Baptist Seminary of Kentucky inaugurated

by   Trennis Henderson                                                                                                                                  Vol. XVI, No. 4, April 2003

Baptist Seminary of Kentucky, which launched its first year of classes last fall, held an inaugural convocation 9 March at Calvary Baptist Church in Lexington. Greg Earwood, elected seminary president in 2001, told a crowd of more than 400 people at the convocation that factors driving the creation of the school included "students seeking ministry preparation and churches seeking prepared ministers."

The seminary, which opened with 14 students, remains "in the infancy stage," Earwood told the Western Recorder later, "but we have a solid base of support that is growing." The seminary, housed at Calvary Baptist Church, lists 24 "charter churches" across the state that provide various levels of financial support.

Earwood explained last year that the school was established to help provide "more moderate, progressive opportunities" for seminary education in the region. Calling the school's first academic year "a solid beginning on which we can build," Earwood said, "We want to appeal to the center of who Baptists are in this region."

More than a dozen moderate Baptist seminaries, divinity schools and Baptist-studies programs have been started in recent years, as the six traditional Southern Baptist Convention seminaries have become increasingly conservative. However, none of the new schools is in Kentucky, home of the oldest SBC seminary, Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville. The nearest are in Winston-Salem, NC and Richmond, VA.

"Ours is a heritage which affirms the authority of Scripture alongside the obligation to be responsible interpreters of Scripture," said William Turner, retired pastor of South Main Baptist Church in Houston in his convocation address. Citing concerns over "recent Southern Baptist history," Turner declared, "We've watched a cadre of self-proclaimed 'godly men' work to turn theological education into indoctrination. ... Thank God for a place like Baptist Seminary of Kentucky where academic freedom lives, so that spiritual and intellectual integrity might live and thrive as well." [ABP]

Editorial Comment: This is another liberal theological school along the lines of the Baptist Theological Seminary at Richmond, yet another effort to compete with the SBC. Of course liberals have every right to build a new denomination (or, to use their term, “fellowship”), but to do so while the great majority of their churches simultaneously continue to claim ties to Southern Baptist national, state, and local associations/conventions is considerably less than forthright. TCP