Under the lordship of Jesus Christ, the mission of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary is to be totally committed to the Bible as the Word of God and to be a servant of the churches of the Southern Baptist Convention by training, educating, and preparing ministers of the gospel for more faithful service.
The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary is located in Louisville, Kentucky and is the flagship seminary of the Southern Baptist Convention, or SBC. Southern Seminary or SBTS is the oldest of the seminaries in the SBC and was founded in Greenville, South Carolina in 1859 by James Petigru Boyce who served as its first president. The end of the Civil War found the seminary holding worthless Confederate war bonds, located in newly impoverished South Carolina during Reconstruction. With the financial help of baptist John D. Rockefeller, the seminary relocated to Louisville in 1877. Southern Seminary upholds the SBC Baptist Faith and Message, and its own Abstract of Principles.
Southern Baptist Theological Seminary primarily practices "evangelical" apologetic religious training combined with practical ministerial experience. In this method, students are taught about Baptist theology and other religions so that future ministers, missionaries, and church workers can most effectively communicate and defend their faith to non-Christians. This method of teaching involves evaluating, with a purpose in validating, the Christian Bible to be the inspired word of the Christian God and infallible. They believe that God "created" "male and female."
This understanding of religious education also differs from the critical method of religious training, which is commonly taught in many modern seminaries and universities. In the critical method, the Christian Bible is seen as non-authoritative, and religion is seen as a pure humanity. Religion as an academic discipline occupies itself with the purely objective and non-faith-based study of world religions and religion (all religions, including non-Christian) as a timeless aspect of the human condition.
According to the Southern Baptist Convention, the Seminary has been an innovator in theological education since its founding in 1859 in Greenville, South Carolina as the first seminary of the SBC. 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.
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| Percent of Students International: | 0% |
| On-Campus Housing Available: | Yes |
| Percent of Students Living On-Campus: | 17% |
| Freshman Students Required to Live on Campus: | No |
| Tuition & Fees (undergraduate) | Expenses | ||
Published Tuition and Fees: |
$ 5,010 | ||
Average Tuition for Full-Time Undergrads: |
$ 5,940 | ||
Required Fees for Full-Time Undergrads: |
$ 150 | ||
| Financial Aid | Avg. Amount Received | % of Students Receiving Aid | |
Institutional Grants: |
$ 159 | 33% | |
Student Loans: |
$ 1,587 | 8% | |
Any Aid: |
33% |
| Acceptance Rate: | 86% (Selective) |
| Application Fee: | $ 35.00 |
| Formal Demonstration of Competencies: | Not Required |
| High School Diploma or Equivalent: | Not Required |
| High School GPA: | Not Required |
| High School Rank: | Not Required |
| High School Record: | Required |
| Recommendations: | Required |
| TOEFL: | Required |
| Test Scores: | Not Required |