OBU’s Center for Baptist Renewal renamed after Dockery, George

NEW ORLEANS – With a commitment to go “deep in the Christian tradition,” while retrieving what is “good and healthy” to apply to the modern day, Oklahoma Baptist University President Heath Thomas announced the renaming of the Shawnee-based university’s Center for Baptist Renewal in honor of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary President David S. Dockery and Founding Dean of Beeson Divinity School Timothy George during a ceremony in the exhibit hall at the Southern Baptist Convention on June 12.

Dockery said he was “deeply honored,” “surprised,” and “humbled” by the honor, before reading a statement on behalf of George who was not present. In his statement, George expressed his full “support” of the “open engagement with a great tradition of Christian believing and thinking this center aims to promote.”

The Dockery and George Center for Baptist Renewal will be housed in OBU’s Hershel H. Hobbs School of Theology and Ministry, said Thomas, a 2001 Master of Arts in theology graduate of Southwestern Seminary.

The Center for Baptist Renewal at Oklahoma Baptist University was renamed the Dockery and George Center for Baptist Renewal in honor of David S. Dockery, president of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, and Timothy George, founding dean of Beeson Divinity School.

Thomas lauded Dockery for the ways he has “effectively” helped believers “think Christianly” and assisted Baptists to “think about what it means to be Baptist.” Calling him “one of our great teachers in integrating faith with all areas of knowledge,” Thomas thanked Dockery for four decades of leadership in Christian higher education and said through the Dockery and George Center the university is “delighted to equip this next generation to live out their faith faithfully, with strong theology that’s centered in Christ and His good news.”

Explaining he and George first met in the late 1980s when they began working on the book Baptist Theologians, Dockery said the two theologians “laid out a vision for the renewal of Baptist theology in Southern Baptist life and in Baptist life more broadly for the decades to come.” Dockery added that in the late 1980s “finding capable Baptist theologians” who were simultaneously “faithful to the tradition and faithful to the Scriptures and faithful to the Gospel” were “few and far between,” while there were theologians, including the late James Leo Garrett Jr, who were “pioneers” who “prepared the way for us to build on the work.”

Dockery said he and George believe that “within God’s good providence, if you look around, [and] see the theologians who are coming along in all of our institutions, God has begun to answer that prayer,” as “multiple volumes of theology” are “forthcoming,” the next generation is being prepared, and the church is being strengthened “to be more faithful in carrying out its mission.”

Thomas announced that he, Dockery, Matthew Emerson, Brandon Smith, and “scholars from all over the world” are fellows of the Dockery and George Center for Baptist Renewal.