page_title: Vanderbilt University Divinity School
section_title: Early history
hierarchical_section_title: Vanderbilt University Divinity School / Early history
caption_attribution_description: English: The spire of Benton Chapel at Vanderbilt University
context_page_description: The Vanderbilt Divinity School and Graduate Department of Religion is an interdenominational divinity school at Vanderbilt University, a major research university located in Nashville, Tennessee. It is one of only five university-based schools of religion in the United States without a denominational affiliation that service primarily mainline Protestantism.
context_section_description: Vanderbilt Divinity School was founded in 1875 as the Biblical Department and was under the auspices of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, one predecessor of the present-day United Methodist Church. In 1914, in concert with the University's severance of its ties with the MECS, the school became interdenominational and ecumenical, and in 1915, the school's name was changed from the Biblical Department of Vanderbilt University to the Vanderbilt School of Religion; it adopted its present name in 1956.  The present physical plant of the school, known colloquially as the "quadrangle" or "quad," was completed in 1960; the Benton Chapel that abuts the quad is named for a mid-20th-century dean, John Keith Benton. In 1966 the Graduate School of Theology of Oberlin College in Ohio merged with that of Vanderbilt, increasing the faculty resources of both the Divinity School and the Graduate Department of Religion, as well as the holdings of the school's portion of the University Library.
caption: The spire of Benton Chapel
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