Southern Baptist Theological Seminary
Near Louisville, Kentucky
The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary opened in eighteen fifty-nine in Greenville, South Carolina, with twenty-six students and four professors. James Petigru Boyce, a theology professor at Furman University, had challenged Southern Baptists three years earlier to fund a new institution, and they pledged one hundred thousand dollars to make it happen.
The Civil War shut the school down and drained its endowment. Facing a fresh start, trustees chose Louisville over several rival cities in eighteen seventy-seven, securing a new endowment from Kentucky Baptists. Today it remains one of the largest seminaries in the world, training tens of thousands of ministers across more than a century and a half of operation.
