RICHMOND, Va. – The faculty dean at Baptist Theological Seminary at Richmond has been tapped as president of American Baptist-related Colgate Rochester Divinity School/Crozer Theological Seminary. Trustees of the school in Rochester, N.Y., named Thomas Halbrooks, a 1962 graduate of Samford University, as president-elect at a called meeting Dec. 17.
Halbrooks, 59, will assume the presidency July 1 when the current president, James Evans, steps down after 10 years. Halbrooks was one of three original faculty members at the Virginia seminary that opened in 1991 and its only dean. He previously taught church history 13 years at Southeastern Seminary in Wake Forest, N.C.
“BTSR is proud that the dean of this school, the youngest accredited Baptist seminary in America, has been selected as president of the oldest Baptist divinity school in the nation.” Colgate Rochester Divinity School is the result of a 1928 merger of two former Baptist seminaries: Colgate (founded in 1819) and Rochester (founded in 1850). Crozer Theological Seminary, which was founded in 1861 and counts among its graduates Martin Luther King Jr., joined the merger in 1970.
Halbrooks said his goals for Colgate Rochester/Crozer include “being a congregationally focused” institution and producing graduates that combine “piety and social justice.”
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