Quirky philanthropy and reform theology seem unlikely
bedfellows, but between them they have created one of the newest
and most interesting schools of divinity in the United States.
Welcome to Beeson, an increasingly admired evangelical but
ecumenical seminary on the campus of Samford University near
Birmingham, Alabama. Financially endowed beyond the dreams of most
other comparable religious teaching establishments, Beeson
celebrates its 21st anniversary this year. It owes its rising
reputation to two remarkable founding fathers.
The crusty and mildly eccentric benefactor behind the school was
Ralph Waldo Beeson (1900–1990), a former sales agent for the
Liberty National Life Insurance Company (now Torchmark). He bet his
life savings on Liberty shares during the stock exchange crash of
1929, eventually selling them at the top of the market in the
1980s. This made him a fortune of well over $100 million. He spent
little of it on himself, living so frugally that his reluctance to
buy new trousers became a local legend.
Beeson lived in a modest home on Shades Mountain overlooking the
Samford campus. He donated several new buildings to the university,
saying that he liked to look out from his bedroom and keep an eye
on his philanthropic investments. By far the most generous of these
was his endowment of a new divinity achool with a gift worth more
than $70 million, believed to be the largest ever from a single
donor in the history of theological education. In 1988 he attached
conditions to his founder’s bequest that have subsequently shaped
the school’s scholarship and spirituality.
Beeson was brought up as a Methodist—his father’s name was John
Wesley Beeson—he married a Baptist, and they became Presbyterians,
but he resisted the narrow exclusivism of these traditions. He
insisted that his school should be interdenominational and
nonsectarian while at the same time staying faithful to Scripture,
to historic Christian doctrine, and to the heritage of the
Reformation. The result is that Beeson today describes itself as
“confessional, covenantal, evangelical, ecumenical and
reformational,” a combination that exists in no other seminary on
an American university campus.
Ralph Waldo Beeson requested two other conditions that have
proved distinctive for his school. First, that it should stay
small, and second, that it should be easily affordable. Under the
terms of his will, the student body is limited to a total of 180.
Students pay maximum annual fees of $5,500, although two-thirds of
them make average payments of $1,700 and one-third pay nothing at
all. By comparison, most other divinity students in peer
institutions (i.e., Wheaton; Fuller; Dallas Theological Seminary;
Gordon-Conwell) have to pay much higher fees— usually at the
$15,000–$20,000 level. Because Beeson is neither driven by
enrollment numbers nor constrained by the usual funding pressures,
it can afford to aim for excellence in both the selection of its
students and the appointment of its faculty.
The other founding father whose name has become almost as
synonymous with the school as the major benefactor’s is its
original and only dean, Dr. Timothy George. In the early days he
was exhorted by calls from Mr. Beeson in his aerie on Shades
Mountain, “Now, Timothy, I want you to keep things orthodox down
there.…I want you to train pastors who can preach.”
Virtually all the young men and women who graduate from Beeson
with its flagship MDiv (Master of Divinity) degree go on to become
pastors who preach in a wide variety of churches and ministries
around the world. They are well grounded in Scripture, as a third
of the curriculum is focused on Greek, Hebrew, and biblical
studies. The leading lights of the faculty include Lyle Dorsett,
who according to his dean “teaches evangelism in a way that brings
together the mind of C. S. Lewis and the passion of Richard
Baxter,” and Robert Smith Jr., a renowned preaching lecturer and
author of several books on pulpit oratory, including the
best-selling Doctrine That Dances: Bringing Doctrinal
Preaching and Teaching to Life.
I met these and other eminent faculty members, as well as many
students, when I recently lectured at Beeson. Modesty compels me to
admit that my favorable view of the school may have been influenced
by the fact that I was there to receive its annual award in
Christian biography for my John Newton: From Dis grace
to Amazing Grace (Crossway, 2007). The institution seems to
have quite a niche in Anglophilia, since recent campus speakers
from my home country have included Margaret Thatcher, John Major,
Cherie Blair, and John Pollock—a far better British biographer than
your columnist. But after making allowances for the possibility
that the prize (and the accompanying check!) may have provided me
with a rose-colored perspective on Beeson, there is at least one
more reason why the school is riding so high. It is the scholarship
and leadership of its dean, Dr. Timothy George.
I FIRST MET GEORGE five years ago when I was writing another
Christian biography, Charles W. Colson: A Life Redeemed
(Doubleday, 2005). T. F. George and J. I. Packer were the principal
Reformed theologians in the galaxy of professors and pastors
assembled by Colson to lead a long- running symposium known as
Evangelicals and Catholics Together (ECT). The quality of these
scholars was so outstanding (the principal Catholics were the late
and much lamented Cardinal Avery Dulles and Richard John Neuhaus)
that their published deliberations broke new ecumenical ground.
However, ECT’s gentle murmurings about unity were reported on the
front page of the New York Times under the ominous
headline “How the Evangelicals and Catholics Joined Forces.” This
cost Colson’s prison ministry over $1 million in withdrawn
donations. Hard-line Reformationists such as R. C. Sproul even
claimed that Rome’s denial of the Lutheran doctrine of sola
fide (justification by faith alone) meant that “the Roman
Catholic church is neither a Christian body nor a Christian
church.” To his credit, Timothy George stood firm through these
bigoted vaporings, and 20 years later ECT continues to make a fine
contribution to the cause of interdenominational understanding.
The episode is important because it shows that behind the wealth
and warm welcome of Beeson lies a dean with a touch of ecumenical
steel. He is a distinguished author in his own right, with notable
works such as Theology of the Reformers and Is
the Father of Jesus the God of Muhammad? (answer:
no). But first and foremost Timothy George is a wide-visioned
educator of excellence, a successful preparer of pastors, and an
internationalist obeyer of Christ’s great commission “Go and make
disciples of all nations.” No wonder Beeson’s impact as a divinity
school is being felt around the world as well as setting a fast and
faithful pace in the groves of theological academe.
