The tragic events of his family’s life in Birmingham helped Dockery see the urgent need for progress in race relations. After becoming dean, Dockery named the first two African-American faculty members in the School of Theology at SBTS. And during his two decades of presidency at Union, he hired more minority faculty, established a center for racial reconciliation, and saw the minority student enrollment rise from 9 percent to 20 percent.

David Dockery, president of Trinity International University, knows the feeling of exhaustion. His wife, Lanese, gave birth to their three boys in three years. While he was president at Union University, one student shot another, and an EF4 tornado tore through while half of the students were on campus.

But the most emotionally exhausting day in his life came on January 24, 1992.

“It was one of the happiest days and one of the saddest days of our lives jammed together,” he said.

For Dockery, January 24 started early. His commute to downtown Nashville normally took about 20 minutes. Although he was an assistant professor at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary (SBTS) in Louisville, he was on loan to the Southern Baptist Sunday School Board (precursor to LifeWay Christian Resources) in order to serve as the general editor for the New American Commentary series.

But that Friday the drive was three hours, and took him up Interstate 65 back home to the SBTS campus in Louisville.

That he was employed at the seminary at all was a minor miracle, the result of a growing conservative resurgence in the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC), which included pressure to hire faculty who affirmed biblical inerrancy at SBC institutions.

January 24 would mark a sharp turning point, both in his life and also in the theological direction of the SBC’s oldest seminary.

Dawn of the Conservative Resurgence

After World War II, the SBC shifted from a theological focus to a programmatic focus, Dockery wrote. Southern Baptists filled their Sunday schools in the 1950s, but many leaders drifted away from biblical orthodoxy.

As in many other post-war denominations, SBC seminary faculty in the 1960s attempted to fit the Bible and science together in a way that meant “personal religion can be held by intelligent people,” according to progressive pastor Cecil Sherman. Intelligent people believed science, which appeared to be on Darwin’s side, so biblical accounts that seemed too hard to believe—a six-day creation, a worldwide flood, a fish swallowing a man, or a virgin giving birth—ended up on the chopping block, SBTS dean Gregory Wills wrote in 2010.

The progressive trend continued into the ’70s and ’80s, when “SBTS wanted very badly to be seen as a peer to the divinity schools at Duke, Yale, and Princeton,” Dockery said. “Academically, Southern was always out in front among the SBC seminaries. But in terms of relating to the people in the pew, the seminary was often out of touch.”

Appalled by theological confusion across the SBC, Southern Baptists in the pulpits and pews began to pressure the seminaries, eventually compelling the presidents to promise to hire staff who believed in the inerrancy of the Bible.

“SBTS faculty started doing research to see if they could find a conservative Southern Baptist who understood Baptist life, who affirmed biblical inerrancy, and who would work constructively with them as a faculty member,” Dockery said. They found one teaching at a small college in Dallas and serving as the editor of its theological journal.

“I went as the county fair blue-ribbon conservative, and taught New Testament and theology,” he said with a grin.

Dockery remembers sitting with the faculty during convocation at the start of his second year.

“[President Roy Honeycutt’s] address was on Galatians 4, on the story of Sarah and Hagar and the importance of Christian freedom,” Dockery recalled. “Then he said, ‘The Hagarites, they’re bound to the law—you know, people like these inerrantists who can’t understand the freedom of the Word of God.’

“Every faculty member turned and looked at me. Every one of them,” he said. “I thought, I am an alien in a foreign land.”

(Later, a colleague broke the tension with a sign on his door: “Hagarites live here.”)

Dockery taught at the school for two years before taking a leave of absence to work on the conservative New American Commentary in Nashville. While he was there, a dean position at SBTS opened up.

The job was an influential one—hiring faculty, deciding on academic programs, and helping shape the vision for the school. Under pressure from the board to find a conservative, the administration chose Dockery.

But the faculty—almost entirely made up of moderates or progressives—were scheduled to vote on January 24, and no one was sure what they’d do.

Afternoon Vote

After lunch on January 24, wearing his standard-fare dark suit, Dockery stood before about 70 faculty members, microphone in hand, and answered questions.

They asked him about theology and church polity. They asked about his leadership style and understanding of shared governance. They asked about accreditation issues. They asked how he would represent the faculty to the administrators, how he would represent the faculty to the board, how he would represent the seminary externally.

It lasted two and a half hours.

“I was prepared for that,” Dockery said. “The Lord was with me that day.”

Afterward, Dockery was stashed in a nearby office while the faculty took just 20 minutes to approve him with a 95 percent majority.

“It was the biggest day of my life professionally at that point,” Dockery said. Elated, he called his wife to let her know he was on his way. All was well; she couldn’t wait to see him.

He set off on the three-hour drive home.

Worst News

When Dockery walked into his rented home in northern Nashville, he immediately knew something was wrong. His three active boys, ages 10, 11, and 12, were in the living room with his wife, Lanese. Everyone was crying.

“They had just received a phone call from Birmingham,” Dockery said. Both he and Lanese had grown up there, in the middle of race riots and Bull Connor and Martin Luther King Jr.’s jailhouse stay.

“PawPaw’s been shot,” the boys told him.

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