Mercer Special Collections hold university’s Baptist identity

Mercer University’s roots live in a small room on the third floor of Jack Tarver library.

Under glass casing and among boxes, bins and stacks are early Baptist church records and original hand-written documents that tell the story of churches across the state.

These records also document the Georgia Baptist Convention — an institution formed by the instigation of key Mercer figure Adiel Sherwood and first chaired by the university’s namesake, Jesse Mercer.

The Convention split from Mercer nearly a decade ago, but church historians, genealogists and those looking to explore the university’s past continue to flock to the institution’s baptist and university archives.

“We have the largest collection of specifically Georgia Baptist materials in the world,” said Laura Botts, the assistant dean for archives and digital initiatives. “The (Convention) currently has their own archives, but we have a lot more of their history than they do.”

Baptists, and the Convention in particular, left hand prints all over Mercer during its foundation. Before it was a university, Mercer was a boy’s preparatory day school.

Mercer began with a $2,500 gift from the estate of Savannah jeweler and silversmith Josiah Penfield to “aid in the education of poor young men preparing for the Gospel Ministry,” according to an 1846 catalog of officers and students in the university archives.

In January 1833, Mercer was established as a literary and theological institution with a manual labor component.

“They would have been younger back then,” Botts said. “Students had to work in the fields as well as study, go to chapel (and) go to church on Sundays. There’s definitely this kind of Protestant work ethic that shows up in those early days, just that Baptist emphasis on learning, independence and autonomy.”

The university was also home to the Georgia Baptist Historical Society. Founded in 1964 at Mercer, the organization furthered the efforts of Baptist historians by donating resources and funding for student assistants, archival supplies, microfilming and binding of materials.

From 1968 until its dissolution in 2012, the society produced one to two newsletters each year and 23 volumes of its journal “Viewpoints: Georgia Baptist History.”

“(The society) had a very active membership until quite recently … because so many of the members had got older and either couldn’t come, couldn’t travel or had passed on,” Botts said. “(The journal) is a great source even now of Georgia Baptist history.”

But as time wore on, things changed and relations soured between the Georgia Baptist Convention and the university.

At least one early source of tension was Mercer being featured as Playboy’s No. 9 party school in the country for 1987. Years later, the university’s triangle symposium organization advertised a Coming Out Day — reigniting tensions.

The convention voted to cut ties with the university in 2005 and confirmed the vote in 2006.

“The waters had been troubled for some time over a number of issues, but (the coming out day) seemed to be the straw that broke the camel’s back,” said Wayne Robertson, chairman of the convention’s administration committee, to the Dalton Daily Citizen following the vote split.

Despite all the drama, the university wanted to keep the records.

“One of the things that Mercer wanted to do was hold on to the Baptist archives and we were allowed to do that,” said Botts, who was on staff when the split took place. “We were able to keep all of the records that we have.

Craig McMahan, the university’s minister and dean of chapel, said keeping those records and the ability to go back through the archives is important to understand Mercer as it continues to evolve.

“The fact that we can go back and refer to those archives and hear the voice of Jesse Mercer over the decades, over the centuries … really does show that we still are honoring that founding dream,” McMahan said. “Without those archives, we wouldn’t have an identity.”

This story was originally published December 27, 2016 at 4:51 PM with the headline "Mercer Special Collections hold university’s Baptist identity."