Academic Freedom and Southern Baptist History‪.‬

Following the 1898 Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) meeting, William Heth Whitsitt, under pressure from a threatening B. H. Carroll and at the encouragement of A. T. Robertson, resigned as president and church history professor of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky. In May 1899 the trustees accepted his resignation. A century later, as Southern Baptists and their institutions stumble into the twenty-first century, one of the most significant challenges facing Southern Baptist teachers, scholars, administrators, and certainly the denomination is the issue of academic freedom. This issue is important both for persons affiliated with Southern Baptist institutions and for those Southern Baptists associated with both non-Southern Baptist denominational institutions and secular institutions.