Morehouse School of Religion, formerly known as Augusta Theological Institute, was organized in 1867; two years after the Civil War had ended. Known as the oldest theological institution, it was established in the Springfield Baptist Church in Augusta, Georgia. Springfield Baptist Church is the oldest independent African American church in the United States.

Augusta Theological Institute was founded by Rev. William Jefferson White, an Augusta Baptist minister, cabinetmaker and journalist, with the encouragement of Rev. Richard C. Coulter, a former slave from Augusta, Georgia, and Rev. Edmund Turney, organizer of the National Theological Institute for educating freedmen in Washington, D.C. The American Baptist Home Mission Society of New York was a major sponsor. Between the years of 1867 to 1871 White appointed five ministers to serve as Augusta Institute principals: James W. Parker, J. Mason Rice, Charles Henry Corey, Lucian Hayden and W.D. Siegfried. White appointed Rev. Dr. Joseph T. Robert, a trained minister and physician. Robert was the father of the author of Robert’s Rules of Order, the Institute’s first president.

In 1879, The Reverend Frank Quarles was invited to the Augusta Theological Institute was invited to move into the basement of Friendship Baptist Church in Atlanta. During this period, the Augusta Theological Institute incorporated and was renamed The Atlanta Baptist Seminary. Later, the seminary moved to a four-acre lot near the site on which the Richard B. Russell Federal Building now stands in downtown Atlanta. Following Joseph Robert’s death in 1884, David Foster Estes, a professor at the Seminary, served as the institution’s acting president.

In 1885, Dr. Samuel T. Graves was named the second president, and then the institution was relocated to its current site in Atlanta’s West End community. This campus, a gift of John D. Rockefeller, was a part of a land tract which General William Tecumseh Sherman’s army gained in the famous victory and siege of Atlanta in 1864.

In 1897, the Atlanta Baptist Seminary was authorized to offer baccalaureate degrees; and in addition; the school’s name was changed to Atlanta Baptist College. The school entered into a period of excellence and began to develop its own college identity.  In addition, the college added numerous student organizations and athletic teams.  This occurred during Dr. George Sale’s administration. Sale was a Canadian who served as the third and youngest president from 1890 to 1906. The seminary which was affiliated with the college was staffed with a dedicated faculty.  Through the college, the seminary conferred a Bachelor of Divinity, a Bachelor of Theology degrees and a Diploma of Theology. Theological students continued to outnumber liberal arts students through 1923-1924.

In this new era, the seminary became a college and expanded its academic degree programs and the same time, added physical facilities. In 1906, Dr. John Hope, the first person of African descent, became the college’s fourth president.  Hope was a Phi Beta Kappa man and a graduate of Brown University.  Since 1898, Hope had been a professor at Atlanta Baptist College. Hope was distinguished in the field of education and civil rights. An influential leader, Hope facilitated an intellectual climate similar to the one he had experienced at his alma mater.