Payne Theological Seminary

History

The roots of Payne Theological Seminary lie in the founding of Wilberforce University in 1856, the first college owned and operated by African Americans. From the beginning, Wilberforce trained ministers for the African Methodist Episcopal Church alongside its undergraduate program. Bishop Daniel Alexander Payne, who became Wilberforce's president in 1863 and was instrumental in the AME Church's purchase of the institution, organized the seminary's theological work and laid the intellectual foundation for what would become a separate institution.

In 1894 the General Conference of the African Methodist Episcopal Church formally incorporated the seminary as Payne Theological Seminary, separating it from Wilberforce University while keeping it physically adjacent. The incorporation gave the AME Church a free-standing institution dedicated entirely to theological education — a distinction it still holds as the oldest free-standing African American seminary in the country.

Throughout the twentieth century Payne trained pastors, bishops, and theologians for the AME Church and for the broader Black church tradition. Under deans and presidents including Rembert E. Stokes, who served in the 1950s, the seminary expanded its physical plant — including the construction of the Chapel of the Living Savior and its stained-glass windows — and strengthened its academic standing within the broader theological education community.

Payne was admitted to membership in the Association of Theological Schools in 1956 and achieved full accreditation in 1995, becoming the fourth historically African American theological seminary to be fully ATS-accredited. The accreditation was reaffirmed in 2026 for a full ten-year term.

Notable Alumni

A representative selection from the institution's record of producing leaders in their fields.

Recent Developments

The seminary passed through a leadership transition in 2025 and 2026. The Reverend Michael Joseph Brown, Ph.D., who had led Payne as president since 2016, died in December 2025 while on a leave of absence; the institution announced his passing on December 20, 2025. The Board of Trustees subsequently named the Reverend Betty Whitted Holley, Ph.D., as the seminary’s eighteenth president. Holley is a Payne alumna — she earned the Master of Divinity at the seminary in 2000 — and a longtime member of its core faculty in ecological theology and theological writing who had directed the Master of Divinity program; she also serves as a presiding elder in the Third Episcopal District of the African Methodist Episcopal Church. Her inauguration is scheduled for November 6, 2026.

Significance

Payne Theological Seminary is, alongside Howard University School of Divinity, Interdenominational Theological Center, and a handful of others, one of the principal training grounds for Black church leadership in the United States. Its location within the historic Wilberforce-Central State complex in Ohio makes the campus a singular site of African American intellectual and religious history.

As the seminary of the African Methodist Episcopal Church — the oldest independent Black denomination in the United States, founded by Richard Allen in 1816 — Payne carries a particular institutional weight. The bishops, presiding elders, and pastors trained at Payne lead congregations across the United States, the Caribbean, Africa, and Europe. The seminary's role in the AME Church's ordination of women, including the election of Vashti Murphy McKenzie as the denomination's first female bishop, marks it as a generative institution rather than merely a credentialing one.

Payne's continuing accreditation, modest enrollment, and historic mission place it in the category of small, mission-driven institutions whose value cannot be measured in scale. The seminary's significance is in the continuity it provides — an unbroken line of Black theological education extending from the abolitionist era to the present.

Source notes: This entry draws on Payne Theological Seminary institutional records; the Association of Theological Schools' published accreditation actions; the Theological Commons' Payne Seminary/AME archive at Princeton Theological Seminary; and standard reference works on AME Church history including Stephen W. Angell's Bishop Henry McNeal Turner and Dennis C. Dickerson's The African Methodist Episcopal Church: A History. The 1856 founding date references the seminary's theological-department origins at Wilberforce; the 1894 date is its formal incorporation as a separate institution.