ATLANTA (ABP) — In a move that will put an American Baptist history collection and a formerly Southern Baptist history group under the same roof, the Baptist History and Heritage Society announced Feb. 23 that it will relocate to Mercer University.
The society's main offices will move from Tennessee to the school's Atlanta campus in July, officials said. Mercer's main campus is in Macon, Ga.
Last September, the American Baptist Historical Society also announced plans to consolidate its archival collections at Mercer. The American Baptist group holds the largest collection of Baptist history resources in the world.
The American Baptist archives are in a building formerly used by the Georgia Baptist Convention. The state convention severed its historic ties to Mercer in 2005 because of disagreements over doctrine and denominational politics.
Now joining the American Baptist collection in that building will be the Baptist History and Heritage Society, successor to the former Southern Baptist Historical Commission.
Mercer officials have said they want to establish the Baptist school as a university with a national focus. Bill Underwood, Mercer's new president, has said the history societies' presence would strengthen that goal.
In a Mercer press release, Charles Deweese, executive director for the Baptist History and Heritage Society, said concentrating the historical resources at Mercer would help the 174-year-old school become the center for “the intellectual study of Baptists in the world.”
“As an independent Baptist historical society, we are focused on helping Baptists of all traditions to conserve and share their heritage,” he said. “The American Baptist Historical Society's archives, combined with the resources of Mercer University, make our new location ideal.”
Founded in 1938 as the Southern Baptist Historical Society, the group became an auxiliary to the Southern Baptist Historical Commission in 1952. The SBC decided to eliminate denominational support for the commission in 1995.
The offices of the Baptist History and Heritage Society are currently located in the Tennessee Baptist Convention's offices in Brentwood, Tenn., near Nashville.
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American Baptists will move historical collections to Atlanta