In January 2010, the Billy Graham School of Missions and Evangelism at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary will launch the Certificate in Islamic Studies program. The five-course certificate program will equip students to better understand the Islamic religion and culture and inspire students to reach Muslims with the Gospel.

“This program came about through an initiative from President Mohler, who properly sensed the growing influence of Islam within the world,” James D. Chancellor, W. O. Carver Professor of Christian Missions and World Religions, said. “This type of program is part of a trend that is appearing at more and more seminaries. The Islamic religion is growing and Southern Baptists are taking part in an endeavor to reach this unreached people group.”

The Islamic Studies Certificate, which can be completed in two years, is being developed by Chancellor; Chuck Lawless, dean of the Billy Graham School; George H. Martin, M. Theron Rankin Professor of Christian Missions and associate dean of the Billy Graham School; and Michael Clark, a Southern doctoral student and assistant director of the seminary’s Great Commission Center.

The group began building the foundation for the program in summer 2009, creating several new courses and developing the curriculum. The program developers and the Billy Graham School plan to offer online courses in the future.

“When preparing the certificate program, in essence, we wanted to develop courses which would equip believers to reach Muslims with the gospel, both here in the United States and overseas,” Clark said. “Islam represents the largest unreached religious group in the world (1.5 billion) and the Muslim population in the US will only continue to increase. Because of this, now more than ever, Christians need to know how to best share the gospel with Muslim believers, whether they live thousands of miles away or whether they live next door.”

Chancellor will be teaching three of the program’s courses: “major living world religions,” “history and religion of Islam” and “issues in contemporary Islam.” Earning his doctorate in Islamic History and Culture from Duke University, Chancellor has spent a significant amount of time studying the world’s Islamic cultures and new religious movements. Chancellor was a visiting scholar at the University of Manitoba and has taught at the Nigerian Baptist Theological Seminary, the Malaysian Baptist Theological Seminary, The Baptist Seminary of Singapore and The Philippine Baptist Theological Seminary.

The “missions to the Islamic world” course will be taught by Martin, who has extensive experience in missiology and with world religions. Martin has served and taught in the Pacific Rim and Asia.

“There are no field requirements within the program,” Chancellor said. “But I think this program may very well result in students taking mission trips to the Islamic world.”

Clark will instruct for “scripture, theology and practice of Islam.” The course’s curriculum will assist students in understanding Islamic beliefs and practices through the study of Muslim scriptures as well the various cultural expressions of Islam from around the world.

For more information on the Certificate in Islamic Studies, contact the Billy Graham School or visit www.sbts.edu/bgs.

Although the new campus was originally slated for construction on Brownsboro Road, World War I interrupted the fundraising efforts. Before funds could be raised to begin construction, seminary trustees were able to acquire 50 acres in a better location off of Lexington Road. Isla May Mullins recalled the desire of her husband, Southern Seminary president E. Y. Mullins, to relocate to that exact location in her biography of the seminary’s fourth president.

“The tract was the favorite spot in all the environs of Louisville to Dr. Mullins and his wife, and had been for years,” Isla May Mullins wrote. “The noble hill which rose from the road with its beautiful grove of century-old beeches was always a delight; but in the fall when the trees of every sort were in their glory of flame and orange and shading green, strewing the ground with luxurious abandon, ‘The Beeches’ were an unending delight to them.

“Day after day they would drive out in the late afternoon just to see the changes which each twenty-four hours had brought. Dr. Mullins would eagerly remark: ‘How I would like that glory-crowned hill for our Seminary! Wouldn’t the buildings rise from there like a heavenly vision?’ They would rejoice over the thought of such an impossible dream. But that it could ever come true was beyond even their faith. So unmindful humanity is of the possibilities of God’s mysterious ways”[1]

This campus, which came to be known as the Beeches, is where the seminary remains today. The landscape of the Beeches campus was set out by the Olmstead firm and James Gamble Rogers designed the buildings. A groundbreaking ceremony for Norton Hall, the first building on the new campus, was held on Nov. 28, 1923.

For more information on the history of the Beeches campus or to learn about archival resources available to you visit www.archives.sbts.edu.

1. Isla May Mullins, Edgar Young Mullins: An Intimate Biography. (Nashville: Sunday School Board of the Southern Baptist Convention), 177.