Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, 1859-2009

Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, 1859-2009 by Wills, Gregory. hardcover edition. ISBN: 9780195377149.

With 16.3 million members and 44,000 churches, the Southern Baptist Church is the largest Baptist group in the world, and the largest Protestant denomination in the United States. Gregory Wills argues that Southern Baptist Theological Seminary has played a fundamental role in the persistence of conservatism, not entirely intentionally. Tracing the history of the seminary from the beginning to the present, Wills shows how its foundational commitment to preserving orthodoxy was implanted in denominational memory in ways that strengthened the denominations conservatism and limited the seminarys ability to stray from it. The story of Southern Seminary is fundamental to understanding Southern Baptist controversy and identity.