Edgar Young Mullins

Edgar Young Mullins (January 5, 1860, Franklin County, Mississippi – November 23, 1928, Louisville, Kentucky) was a Baptist minister and educator, who from 1899 until his death was the fourth president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, the flagship school of the Southern Baptist Convention.

Mullins entered Texas A&M College at 16, and after graduation studied to become a lawyer, but a dramatic religious experience under the preaching of Major William Evander Penn caused him to pursue a career in foreign missions. He entered the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, graduating in 1885 as one of the top students in his class. He married Isla May Hawley, whom he met at Walnut Street Baptist Church in Louisville. They were parents of two sons, both of whom died in early childhood.

The Southern Baptist Foreign Mission Board, short on funds, turned down his application to become a missionary to Brazil. Years later, Mullins would become Associate Secretary of the Foreign Mission Board. Mullins also served in pastoral ministry in Baltimore, Maryland, where his experiences in the inner city gave him a sensibility to social issues that lasted a lifetime.

Following his time in Baltimore, Mullins settled into pastoral work in New England, far from his alma mater, which was embroiled in a bitter theological controversy with its third president, William Heth Whitsitt. When Southern Seminary sent an agent to his doorstep in Newton Centre, Massachusetts, to offer him its presidency, Mullins expressed initial shock at the thought of stepping into that difficult post. The unanimous call of the trustees persuaded him, however, and he assumed the presidency in 1899.

Toward the end of his seminary presidency, Mullins led in the relocation of the 1877-era campus from downtown Louisville to a spacious suburban tract known as "the Beeches" in the hills east of the city. In 1926 a handsome academic and residential complex was completed in classical Georgian architecture, with a distinctive clock tower in his honor atop the main administrative building, Norton Hall. The main housing complex on the new campus was named Mullins Hall also in honor of his leadership.

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