B. H. Carroll Theological Institute - History

History

The Institute's founding chancellor is Russell H. Dilday, a former president of the Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary of the Southern Baptist Convention, who wrote of a 'lively renaissance of Baptist theological education at the edge of a new millennium' prior to the launch of the Institute. At the 2006 installation of the Institute's president and first administrators, Dilday indicated that 'the time is right for such a school as the Carroll Institute.' The four inaugural faculty members at Carroll all formerly taught at Southwestern. including Corley, who was a professor of New Testament and Greek and the Dean of the School of Theology there. Corley was awarded both a Master of Divinity (M.Div.) and Doctor of Theology (Th. D.) from Southwestern. The Institute's representatives express no competition existing between the residential-model of education exemplified by Southwestern and their own non-residential model. In a guest post for the National Association of Baptist Professors of Religion Southwest Region NABPR-SW blog, Corley suggests schools like the Institute can help 'bridge the gap between where the seminaries are and what their publics need.'

Some contention developed over the adoption of the name of B.H. Carroll by the Institute, as Carroll was the founding president of Southwestern Seminary; Paige Patterson called the use into 'question,' while Biographer Alan LeFever suggested the limit to be unduly 'restrictive.' Writing long before the controversy, Leon McBeth testifies to the importance of Benajah Harvey Carroll's legacy to Baylor University and Southern Seminary as well as to modern Baptist history, describing the man as 'the John Wayne of Texas Baptists.'