Seminary started by Baptist moderates to close in January
The Baptist Theological Seminary at Richmond opened in the wake of the Southern Baptist “conservative resurgence” launched in 1979.
The Baptist Theological Seminary at Richmond—the first freestanding seminary started as an alternative to the six Southern Baptist Convention seminaries—is closing its doors “due to financial pressures.”
One of 15 theological institutions that receives funding from the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, the seminary opened for classes in the fall of 1991. Plans for the school arose after the president and dean at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in Wake Forest, North Carolina, resigned in 1987 rather than implement restrictive hiring policies of the board of trustees.
Southeastern was the first SBC institution to feel the full effect of the “conservative resurgence” launched in 1979 to reverse trends that the movement’s leaders warned would eventually lead the nation’s largest Protestant body to join the ranks of declining mainline denominations they perceived as departing from the fundamentals of Christianity.
