Denver Seminary - History

History

Founded in 1950, Dr. Carey Thomas became the Seminary's first president in 1951.

The Seminary was founded by members of the newly founded Conservative Baptist Association. This is a group of churches that separated from the Northern Baptist Convention over theological differences stemming from the Fundamentalist-Modernist Controversy conflict earlier in the twentieth century. The school was originally known as the Conservative Baptist Theological Seminary and, in 1982, changed its name to Denver Conservative Baptist Seminary. The school changed its name again in 1998 to Denver Seminary to reflect its growing appeal to a wide-spectrum of evangelical students, most of whom were no longer from the Conservative Baptists Association. Yet, the Seminary maintains its Baptist roots by requiring all full-time faculty to sign a doctrinal statement that is baptistic in nature. Students, staff, and adjunct faculty, however, are only required to sign the statement of faith used by the National Association of Evangelicals.

After Thomas' death in 1956, Vernon Grounds became the second president and remained so until 1979; he was named the seminary's chancellor in 1993. In 2002, Senior Professor of Church History Bruce Shelley authored a biography on Grounds titled Transformed by Love: The Vernon Grounds Story. This book gives a comprehensive overview of Denver Seminary's history as it developed from a small denominational school to a major evangelical seminary under Grounds' leadership.

Denver Seminary was previously located in Englewood, Colorado on the site of the former Kent School for Girls. It moved to a newly built campus in Littleton, Colorado in July 2005. Extensive renovations were made to the campus in 2011 that include several renovated classrooms to increase capacity and an addition to the library to serve as a student center.