R. Albert Mohler Jr. today was elected as vice president of the Evangelical Theological Society (ETS), effective immediately following this year’s annual meeting in Denver, Colorado, Nov. 13-15.
Mohler becomes vice president of ETS with no objections from fellow scholars at the 70th annual ETS meeting. Mohler is the third representative in the last fifteen years from The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary to serve as vice president of ETS, following Thomas R. Schreiner and Bruce A. Ware. Schreiner, James Buchanan Harrison Professor of New Testament, was vice president in 2012 and president in 2013. Ware, T. Rupert and Lucille Coleman Professor of Christian Theology, was vice president of ETS before becoming president in 2009.
Gregg R. Allison, professor of Christian theology, was the secretary of ETS in 2018.
Mohler has been an active member of the Evangelical Theological Society for three decades and has presented many papers and addresses for both national and regional meetings.
“The Evangelical Theological Society is the most important academic society for scholars who are, first of all, evangelical, and second of all, committed to the strengthening of this movement, academia, and the engagement of the intellectual world,” Mohler said immediately after this morning’s ETS business meeting. “The history of ETS is the history of the development of the evangelical movement in America. Even though it is off the screen of most people in evangelical churches because of its academic nature, it was of the most important loadstars of the evangelical movement.”
Since his election as president of Southern Seminary in 1993, Mohler has been at the forefront of public theological dialogue in evangelicalism. He was hired to return the seminary to its founding commitment to the truth of the Bible and to a strong, representative relationship with the Southern Baptist Convention.
Mohler is also an ordained minister, having served as pastor and staff minister of several Southern Baptist churches. In addition to his responsibilities as president of Southern Seminary, he also serves as the Joseph Emerson Brown Professor of Christian Theology.
Mohler is the author of many books, including We Cannot Be Silent: Speaking truth to a culture redefining sex, marriage, & the very meaning of right & wrong; Culture Shift: Engaging Current Issues with Timeless Truth; and Words From the Fire: Hearing the Voice of God in the Ten Commandments. From 1985 to 1993, he served as associate editor of Preaching, a journal for evangelical preachers, and is currently editor-in-chief of The Southern Baptist Journal of Theology. He has contributed to over 100 other published works.
A native of Lakeland, Florida, Mohler was a Faculty Scholar at Florida Atlantic University before receiving his Bachelor of Arts degree from Samford University in Birmingham, Alabama. He earned both a master of divinity degree and a doctor of philosophy in systematic and historical theology from Southern Seminary. He has pursued additional study at the St. Meinrad School of Theology in St. Meinrad, Indiana, and did academic research at University of Oxford in England.
Mohler hosts two podcast programs: The Briefing, a daily analysis of news and events from a Christian worldview, and Thinking in Public, a series of conversations with the day’s leading thinkers. He also writes a popular blog, where he regularly comments on moral, cultural and theological issues. Called “an articulate voice for conservative Christianity at large” by The Chicago Tribune, Mohler’s mission is to address contemporary issues from a consistent and explicit Christian worldview.