PLAINVIEW, TX — This Old House at 415: Letters from the Family will be the topic April 10 when Wayland Baptist University hosts Dr. Karen O’Dell Bullock for the 2024 William M. Pinson Jr. Baptist History Lecture Series.
Dr. Bullock, who served as Distinguished Professor of Christian Heritage and director of the Ph.D. program at B.H. Carrol Theological Seminary from 2007 until her retirement in 2023, is scheduled to speak during Wayland’s weekly chapel service at 11 a.m. in Laney Student Activities Center. A question-and-answer lunch session follows in UC-211 in McClung University Center. Go to to reserve a seat at the lunch session.
The lecture series and an endowment fund to sustain the series was established by the Baptist General Convention of Texas as an expression of gratitude for Dr. Pinson’s service as a pastor, seminary professor and president, and Baptist denominational leader. He served as executive director of the BGCT for 17 years, retiring to emeritus status in 2000.
The lectures, which are designed to bring awareness of Baptist heritage and distinctiveness, are held annually on the campus of one of the nine BGCT-affiliated universities. In 2014, Wayland hosted the lecture series with Dr. Bill Tillman, a longtime leader in Baptist education and ethics, as the featured speaker.
Dr. Bullock’s topic stems from historians tracing the earliest Baptist church to 1609 — 415 years ago —in Amsterdam. It was there that English Separatist pastor John Smyth rejected the baptism of infants and argued that only believing adults should be immersed. The lecture will touch on Baptist heritage since that time.
“I am a Baptist because we are the family of faith that stands on the authority of God’s word, practices the priesthood of all believers and believer’s baptism, champions religious freedom for all persons and local church autonomy, engages in missions and social justice, and knows the church of the Living God to be essential,” Dr. Bullock told the Baptist Standard in 2021. “Baptists never have been perfect, and are not now, but they have been uncommonly courageous in their more than 400 years of stewardship of the gospel of Jesus Christ.”
The church history professor has authored seven books about local churches, written nine book chapters on Baptist leaders, and authored dozens of commissioned pieces, peer-reviewed encyclopedia and journal articles, Bible studies, and historical studies. She has written more than two dozen papers for academic conferences.
Dr. Bullock served on faculty at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary from 1995 to 2004 teaching Christian history and Baptist heritage. She directed the Ph.D. program as Associate Dean of the School of Theology at SWBTS from 2000 to 2004. She taught Christian heritage from 2004 to 2007 at Dallas Baptist University, where she helped start a Ph.D. program in Christian Leadership.
She has served on two Baptist World Alliance commissions — Commission on Baptist Heritage and Identity, and the Commission on Religious Freedom. Her international reach has included teaching at Canadian Baptist Theological Seminary and College and serving as a guest professor at Nigerian Baptist Theological Seminary and Uganda Baptist Seminary. She led numerous students on international study tours to Oxford University and to sites significant to the Protestant Reformation.
Dr. Bullock earned a Bachelor of Science in education from the University of North Texas as well as a Master of Divinity with biblical languages and a Ph.D. double major in church history and missions at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary.
Copyright © 2024