Correction: An earlier version of this article wrongly stated that Scott Pace was the first Southeastern Seminary alumnus to be named president there. Randall Lolley also was an alumnus when he became president.
Trustees of Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary have elected the fourth president of the school’s conservative era.
Scott Pace was named seventh president of the North Carolina school affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention. For now, Pace will continue serving as provost, a role he’s held since June 2023, while adding the title of president-elect.
He will officially succeed Danny Akin July 31.
Southeastern Seminary was the first of the six SBC seminaries to be captured and converted by the so-called “conservative resurgence” that swept the nation’s largest Protestant denomination in the latter part of the 20th century.
President Randall Lolley was forced out by a new conservative majority on the board in 1988. He was replaced by Louis Drummond, who lasted four years as a transitional figure before trustees elected Paige Patterson, a co-architect of the conservative movement. Patterson transformed the school into a bastion of conservative evangelical theology before departing for another SBC seminary, Southwestern Seminary in Texas.
Akin followed Patterson and brought stability and growth to the seminary over two decades. Now his successor was chosen from within the faculty — a first in recent history. Pace has taught at the seminary since 2018.
He earned a master of divinity degree from Southeastern in 2002 and a Ph.D. in applied theology in 2007. Pace previously taught at Oklahoma Baptist University and has experience as a pastor of churches in Oklahoma, Florida and North Carolina.