Columbia Theological Seminary history

Columbia Theological Seminary officially opened in 1829 in a house built and owned by the owner of a plantation using the labor of enslaved people in Columbia, South Carolina.

The seminary has nurtured, and has been nurtured by, the southern Presbyterians up through its present affiliation with the Presbyterian Church (United StatesA.). In 1830, Columbia, SC became the first location of the seminary.

John Leighton Wilson, 1833 graduate; first missionaries to West Africa by the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions.

Goulding’s leadership until he left the school in 1834.

Plans for a move from South Carolina to Decatur, Georgia, began in 1924 with the goal of creating a place of “scholarship and piety ”that left the past behind and new work begun“ and the ministry of the Presbyterian Church could be strengthened and enlarged .”

First named The Theological Seminary of the Synod of South Carolina and Georgia, the name was officially changed in 1925 to Columbia Theological Seminary.

In 1927 it moved to its current location in Decatur, Georgia.

The leadership of a young and energetic president, Doctor J. McDowell Richards, brought substantial growth and eventual stability through almost four decades starting in 1932.

Columbia was one of the several PCUS seminaries that joined the PC (United StatesA.) following the 1983 PCUS and United Presbyterian Church in the United StatesA. merger.

GHS also coordinates the maintenance for more than 2,100 markers installed by the State of Georgia prior to 1998.

Erskine Clarke won the prestigious Bancroft Prize given by Columbia University for a work “of exceptional merit” for his book, “Dwelling Place: A Plantation Epic” (2005), a compelling narrative history of four generations of a Georgia plantation’s inhabitants, white and black.

Erskine Clarke, To Count Our Days A History of Columbia Theological Seminary (Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 2019), 6—7.

September 14, 2020, Savannah, GA – The Georgia Historical Society today announced the virtual dedication of a new Georgia historical marker for The Birthplace of Columbia Theological Seminary in Lexington, Georgia.