Fuller Theological Seminary

Fuller Theological Seminary was founded in 1947 by Charles E. Fuller, a radio evangelist known for his Old Fashioned Revival Hour show, and Harold Ockenga, the pastor of Park Street Church in Boston. The seminary's founders sought to reform fundamentalism's separatist and sometimes anti-intellectual stance during the 1920s–1940s. Fuller envisaged that the seminary would become "a Caltech of the evangelical world." In the late 1940s, evangelical theologians from Fuller championed the Christian importance of social activism.

The earliest faculty held theologically and socially conservative views, though professors with liberal perspectives arrived in the 1960s and 1970s. There were tensions in the late 1950s and early 1960s as some faculty members became uncomfortable with staff and students who did not agree with Biblical inerrancy. This led to people associated with the seminary playing a role in the rise of neo-evangelicalism and progressive theology.

David Hubbard recruited Donald McGavran to be the first dean of the newly created school of world mission in 1965. McGavran was esteemed as perhaps the world's most prominent and influential missiologist of the 20th century. McGavran recruited some of the greatest missiologist of the 20th century to serve as faculty of the school of world mission at Fuller Theological Seminary. This included Alan Tippett, Ralph Winter, C. Peter Wagner and many others. These faculty would shape world missions for the ensuing decades. Fuller's School of World Mission became the largest missions training institution in the world. The school of world mission also has the largest amount of missions faculty of any institution in the world as well as graduating the most missions students of any seminary.

In 2022, it had 2,370 students enrolled.

Presidents

Fuller has had six presidents over its over 70-year history. The founding president, Harold Ockenga, remained in Boston and served as president in absentia from 1947 to 1954. He described his role to Charles Fuller as recruiting faculty and setting the curriculum, which did not require his active presence in Pasadena. His successor and protege Edward John Carnell, a Baptist theologian and apologist, took over the post in 1954 but resigned in 1959 under failing health. Ockenga resumed his in absentia leadership until 35-year-old David Allen Hubbard, a Baptist Old Testament scholar and member of Fuller's third entering class, became Fuller's third president in 1963. Hubbard served for 30 years and led the seminary through both substantial growth and significant controversy.

Hubbard was succeeded by Reformed philosopher and theologian Richard Mouw, who served as president of Fuller from 1993 to 2013. In 2006, a Los Angeles Times article labeled him as "one of the nation's leading evangelicals". In July 2013, Mark Labberton became the Clifford L. Penner Presidential Chair of Fuller. Labberton, a Presbyterian (USA) pastor, had previously served Fuller as director of the Lloyd John Ogilvie Institute of Preaching since 2009. He retains his position as Lloyd John Ogilvie Associate Professor of Preaching alongside the presidency. Mouw remained at Fuller as Professor of Faith and Public Life until 2020. In October 2021, Labberton announced his retirement.

David Goatley became the sixth president in January 2023. He is the first African American to occupy the role. Goatley is a missions executive and former administrative executive at Duke University.