Toward the end of his life, the great dissenter and short-time Baptist Roger Williams (1603-1683) reflected on the founding of Providence Plantation in the American colony of Rhode Island, writing:
I desired it might be for a shelter for persons distressed of conscience. I then communicated my purchase unto loving friends who desired to take shelter here with me.
I’ve often thought that Corey D.B. Walker, dean of the School of Divinity, Wake Forest University, had something like that in mind when, in 2025, he proposed that the school host a gathering of alumni of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. Last year’s August convocation brought together more than 100 people. A second such occasion is now scheduled for Friday evening to Saturday afternoon, August 7-8, on the Wake Forest campus, with an ever growing and widening guest list.
Bill Leonard
This year’s event focuses on “The Legacy of Dissent,” an opportunity for graduates, faculty and friends of a particular era at Southern Seminary, with friends from other places and times, to come together for food, fellowship, conversation and worship. The program begins at 5 p.m. on Friday, Aug. 7 with a cocktail reception (OKJ, it’s that era at SBTS), followed by dinner, table conversations and a brief introduction to the legacy of dissent (I’ve been asked to make a run at that.). The evening concludes with additional table discussion of the topic.
The convocation on Saturday, Aug. 8, begins at 8:30 a.m. with “a light breakfast” (I’m guessing that means no gravy on the biscuits), followed at 9 a.m. with a session titled, “Dissent: a Baptist Case Study,” led by former SBTS theology professor Molly Marshall, now president of United Theological Seminary of the Twin Cities. Discussion follows with a panel including Linda McKinnish Bridges, founding faculty member and then president of Baptist Theological Seminary of Richmond.
Following a break, conversation addresses “A Renewed Call to Dissent,” led by Jon Singletary, former dean of the Diana Garland School of Social Work at Baylor University and current professor of social work there. Diana Garland was dean of the Carver School of Social Work at SBTS and founding dean of Baylor’s social work school. Discussion follows, led by Singletary and others.
Lunch is followed by worship, including Holy Communion. Preacher for the service is Ronald Bobo, now senior pastor of West Side Missionary Baptist Church, Waterford, Mich., and executive director of Sharing Hope International Ministries. Leading worship will be Scottie Stamper, founder of The Browning Retreat and director of adult spiritual formation at Christ Church, Charlotte. (l am honored to be included with this group of folks and this WFU Divinity School endeavor.)
“The Baptist legacy of dissent was there from the beginning.”
Why the issue of dissent? An uncluttered response might simply be: Because we live in the somewhat less than United States of America in the year 2026, a land where freedoms long taken for granted are threatened or simply ignored, all too often in Jesus’ name.
The Baptist legacy of dissent was there from the beginning.
The great Baptist historian William L. Lumpkin wrote:
A believer’s church is the foundation of Baptist affirmation of freedom of conscience and religious liberty. Faith must remain uncoerced by state or state-privileged religion. God alone is judge of conscience. Baptists long affirmed the importance of national citizenship but reserved the right to dissent should the state require an obedience that contradicted faith and conscience.
In 1645, Anglican Daniel Featley spoke for the Established Church in describing the people he called “Dippers”:
They preach, and print, and practice their heretical impieties openly; they hold their conventicles weekly in our chief Cities, and Suburbs thereof, and there prophesy by turns; and … they build one another in the faith of their sect, to the ruin of their souls; they flock in great multitudes to their Jordans, and both sexes enter into the River, and are dipt after their manner with a kind of spell containing … their erroneous tenets. … And as they defile our Rivers with their impure washings, and our pulpits with their false prophecies and fanatical enthusiasms, so the presses sweat and grown under the load of their blasphemies.
Centuries later, the great Reinhold Niebuhr said it like this: “Consent makes democracy possible, dissent makes democracy meaningful.”
Thus dissent is not simply past-active, it is immanently pro-active, right now. So, Baptist or not, join us Aug. 7 and 8 at Wake Forest University as we explore the legacy of dissent, a Baptist case.
And bring your distressed conscience with you.
Editor’s note: Bill is too humble to explain this, but what he’s writing about here is the Bill J. Leonard Summer Institute at Wake Forest University School of Divinity. This annual event was established to honor and extend his legacy as a renowned scholar, teacher and founding dean of the School of Divinity. Learn more about the schedule and register here.