By John Pierce and Greg Warner
Associated Baptist Press
Can Baptists build and sustain a national Baptist university? It hasn't been done yet, said top leaders at Mercer University, but Mercer has as good a chance as anyone.
“Mercer may be the best hope for preserving the principles that have defined Baptists,” Mercer president-elect Bill Underwood told school supporters Jan. 20. “Today there remain relatively few Baptist universities that have not been lost to either the threat of fundamentalism or the threat of secularization. Among those that remain, fewer than five have the strength and resources to emerge as great national universities. Mercer is one of the very few. Together, we can do it here.
“The fact that no one else has done it should not be discouraging,” Underwood said. “To the contrary, that's what provides us with the opportunity to do something truly special. Mercer can be the intellectual engine of a dynamic worldwide free Baptist movement.”
Underwood addressed a Jan. 19-20 gathering of Baptist supporters of Mercer-his first major speech since being elected president Dec. 2.
Kirby Godsey, who will retire in June after 27 years as Mercer's president, asked participants, mostly Georgians, to help “chart a course toward being the model of a premiere Baptist university.”
Godsey said the two-day forum was “the first step in a long journey” toward sustaining and improving the university's “Baptistness.”
The “Baptist summit” came on the heels of the Georgia Baptist Convention voting in November to sever its 173-year tie to the university, prompting Mercer leaders to rally supporters to make up the loss of funding and strengthen its Baptist identity.
“Mercer can be the single greatest resource in Baptist life, if Baptists will embrace us,” said Underwood, a former law professor at Baylor University in Waco, Texas. The Texas Baptist school also has flirted with national status, invoking the model of Catholic Notre Dame.
Walter Shurden, former chair of Mercer's Christianity department and current director of the university's Center for Baptist Studies, said he would like to see Mercer become a national university that is fully integrated into Baptist life, but he acknowledged history is against any Baptist university attaining elite status.
He pointed to two now secular universities with deep Baptist roots. Baptists founded Rhode Island College in 1764. Today it is Brown University, an Ivy League school in Providence, R.I.
Early Baptist leader Luther Rice started Columbian College in 1821. Today it has evolved into the respected George Washington University. “We lost it!” said Shurden of the Washington, D.C., school formed to educate Baptist ministers.
Shurden noted Mercer's similar beginning, but said he hopes for a better outcome. Prominent Baptist leader Jesse Mercer founded the school in 1833.
Shurden called on Mercer administrators to hire faculty that support the university's Baptist identity and mission. “If Mercer is to become a national Baptist university, it will require more Baptist faculty and non-Baptist faculty who care about this Baptist identity.”
Shurden said that an effort among some Southern Baptists in the 1920s to designate Mercer and Baylor as national universities of the east and west failed. The situation would have resembled what United Methodists have done with Emory University in Atlanta and Southern Methodist University in Dallas, he said.
“We were left with good schools but all regional or state schools,” said Shurden.
Shurden noted that other religious traditions have done what Baptists have failed to do. He cited Brandeis, Brigham Young and Notre Dame as national universities that have not shied away from their respective Jewish, Mormon and Catholic identities.
“Mercer is a Baptist name … in the same way Brigham Young is a Mormon name,” said Shurden. He said Baptists have an image problem that could hinder its educational efforts, but so do Catholics.
Shurden called on trustees to “act quickly” in assuring that the board maintains a Baptist majority and selects only active Baptists as future presidents.
Associated Baptist Press