Journal: Journal for Biblical Manhood and Womanhood
Volume: JBMW 04:4 (Spring 2000)
Article: Confessing the True Faith
Author: David Wegener

Confessing the True Faith

An Interview With Al Mohler

Interview By

David Wegener

JBMW: Could you tell us a little about your background, how you became a Christian, and how you came to be the president of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary?

AM: By God’s grace, I was born to godly Christian parents and raised in a Christian home. I came to know Jesus Christ as my personal Savior when I was nine years old at a Vaca- tion Bible School service. This was the first time I really understood that I was a sinner and that Jesus Christ was my Savior. I did not have any sophisticated understanding of the doctrine of the atonement, but I knew that Jesus was my Savior and Lord, and I made a public profession of faith and joined the church and was baptized. I grew up in a very traditional, tall-steeple, Southern Baptist church, and though I had been in the church virtually all my life, this was the first time I understood what it meant to be a Christian and a disciple of the Lord Jesus Christ.

My family made a significant move when I was thirteen, from the town of Lakeland in central Florida down to Fort Lauderdale in south Florida. That was a huge shift, culturally and socially. South Florida in the early 1 970s was a very interesting place to be. It was during that period that I began to have some serious questions about the Christian faith, and I became very interested in finding answers to these questions. I had some good and godly mentors. I started reading Francis Schaeffer and other apologists. I had a deep hunger to know the Scriptures and began to develop a sense of vocation as a theologian—as a pastor.

I had been attending the state university, headed, or so I thought, for a career in law. Yet I was very unhappy as I pursued the line of studies leading in that direction. I came to understand clearly that I was called to the ministry. I left the school where I was studying and began to prepare for the ministry at Samford University, a Baptist school.

While at Samford, I came to know the woman who was to become my wife. Mary was the sister of my roommate. Though we were from the same home church in Florida, we didn’t know each other very well since it was such a large church. We got to know each other, fell in love, and were married in 1983.

I graduated as President of the ministerial association at Samford, with a degree in religion and philosophy, and then went to Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky. I arrived here in 1980 and received my Master of Divinity degree in 1983 and a Ph.D. in Systematic and Historical Theology in 1989. For most of those years between 1983 and 1989 I also served as assistant to the President of the seminary.

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