October 22, 2024
In the spring of 1906, one hundred years before the GBC and Mercer University formally parted ways, the issues leading to that eventual separation were very much in the forefront of the University trustees. It was during an era of theological tension in America known as the Modernist/Fundamentalist Controversy. Although little was published at the time, what transpired has been called the Mercer Heresy Trial of 1906.
Unfortunately, this trial was more than a tragic isolated chapter in the life of Mercer University. It was an early window into the theological struggles that Baptists would confront in the next century . . . and beyond. A struggle that would divide an individual family, the Georgia Baptist, and Southern Baptist families alike.
In the spring of 1906 William Heard Kilpatrick (1871-1965) was a mathematics professor and Vice President of Mercer University. For two years (1903-1905) he had served as the University’s interim President, and many viewed the popular 35-year-old as the logical choice to fill the vacant post of President. Still, others had questions concerning the rumors of his orthodoxy.
“Heard,” as he was known by his family, came from a long line of Baptists. His grandfather James Hall Tanner Kilpatrick (1793-1869) moved to Georgia in June 1822, the same month the GBC was organized at the Powelton Meeting House. Becoming a leading pastor in the Hephzibah Association, J.H.T. Kilpatrick was credited more than any other person for guiding the churches and pastors of the Hephzibah Association from anti-mission to missionary sentiments in the 1820’s and 1830’s. J.H.T. Kilpatrick was a founder of Mercer University serving on its first board of trustees.
Heard Kilpatrick’s father James Hines Kilpatrick (1833-1908) graduated with “first honors” from Mercer in 1853. Following his graduation J.H. Kilpatrick took a position as a schoolteacher in White Plains, Georgia. He soon became the pastor of the White Plains Baptist Church, a church he would serve for 52 years. After the death of J.H. Kilpatrick’s first wife he married Miss Edna P. Heard (1843-1925), a twenty-seven-year-old schoolteacher. A son, William Heard Kilpatrick, was born the year after their marriage.
J.H. Kilpatrick was the President of the GBC 1890-1895 and served on the Mercer Board much of his adult life. J.H. Kilpatrick was remembered for his sense of justice. African Americans noted that he always dignified them by speaking to them in passing, something rare in a 19th century Georgia town. On the other hand, he was an intellectual known to be aloof with a stern demeanor to all, including his own children. Three of his sons were estranged from him for much of their adult lives - two of them never joined the church. One of them named his own sons after the atheists Darwin and Huxley to spite his father.
Heard Kilpatrick joined the White Plains Baptist Church during a revival shortly before his fifteenth birthday. It had been an unsettling year in the town following a typhoid outbreak that claimed the lives of two of his sisters. It was also the year of a major earthquake centered in Charleston, S.C., that was felt across the South. Heard was one of many who made decisions in the revival at White Plains.
Two years later while a student at Mercer University, his faith was shaken after reading a copy of Darwin’s “Origin of the Species.” He later wrote of that experience; “The more I read it the more I believed it and in the end I accepted it fully. This meant a complete reorganization, a complete rejection of my previous religious training and philosophy. By accepting Darwin’s ‘Origin of Species,’ I rejected the whole concept of the immortal soul; of life beyond death, of the whole dogma of religious ritual connected with the worship of God.’’
His biographer explained that Kilpatrick did not want to hurt his father who had already been injured by the estrangement with his elder stepbrothers. Heard Kilpatrick hid his new beliefs and continued practicing religion outwardly, attending church each week and for many years teaching a Sunday School class.
After graduation from Mercer one of the trustees recommended Heard consider graduate work in math at John Hopkins with the hope of eventually returning to Mercer as a professor. After receiving a master’s degree from John Hopkins and several years of teaching at a high school, he was offered a position as mathematics professor at Mercer.
In his job interview with President Pollock, the first layman to serve as President of Mercer, Kilpatrick was asked to respond to the rumors concerning his faith. “Kilpatrick spoke to him honestly and frankly. He said that he was once disposed to reject religion altogether, but since his philosophy course at Johns Hopkins-helped along by subsequent thinking-he was turning more and more to a religious point of view. At present he could not accept church ritual or ceremonies; concerning the true essence of religion-a belief in the spiritual nature of man and the universe-he was at presently strongly committed.”
Kilpatrick’s academic credentials from John Hopkins were outstanding. The Mercer President may have surmised that a mathematician would not be teaching theology so it would not make any difference what he believed. Heard Kilpatrick, in stark contrast to his father, had a warm and charming personality and must have interviewed well.
Furthermore, because Kilpatrick’s father was on the Mercer Board of Trustees and was the former President of the Georgia Baptist Convention and given Kilpatrick’s family legacy at Mercer, which included his grandfather and his late uncle, who was serving as Chairman of the Board when he had died the previous year, it would be difficult for the relatively new President not to have hired Kilpatrick.
For whatever reason or combination of reasons (academic credentials, personality, legacy, nepotism, or cronyism) Kilpatrick’s ambiguous answer concerning his faith was deemed acceptable . . . that was how a young man who did not embrace Baptist doctrine or, as it would turn out later, a belief in God became a faculty member of a Baptist University. Not only a faculty member but within a few years a Vice President and for two years (1903-1905) the acting President under consideration for the Presidency.
A series of ensuing conflicts with the new Mercer President Dr. Charles Smith in the 1905-1906 academic year resulted in Heard Kilpatrick submitting his resignation effective following the spring semester. Although, it was Kilpatrick’s hope that the resignation would not be accepted by the board, which included, among others, his father.
Over three successive evenings hearings were conducted by the trustees on whether to accept Kilpatrick’s resignation. The trustees were amazed at the brilliant oral defense Kilpatrick gave concerning his theology. He quoted significant passages of scripture from memory giving arguments on both sides of theological questions.
Then Kilpatrick was asked his views on the virgin birth . . . his answer was unacceptable.
The trustees accepted Kilpatrick’s resignation and then called for the resignation of President Smith at the same time. Many on the faculty had backed Kilpatrick and disapproved of the way Smith had handled this and other personnel issues the previous year. Secular newspapers across the state following the trial expressed sentiment that there was still hope of retaining Kilpatrick.
Several years after his departure from Mercer, Kilpatrick changed his field from math to the study of education. He went on to attain world renown in education circles as the chief proponent of John Dewey’s educational teaching principals. Kilpatrick spent most of his career teaching at Columbia University in New York.
Nearly 20 years after the 1906 Heresy Trial, and a year after the dismissal of another Mercer professor on the charges of heresy in 1924, the University awarded Heard Kilpatrick an honorary doctorate. Throughout the rest of his life, Kilpatrick’s personal writings reveal his continued drift away from orthodox Christian beliefs.
Kilpatrick was called on to speak at special events on the Mercer Campus for the rest of his long life. He was 96 years old and living in New York at his death in 1965. Although he lived most of his life in New York, he chooses to be buried near his parents in the old White Plains Baptist Church cemetery in Greene County, Georgia.
A lingering question is what effect Kilpatrick may have had on Baptist life. While a professor at Mercer, Kilpatrick mentored a small group of students each year. He met with them on a regular basis to discuss a wide range of topics including theology. Solon Cousins Jr. ,the pastor of FBC Columbus, Georgia, was one of the students Kilpatrick mentored at Mercer. Cousins helped secure a teaching position at a high school in Columbus for Kilpatrick after his departure from Mercer. Kilpatrick attended his church while in Columbus.
Cousins later moved to Richmond, Virginia, to become pastor of the Second Baptist Church. In 1928 Cousins turned down the position of Corresponding Secretary of the Foreign Mission Board of the SBC. Eventually Cousins took a teaching position with Virginia Baptists’ University of Richmond (1932-1959). A few years later Cousins became the head of the Religion Department, which became known for its modernist (liberal) approach to theology. As the head of the department Cousins was responsible for recruiting and hiring new faculty who reflected the same modernistic views.
Because of the liberalism of the University of Richmond’s Religion Department, Virginia Baptist were the first State Convention to provide for a negative designation to Cooperative Program giving, as a provision was for churches who did not want to support the school. In 1996 theological conservatives in Virginia, increasingly marginalized by the actions of the Virginia Baptist General Association (Convention), created a new alternate Conservative State Convention.
Arguably one of the legacies of Kilpatrick came through one of the young men he mentored at Mercer who guided a Baptist Universities’ Religion Department down the path of modernism theology. The Mercer Heresy trial of 1906 may be considered the opening round of the Conservative Resurgence in Georgia.
In 1918 in response to the Modernist/Fundamentalist Controversy, The Christian Index publishing company published a book titled, “The Ten Fundamentals of the Faith.” Although the most noted SBC document developed during the Modernist/Fundamentalist era was the 1925 Baptist Faith and Message. To those who have argued that theology was not a factor in the Conservative Resurgence, the evidence of the events of 1906 and following proves otherwise.
Furthermore, this episode speaks to the importance of vetting trustees of boards and, in turn, of those boards vetting the administrators they employ to manage institutions and agencies. It is a reminder of the problems created by nepotism and cronyism. When personal relationships replace competence, character and theological integrity in any selection process the door is opened for incompetence and, even worse, heresy to creep in.
A week after the heresy trial the trustees of Mercer had found a new President for the University. The same man who had turned them down when approached in 1904. He was S.Y. Jameson, at the time the Corresponding Secretary Treasurer of the Georgia Baptist State Mission Board.
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Charles Jones is a Southern Baptist historian, retired pastor, and newspaper columnist.
