the Triennial Convention

“Enemies of Christianity are employing learning for its overthrow, and shall not the champions of the Cross be assisted to meet them on equal ground?”

John TaylorThe efforts to “make preachers” would produce “a new clue for begging or teasing the people for more money, with this pretest, we will make more preachers for you, as if Jesus Christ did not know how to make preachers for his own use among men.”

James P. Boyce

“The Baptists are unmistakably the friends of education and the advocates of an educated ministry. Their twenty-four colleges and ten departments or institutions for theological instruction in this country furnish sufficient testimony to the fact that they feel the value of education and the importance, under God, of the means it affords for the better performance of the work of the ministry.”

James P. Boyce

Three Proposals for Theological Education(a). provision for students at every level of

education(b). provision for students who were able to

pursue advanced studies(c). a confession of faith that determined the

boundaries of acceptable belief among the faculty

The Southern BaptistTheological Seminary

(a). SBTS operates the Boyce Bible School (now Boyce College) for those who have not completed a college degree.

(b). The institution offers Masters and Doctrinal programs.

(c). Written into the charter of SBTS, in the Fundamental Laws of the Seminary, is “9. Every Professor of the Institution shall be a member of a regular Baptist Church, and all persons accepting Professorships in this Seminary, shall be considered by such acceptance, as engaging to teach in accordance with, and not contrary to, the Abstract of Principles hereinafter laid down.”

The Whitsitt Controversy

Robert G. Torbet

A report to the Philadelphia Association in 1902 said there were “thirty-six Baptist colleges and universities with twelve thousand students; seven theological seminaries, with over one thousand students; twenty-nine colleges for women . . .; sixty-four preparatory schools and academies with twelve thousand students; a grand total of one hundred sixty-nine educational institutions with more than fifty-four thousand students, and with endowments, property, and invested funds amounting to not less than thirty million dollars.”

Robert G. Torbet

By 1962 Baptists in the North and South were supporting eighteen seminaries, fifty-eight colleges and universities, twenty-three junior colleges, thirteen academies, and six other training schools.

The American BaptistEducation Society

“The establishment of a thoroughly equipped institution of learning in Chicago is an immediate and imperative denominational necessity.”

Ralph Elliot

Alan CulpepperThe 1990s “were also a decade of promising new beginnings as new seminaries and schools of theology opened”:

Baptist House of Studies at Duke Divinity School--1986 ; Baptist Studies Program at Candler School of Theology—1989; Baptist Theological Seminary at Richmond—1991;Christopher White School of Divinity, Gardner-Webb University—1993; Baptist Studies Program at Brite Divinity School—1994; George W. Truett Theological Seminary, Baylor University—1994; Logsdon School of Theology, Hardin Simmons University—1994;Campbell University Divinity School—1996; McAfee School of Theology, Mercer University—1996; Wake Forest University Divinity School—1999.

Bill J. Leonard

“Some Baptist schools received government funds as loans or for use in nonreligious programs. Other schools rejected federal assistance entirely. Some schools took a middle way; accepting loans for individual students and permitting student ROTC units on campus.”

Baptists and Higher Education

III. Baptists and Academic Freedom

A. Thomas Graves: Baptist Principles and Academic Freeom

B. Thomas Graves on “Baptist Martyrs”

C. Baptist Faith and Message

D. Alan Culpepper E. James Taulman F. Pamela R. Durso

Thomas Graves

Baptist Principles Related to Academic FreedomPriesthood of all believers

Rejection of creedalismRealistic view of the nature of human sin

“Baptist principles and academic freedom go hand in hand: the erosion of one threatens the other.”

Thomas Graves

“The litany of academic martyrs in Baptist life is a sad list of shame: Crawford Toy, William Whitsitt, Ralph Elliot; and in the last decade, the number has grown dramatically with seminary faculty members resigning in large numbers.”

The Baptist Faith and MessageEducation

1925Article X

“Christianity is the religion of enlightenment and intelligence. In Jesus Christ are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. All sound learning is therefore a part of our Christian heritage. The new birth opens all human faculties and creates a thirst for knowledge. An adequate system of schools is necessary to a complete spiritual program for Christ's people. The cause of education in the Kingdom of Christ is co-ordinate with the causes of missions and general benevolence, and should receive along with these the liberal support of the churches.”

1963Article XII

“The cause of education in the Kingdom of Christ is co-ordinate with the causes of missions and general benevolence, and should receive along with these the liberal support of the churches. An adequate system of Christian schools is necessary to a complete spiritual program for Christ’s people.

In Christian education there should be a proper balance between academic freedom and academic responsibility. Freedom in any orderly relationship of human life is always limited and never absolute. The freedom of a teacher in a Christian school, college, or seminary is limited by the pre-eminence of Jesus Christ, by the authoritative nature of the Scriptures, and by the distinct purpose for which the school exists.” (my emphasis)

Ralph Elliot

Alan Culpepper

“It is a double-sided question: how to keep a faculty faithful to its Baptist heritage and community of faith on the one hand, yet free to pursue truth and speak critically and prophetically for the good of the church?” He says, “We are still searching for the best means for guiding schools over time, either by the framing of "founding principles" that are Baptist in spirit but do not attempt to define doctrinal guidelines (McAfee School of Theology), or by asking each faculty member to write his or her own statement of faith (BTSR [Baptist Theological Seminary at Richmond]).”

James Taulman

“Those who teach must act responsibility; those in positions of control must grant freedom for them to act responsibility.”

Pamela R. Durso “Baptist administrators, professors, and other educational professionals, as they live out their calling to educate men and women, must always remember that the freedom they have been given is accompanied by a heavy responsibility. Baptist educators have a calling to uphold the highest standards of scholarship, to be accurate, and truthful in their speaking and writing, and to be respectful in all their dealings with students, other scholars, their community, and the Baptist family. Baptist educators must be fervently committed to academic freedom, ardently devoted to Baptist principles, and passionately dedicated to live and behave as authentic and committed Christians. Each of these three responsibilities is an essential ingredient in maintaining the health of Baptist schools, and the administrators, professors, and staff members of Baptist schools must take all three responsibilities seriously. Baptists should accept nothing less from their Baptist schools.”

Baptists and Higher Education

IV. Some Concluding Points A. Questions B. Walter B. Shurden:

Points on Theological Education

C. Alan Culpepper D. William Underwood

Questions

1. What does it mean to be a scholar in the Baptist tradition?2. How can Baptist faith enrich and sustain the

life of the mind? 3. What special contribution might Baptist

colleges make to the ecology of American higher education and to the life of the Church?

4. What distinctive Baptist practices bear directly on intellectual life and how might they be nurtured to better effect?

Walter B. ShurdenPoints on Theological Education

Theological education should produce:1.Tender hearts2.Tough minds

3.Trained hands

Alan Culpepper

“Baptist theological education flowers from our peculiar heritage and regional contexts. It is constructive, warm-hearted, committed to missions and evangelism, focused on the local church, Bible centered, and blends theory and practice, scholarship and piety.”

William Underwood

“Our faith-based mission empowers us to explore a broader range of issues than are examined at secular universities today -- issues that are fundamental to leading an informed life and were once central to higher education but are now largely forgotten in our universities. Why am I here? How should I spend my life? What should I care about most? . . . But we should also remember that faith is not entirely, or even primarily, an intellectual matter [my emphasis]. We are commanded to love our neighbor, and we are instructed to manifest that love by serving those in need. Surely central to our mission as Baptist universities should be encouraging our students to see the face of God in the hungry, the thirsty, the sick, the stranger and even the prisoner. Central to our mission should be cultivating in our students an ethic of service (my emphasis).”