The Future of Baptist Higher Education

Chapter One: Baptist Identity and Christian Higher Education

Chapter One Baptist Identity and Christian Higher Education Donald D. Schmeltekopf Dianna M. Vitanza I The first Baptist institution of higher education established in America was Rhode Island College, founded in 1764. Rhode Island was a logical place to locate the institution, for in the mid-eighteenth century this American colony had more Baptists than any other, largely because the tradition of religious liberty advanced by Roger Williams was attractive to Baptists and because they were not particularly welcomed in the other New England colonies. At this early date Baptists were also not yet that numerous in the middle and southern colonies. While Baptists in general were ambivalent about the need for education, even for their clergy, they nevertheless wanted their own institution rather than relying on Harvard. Experience had taught them that “you could send a Baptist to Harvard but you could not get one out.”1 In 1804, Rhode Island College became known as Brown University, named after a prominent family in Providence. Even though the number of Baptists in Rhode Island was diminishing and the number of Baptists in the middle colonies was growing rapidly, Brown remained the only Baptist institution of higher education in America until 1819, when the increase of Baptists in the middle colonies led to an ambitious effort to create a Baptist school in Washington, D.C., called Columbian College. Luther Rice was one of the major movers behind the plan for the institution, which proposed a combination of classical education, legal and medical courses, and advanced work in theological studies. Property was purchased, a large building constructed, a president and a faculty hired, and students recruited, but the school soon had serious financial difficulties, and, 3 SchmelVita Future.indd 3 SchmelVita Future.indd 3 4/11/2006 1:20:18 PM 4/11/2006 1:20:18 PM 4 Baptist Identity in spite of his best efforts, Rice was unable to save the institution for Baptists. The federal government rescued the school from collapse, granting its founding charter in 1821, and in 1904, by an Act of Congress, Columbian became George Washington University, severing all ties with Baptists. Both before and after the fading of Columbian College, Brown remained of enormous influence in training Baptist leaders from both the North and the South.2 For example, southern educational leaders such as John A. Broadus, James Huckins, William B. Johnson, Jonathan Maxcy, and J. B. White all had the benefit of a Brown education. In the South the earliest schools operated by Baptists were academies, usually small schools designed to give children the basics of grammar, arithmetic , literature, and the Bible. Academies flourished throughout the South, numbering in the hundreds, from about 1800 until the beginning of the public high school movement a century later. The movement to establish institutions of higher education, inspired in part by a desire for an educated clergy, began in 1825 with the founding of Furman University, named after Richard Furman, a distinguished pastor and Baptist leader in South Carolina. Known initially as the Furman Academy and Theological Institution at Edgefield, South Carolina, it was moved to Greenville in 1851, its permanent location, after interim moves to High Hills of the Santee and Winnsboro. In 1859 the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary opened on the Furman campus, but relocated to Louisville, Kentucky, in 1877. During the nineteenth century, over thirty Baptist colleges and universities were founded in the southern and border states under the auspices of state Baptist organizations and with the encouragement and support of local communities . The most notable of these today include Union University, established in Jackson, Tennessee, chartered originally as Jackson Male Academy in 1825; Georgetown College, founded in 1829 by the Kentucky Baptist Education Society in Georgetown, Kentucky; the University of Richmond, formerly the Virginia Baptist Seminary and later Richmond College, established in 1832 by the Virginia Baptist Education Society in Richmond, Virginia; Mercer University, formerly Mercer Institute, founded in 1833 by Georgia Baptists at Penfield, Georgia, and later relocated to Macon; Wake Forest University , chartered also in 1833 by North Carolina Baptists, established first as Wake Forest Institute and then as Wake Forest College in the town of Wake Forest, North Carolina, and after 1956 relocated to Winston-Salem, North Carolina; Judson College, an all-female institution, founded in 1838 as Judson Female Institute in Marion, Alabama; Samford University, established in 1841 initially as a male college, also in Marion, and in 1877 relocated to Howard...