The Cordele dispatch. (Cordele, Ga.) 19??-1971, 1916-05-10
WHAT THE sAPTIsTs NEED.

logical Seminary that needs unlVer-
sity, but the young man, the student
who is looking for a broader intellect
nal training. 1t is not Baptist Uni
yersity that the Baptisis need. There
can be no such thing. There might be
some Baptist school on the order of
that the good Baptists of the state
have seen fit to call Mercer Univer-
sity, but that is all. The word "Bap-
tist" is restriction, limitation, none
the less honored or sacred for it's be-
ing so, but attached to any educational
institution in its primary meaning, it
makes such institution denomination
al. Then it is not university.
The Christian Index, the organ of
the Baptists of Georgia, is evidently
watching the Methodists in their work
for Emory University. 1t suggests the
establishment of Southern Baptist
University in connection with the
seminary in Louisville. The Metho-
dist are not promising Georgia and
the south a UNCONVENTIONAL school in
Emory university. They are said to
be working for a real university where
educational research and investiga-
ton will be unhampered. They are
trying to rise above the razor backed"
trustee-ridden educational institution
where ones religious belief must be
first tested out
The seminary doesn't need any Bap-
fist University. 1t could not have it
if the buildings were there and the
money all ready in the treasury with
which to run hundred years. Semi
naries do not run universities ON the
side. Universities, the large and most
useful ones, have courses in theology
where the seminary training is cared
for. Young men do not go to the SEM
inaries looking for university train
ing, nor should they be forced to go
there without it. The northern uni
versities are educating our southern
men now for the reason that there is
no great southern university no well
equipped southern institution. 1t is to
be regretted, but it is also true that
most of the better trained ministers
of the south get their training in the
north.
The Index suggests that the teach
ers in our Baptist schools and colleges
should get their training in Baptist
university and its great complaint is
that we get no trained Baptist teach
ers for the Baptist schools. Where
would the university instructors get
their training If the whole thing must
be strictly Baptist?
If the Baptists of Georgia-we are
speaking of those we know-ever rise
to anything great in intellectual train
ing, they must put aside all this. De-
nominational jealousies in education
are spelling disaster at every jump for
Georgia Baptists. Don't forget that.
We are too much Baptsts this and
Baptists that and too little of the real
desire for broader, better education.
We think just now of poor Mercer.
What a chance the Baptists have had
in this school! And what an oppor-
tunity is slipping If all the denom-
national jealousies that have bound
it and bounded its otherwise
steady growth could have been de-
sroyed in embryo, the Index could
have written a gloriously different
chapter.
We do need Baptist support of real
university. We have not the smallest
bit of it in Mercer We do not need
Baptist trained for Baptist everything.
First thing the Index and all of us
know, there will be no Baptist to an
swer roll call. We need broader ed
ucational outlook, then the great uni
versity to give US back young men cap
able of doing our thinking and preach
ing. The whole rank and file of Bap-
lists have now a general complaint
against too much Baptist and too lit
tie real training for our boys and
girls. Let us be done with. 1t is in
juring our cause.
Nord.Ia,s Mav0r did NOT mt MANY