History

The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary has been an innovator in theological education since its founding in 1859 in Greenville, South Carolina as the first seminary of the Southern Baptist Convention. The school's pioneering legacy began in the visionary mind of James Petigru Boyce, the school's first president. Boyce dreamed of a school that would accept all God-called individuals for study regardless of their educational background.

Though disrupted briefly by the Civil War, Southern Seminary has continued to pursue Boyce's initial vision for nearly 150 years. Southern was one of the first seminaries in the nation to offer a Ph.D. Our department of missions is one of the oldest in the world. We were the first in the nation to offer courses in religious education. And in 1994, Southern Seminary opened the Billy Graham School of Missions, Evangelism and Church Growth, the first program in the Southern Baptist Convention dedicated solely to training missionaries and evangelists.

While we look to the future with great expectation, you can rest assured that we will never forget the legacy of our storied past or our commitment to the faith once for all delivered to the saints.

Norton Hall

Visit the Archives and Special Collections. A division of the James P. Boyce Centennial Library at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, the Archives offers a Research Information page to aid your research, a Special Collections page to share our collections, and a History page to preserve the seminary's heritage.