Southern Baptist Theological Seminary rejects building renaming bid

Trustees of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary (SBTS) voted on Monday to keep its founders’ names on seminary buildings, despite accusations from some black Southern Baptists that doing so celebrates slaveholders.

SBTS trustees had gathered virtually for their annual fall meeting and addressed whether to remove the names of the seminary’s founders from buildings on campus and the undergraduate school. Some Southern Baptists have been calling for the change: The seminary’s founders were slaveholders and active supporters of the Confederacy.

In a unanimous decision, the trustees voted to keep the names in place but take other steps to address the school’s mixed history. The vote prompted varied responses, both criticism and commendation, from those who were pushing for change.

The calls to remove the names were not new, but they gained intensity this year, as George Floyd’s death sparked protests. Seminary founder James P. Boyce and founding faculty members John Broadus, Basil Manly Jr., and William Williams all owned slaves and supported the Confederacy. SBTS’ undergraduate school is named Boyce College. Names of Broadus, Manly, and Williams adorn chapels, student dorms, and other buildings on campus.

On June 19 (the date in 1865 that slaves in Galveston, Texas, learned they were free) Baptist Pastor Dwight McKissic tweeted that Boyce College is “named after a slave master, and a man who’d spoken with great disregard for people of African dissent. Integrity demands that SBTS change the name.” Theologian Celucien Joseph, a professor at Indian River State College, wrote in a June 20 blog post, “The names of these four gentlemen bring too much pain and suffering to African Americans, Black Christians, SBTS Black seminarians and alumni, and the numerous African American and ethnic churches” of the Southern Baptist Convention.

Those who argued for the seminary to remove the founders’ names said they damaged the school’s Christian witness and caused pain to black students. But SBTS President Albert Mohler questioned what removing the names would accomplish. He said the school’s history cannot be changed: “If I believed that removing those names would resolve enmity between brothers and sisters in Christ or cause of offense, then I would do it. But I do not believe that action in itself is the responsible way to deal with this.” (Mohler is a WORLD board member.)

Mohler pointed out that every generation of church history includes a mixture of saints and sinners: Christians cannot tell the story of the Church without “including human beings that we would find guilty of enormous shortcomings and sometimes horrible sin.” He said he and the trustees “do not believe as a Christian institution that history is best dealt with by erasing it, but rather by confronting it and following a pattern of telling the story more faithfully every time we get to tell the story.”

Mohler’s report to the trustees ahead of their meeting stated, “Our task is to honor the saintly without condoning, hiding, or denying the sinful. We have not done this well in the past. We must do better in the present and be more faithful in the future.” In 2018 SBTS published a Report on Slavery and Racism in the History of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. It explored the school’s history and the founders’ beliefs and lamented the sin in the school’s past.

Besides deciding to keep the founders’ names, the trustees approved four motions regarding the school’s history. They agreed to continue lamenting the sinful aspects of the school’s past. They established a new scholarship for black SBTS students, to begin in the 2022-2023 academic year, that will be named after Garland Offutt, the seminary’s first African American full graduate. They resolved to “become more faithful in telling the seminary’s story, and the founders’ story with accuracy and biblical witness.”

Finally, the trustees declared vacant the Joseph Emerson Brown Chair of Christian Theology, formerly held by Mohler: Brown was a former SBTS trustee who profited from black convict labor after emancipation. On Monday, the trustees elected Mohler to a new chair.

Responses to the trustees’ decision was mixed. Thabiti Anyabwile, pastor of Anacostia River Church, tweeted: “To say the founding slaveholders’ theology *defines* the institution is GREATER reason to remove their names and to interrogate their continuing influence on the institution. To emerge from this process still honoring them is itself dishonorable.”

Kyle J. Howard, a former SBTS student, said, “Southern is seeking to do the baseline of what is necessary, rather than seeking to bear fruit with repentance, which requires a zealous pursuit of going beyond what is merely necessary in journeying towards reconciliation.” Howard said he was thankful for his time at Southern, but “I remain profoundly disappointed and honestly sad at the conclusion of the Trustees.”

Dwight McKissic wrote a blog post calling the Garland Offutt scholarship “fruit worthy of repentance.” He wrote, “Hats off to Dr. Mohler and the trustee board for this historic decision that is a step towards healing.” McKissic also restated his belief that orthodox Christian faith cannot be reconciled with “the celebration and honoring of men stealers and child abusers.” McKissic predicted that the next generation would change the names of the buildings: “I pray the Lord will let me live long enough to see it.”