History
The seminary, under the presidency of Sydnor L. Stealey, began offering classes in 1951 on the campus of Wake Forest College. When the college moved in 1956 to Winston-Salem, North Carolina, Southeastern acquired the whole campus. In 1963, Stealey retired and Olin T. Binkley was elected the new president. Under his leadership, the Bachelor of Divinity degree transitioned into the Master of Divinity degree and the Master of Religious Education and the Doctor of Ministry degrees were instituted. Binkley was also an equal-rights supporter. He retired in 1974 and was succeeded by W. Randall Lolley. During his presidency, enrollment at the seminary more than doubled. Lolley resigned in 1987 and was succeeded the following year by Lewis A. Drummond. Billy Graham attended Drummond's inauguration. Drummond's time was marked by a large amount of turnover in the faculty and a decline in enrollment. He retired in the spring of 1992. The fifth elected president of Southeastern was L. Paige Patterson, a theological and political conservative, who reorganised the seminary on conservative lines, as well as upgrading degree programs and introducing doctoral degrees. Patterson's years at the school were another season of growth. He took the same position at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in 2004, being replaced by Daniel L. Akin, the school's current president, who has taken a similar approach.
Read more about this topic: Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“We don’t know when our name came into being or how some distant ancestor acquired it. We don’t understand our name at all, we don’t know its history and yet we bear it with exalted fidelity, we merge with it, we like it, we are ridiculously proud of it as if we had thought it up ourselves in a moment of brilliant inspiration.”
—Milan Kundera (b. 1929)
“To history therefore I must refer for answer, in which it would be an unhappy passage indeed, which should shew by what fatal indulgence of subordinate views and passions, a contest for an atom had defeated well founded prospects of giving liberty to half the globe.”
—Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)
“We may pretend that we’re basically moral people who make mistakes, but the whole of history proves otherwise.”
—Terry Hands (b. 1941)