Twenty years and counting: Mohler reflects on his presidency of Southern Seminary

In April 1995, he was completely spent.

“I thought it was all over,” said R. Albert Mohler Jr. “I just thought I didn’t have anymore to give. I thought this was it.”

Two weeks earlier, the faculty of Southern Seminary, where Mohler had been president for less than two years, overwhelmingly supported a motion that explicitly rebuked him and repudiated his policies, with only two members voting for him and two voting in absentia. The days that followed weren’t any easier.

Mohler even recalled an Easter party when some of those who opposed him were mean to his children who were only six years old and three years old at the time.

“I sat down on the floor in the guest room in the President’s Home with Mary, and we just closed the door and lost it. And we, honestly, as tearfully as we could, prayed, ‘Lord, it’s in your hands; we’ve got nothing more to give.’”

In a recent interview with Towers editors, Mohler discussed the tumultuous earlier years of his presidency, how he arrived at Southern Seminary and the work that remains at the seminary.

The vote of no confidence resulted from Diana Garland’s resignation as dean of the School of Church Social Work because of disagreements with Mohler concerning the election of faculty who supported the ordination of women. The reaction to her resignation and the controversy surrounding the Carver School was fierce, leading to the vote which supported Garland and rebuked Mohler.

And according to Gregory A. Wills’ history of the seminary, Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, 1859-2009, some faculty urged the trustee chairman to remove Mohler as president.

“I didn’t fear being removed from office, simply because the vast majority of Southern Baptist leadership, and specifically the trustees at Southern Seminary, knew that it was going to be a fight,” Mohler told Towers editors.

But his confidence in trustees’ support didn’t lessen the toll on him and his family. And at times, he even thought he might implement a plan to recover the seminary only to be unable to rebuild afterward.

“I felt very imperiled about being able to be the president who would be able to build the institution on the other side,” he said. The trustees “needed me at least to get the hard work done and do the deconstructive work, even if I didn’t have the opportunity to have the constructive work on the other side.” Keep reading

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Recovering a Vision: The Presidency of R. Albert Mohler Jr. [Video]