Southwestern Seminary marks 100 years in Fort Worth

FORT WORTH, Texas — Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary (SWBTS) celebrated a milestone of 100 years at its current location with a chapel service Oct. 19 focusing on its founder, B.H. Carroll, and his successor, L.R. Scarborough, who led the seminary from 1915 to 1942.

“The institution that does not revisit the principles of its founder and the commitments of its founder has made the most absurd mistake of any that you can find anywhere,” SWBTS President Paige Patterson said in a chapel address specifically targeted to the seminary’s board of trustees and faculty.

SWBTS began as an outgrowth of Baylor University in 1905. It separated from Baylor and was re-chartered in 1908 as Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary with a separate board of trustees. The seminary operated two years on Baylor’s Waco, Texas, campus before moving to a section of Fort Worth today known as “Seminary Hill.”

In 1925, the Baptist General Convention of Texas (BGCT) turned control of the seminary over to the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC). During the inerrancy controversy within the SBC during the 1980s and 1990s, the seminary moved toward a perspective to the right of the moderate-leaning BGCT, prompting Baylor to open its own George W. Truett Theological Seminary in 1994.