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EspañolDUKE KIMBROUGH MCCALL
'Duke K. McCall' (b. circa 1914, Meridian, Mississippi) is a Christian religious leader prominent in Baptist life for more than sixty years. He served as a pastor, as chief executive officer of the Southern Baptist Convention Executive Committee, as president of two Southern Baptist seminaries, and as president of the Baptist World Alliance.
McCall grew up in Memphis, Tennessee. His father, John W. McCall, was a judge; his mother, Lizette Kimbrough McCall, was an active leader in Southern Baptist mission support. With plans to become a lawyer, young Duke entered Furman University, Greenville, South Carolina, where he graduated as valedictorian in 1935. At Furman, McCall met Greenville resident Marguerite Mullinnix (1914-1980). The couple married shortly after graduation and raised four sons -- John Richard, Michael, and twins Duke Jr. and Douglas. After his first wife's death, McCall married Winona McCandless of Louisville, Kentucky.
After making a decision to pursue ministry instead of law, McCall enrolled for graduate-professional studies at his denomination's flagship school, Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky, earning the Th.M. degree in 1938 while serving as a fellow to the Seminary's president, Old Testament Scholar John R. Sampey. McCall then pursued the Ph.D. degree, earning it in 1941. During this time, he was also pastor of a small Baptist church in Woodville, Tennessee, earning ten dollars per Sunday.
McCall’s first full-time pastorate, during the early years of World War II, was at Broadway Baptist Church, a prominent congregation in downtown Louisville.
In 1943, the 29-year-old McCall was asked to become president of the Baptist Bible Institute of New Orleans, Louisiana. Within three years, he had led the school’s transformation into the New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary.
In 1946, at age 32, he was chosen as Executive Secretary-Treasurer of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Executive Committee, leading it during a time of explosive postwar growth that eventually saw the SBC become the largest Protestant faith group in the nation. He also led war relief efforts by the SBC, travelling widely in Europe and Asia to survey recovery work. McCall’s success in this high-profile denominational post commended him to the trustees of his ''alma mater'', Southern Seminary in Louisville, in their search for a president following Ellis Fuller’s sudden death in 1950.
McCall’s tenure at Southern (1951-82) reached into four different decades during which he led the seminary to unprecedented heights in academic quality, financial support and enrollment, ultimately exceeding 3,000 students from 26 denominations and all 50 states. With McCall's encouragement, many students from overseas came to Louisville for doctoral work in preparation for leading their national denominations and seminaries.
The seminary faculty, nearly all Baptists by heritage and commitment, was enriched and broadened through an extensive sabbatical study program -- devised by McCall -- enabling most professors to study in major overseas universities and theological centers, including Oxford, Zurich, Tuebingen and Goettingen, underwritten by the seminary. McCall also completed two successful endowment campaigns, resulting in a dozen endowed professorships and major campus improvements. Among other achievements:
★ Breaking from the traditional seminary structure, he led Southern to organize into four graduate schools -- theology, Christian education, church music, and the nation's first accredited, seminary-based school of social work. McCall also led the seminary to launch Boyce Bible School (now called Boyce College), an adult education division for students without college prerequisites.
★ One of McCall's first decisions as president was to quietly integrate the seminary's classrooms in 1951, in defiance of Kentucky's segregationist state law and contrary to the practice of most of the seminary's constituents. Later, at the height of the civil rights movement, Martin Luther King Jr. was invited to speak on campus, making Southern the only SBC institution to host the Baptist civil rights leader.
★ McCall fostered the seminary's participation in collaborative relationships beyond the campus. In the 1970s Southern Seminary was a founding member of Kentuckiana Metroversity, linking two local state universities, two liberal arts colleges and two seminaries to provide students of each school with access to courses at all schools, interdisciplinary teaching and research across institutions, and joint library catalogs. Southern also helped establish the Theological Education Association of Mid-America (TEAM-A), an ecumenical partnership with nearby seminaries of the Roman Catholic, Disciples, and Presbyterian traditions. It was a pioneer in the "cluster" concept of theological education that later became common across the nation.
★ With McCall's encouragement, the seminary staff provided leadership to various projects of the 200- member Association of Theological Schools in the U.S. and Canada (ATS), resulting in a series of ecumenical summer institutes in educational management for deans and presidents of seminaries, and a groundbreaking national study of the funding of theological education.
★ McCall also helped guide Southern Seminary through numerous challenges, including the launch of new Baptist seminaries in North Carolina (1951) and Missouri (1958), flanking the Louisville school and sharply accelerating competititon for students and financial support; a 1958 controversy with a dozen members of the School of Theology faculty over administrative policies, resulting in their resignations; and the beginnings of the conservative takeover of the Southern Baptist Convention in the late 1970s.
In the midst of a busy administrative schedule, McCall found time to write a number of books, including ''What is the Church?, God’s Hurry,'' and ''A Story of Stewardship.'' For 30 years he wrote a monthly opinion column, ''Thinking Aloud,'' widely read among SBC leaders. In the early 1960s he was asked by Louisville TV station WHAS to help inaugurate an unprecedented weekly interfaith dialogue, ''Moral Side of the News'', in which Protestant, Catholic and Jewish leaders discussed the week's headlines in light of faith.
As he was preparing to step down from the presidency of Southern Seminary, McCall was elected to a five-year term as president of the Baptist World Alliance, representing 37 million Baptists in 120 nations. While traveling worldwide for the BWA (1980-85), he continued to lend his energies to the struggle for control and theological direction of the SBC that raged in the 1980s. In 1982, he narrowly lost the SBC presidential election. Later, he helped form the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, an alternative association of moderate and progressive SBC congregations.
His work in theological education and international Baptist life has been recognized through the endowment of the Duke K. McCall Chair of Christian Mission and World Christianity at the Baptist Theological Seminary at Richmond, Va.
Now retired from a lifetime of denominational work, McCall resides with his wife Winona in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida.
★ Southern Baptist Theological Seminary President Duke K. McCall
★ ''Duke McCall: An Oral History.'' with A. Ronald Tonks. Brentwood, Tenn.: Baptist History and Heritage Society, Nashville: Fields Publishing, Inc., 2001. 480 pp.
| Contents |
| Childhood, college and marriage |
| Early career |
| Denominational leadership |
| Southern Seminary presidency |
| Writing and television |
| Baptist World Alliance and beyond |
| References |
Childhood, college and marriage
McCall grew up in Memphis, Tennessee. His father, John W. McCall, was a judge; his mother, Lizette Kimbrough McCall, was an active leader in Southern Baptist mission support. With plans to become a lawyer, young Duke entered Furman University, Greenville, South Carolina, where he graduated as valedictorian in 1935. At Furman, McCall met Greenville resident Marguerite Mullinnix (1914-1980). The couple married shortly after graduation and raised four sons -- John Richard, Michael, and twins Duke Jr. and Douglas. After his first wife's death, McCall married Winona McCandless of Louisville, Kentucky.
Early career
After making a decision to pursue ministry instead of law, McCall enrolled for graduate-professional studies at his denomination's flagship school, Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky, earning the Th.M. degree in 1938 while serving as a fellow to the Seminary's president, Old Testament Scholar John R. Sampey. McCall then pursued the Ph.D. degree, earning it in 1941. During this time, he was also pastor of a small Baptist church in Woodville, Tennessee, earning ten dollars per Sunday.
McCall’s first full-time pastorate, during the early years of World War II, was at Broadway Baptist Church, a prominent congregation in downtown Louisville.
In 1943, the 29-year-old McCall was asked to become president of the Baptist Bible Institute of New Orleans, Louisiana. Within three years, he had led the school’s transformation into the New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary.
Denominational leadership
In 1946, at age 32, he was chosen as Executive Secretary-Treasurer of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Executive Committee, leading it during a time of explosive postwar growth that eventually saw the SBC become the largest Protestant faith group in the nation. He also led war relief efforts by the SBC, travelling widely in Europe and Asia to survey recovery work. McCall’s success in this high-profile denominational post commended him to the trustees of his ''alma mater'', Southern Seminary in Louisville, in their search for a president following Ellis Fuller’s sudden death in 1950.
Southern Seminary presidency
McCall’s tenure at Southern (1951-82) reached into four different decades during which he led the seminary to unprecedented heights in academic quality, financial support and enrollment, ultimately exceeding 3,000 students from 26 denominations and all 50 states. With McCall's encouragement, many students from overseas came to Louisville for doctoral work in preparation for leading their national denominations and seminaries.
The seminary faculty, nearly all Baptists by heritage and commitment, was enriched and broadened through an extensive sabbatical study program -- devised by McCall -- enabling most professors to study in major overseas universities and theological centers, including Oxford, Zurich, Tuebingen and Goettingen, underwritten by the seminary. McCall also completed two successful endowment campaigns, resulting in a dozen endowed professorships and major campus improvements. Among other achievements:
★ Breaking from the traditional seminary structure, he led Southern to organize into four graduate schools -- theology, Christian education, church music, and the nation's first accredited, seminary-based school of social work. McCall also led the seminary to launch Boyce Bible School (now called Boyce College), an adult education division for students without college prerequisites.
★ One of McCall's first decisions as president was to quietly integrate the seminary's classrooms in 1951, in defiance of Kentucky's segregationist state law and contrary to the practice of most of the seminary's constituents. Later, at the height of the civil rights movement, Martin Luther King Jr. was invited to speak on campus, making Southern the only SBC institution to host the Baptist civil rights leader.
★ McCall fostered the seminary's participation in collaborative relationships beyond the campus. In the 1970s Southern Seminary was a founding member of Kentuckiana Metroversity, linking two local state universities, two liberal arts colleges and two seminaries to provide students of each school with access to courses at all schools, interdisciplinary teaching and research across institutions, and joint library catalogs. Southern also helped establish the Theological Education Association of Mid-America (TEAM-A), an ecumenical partnership with nearby seminaries of the Roman Catholic, Disciples, and Presbyterian traditions. It was a pioneer in the "cluster" concept of theological education that later became common across the nation.
★ With McCall's encouragement, the seminary staff provided leadership to various projects of the 200- member Association of Theological Schools in the U.S. and Canada (ATS), resulting in a series of ecumenical summer institutes in educational management for deans and presidents of seminaries, and a groundbreaking national study of the funding of theological education.
★ McCall also helped guide Southern Seminary through numerous challenges, including the launch of new Baptist seminaries in North Carolina (1951) and Missouri (1958), flanking the Louisville school and sharply accelerating competititon for students and financial support; a 1958 controversy with a dozen members of the School of Theology faculty over administrative policies, resulting in their resignations; and the beginnings of the conservative takeover of the Southern Baptist Convention in the late 1970s.
Writing and television
In the midst of a busy administrative schedule, McCall found time to write a number of books, including ''What is the Church?, God’s Hurry,'' and ''A Story of Stewardship.'' For 30 years he wrote a monthly opinion column, ''Thinking Aloud,'' widely read among SBC leaders. In the early 1960s he was asked by Louisville TV station WHAS to help inaugurate an unprecedented weekly interfaith dialogue, ''Moral Side of the News'', in which Protestant, Catholic and Jewish leaders discussed the week's headlines in light of faith.
Baptist World Alliance and beyond
As he was preparing to step down from the presidency of Southern Seminary, McCall was elected to a five-year term as president of the Baptist World Alliance, representing 37 million Baptists in 120 nations. While traveling worldwide for the BWA (1980-85), he continued to lend his energies to the struggle for control and theological direction of the SBC that raged in the 1980s. In 1982, he narrowly lost the SBC presidential election. Later, he helped form the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, an alternative association of moderate and progressive SBC congregations.
His work in theological education and international Baptist life has been recognized through the endowment of the Duke K. McCall Chair of Christian Mission and World Christianity at the Baptist Theological Seminary at Richmond, Va.
Now retired from a lifetime of denominational work, McCall resides with his wife Winona in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida.
References
★ Southern Baptist Theological Seminary President Duke K. McCall
★ ''Duke McCall: An Oral History.'' with A. Ronald Tonks. Brentwood, Tenn.: Baptist History and Heritage Society, Nashville: Fields Publishing, Inc., 2001. 480 pp.
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