The Historical Record of the
James & Rosa McKissic School of Christian Studies
"This record is not merely institutional history — it is a covenant testimony. The names etched into these walls, the courses taught in these classrooms, and the ministers sent from this campus are the legacy."
The James & Rosa McKissic School of Christian Studies bears the name of two pillars of the Little Rock faith community — a covenant family whose investment in Arkansas Baptist College spans generations and whose legacy now shapes the next generation of church leaders.
Rev. James McKissic was a towering figure in the African American Baptist tradition of Arkansas — a preacher whose pulpit was matched by his passion for Christian education. He understood that the church without an educated ministry was a church without a future, and his investment in Arkansas Baptist College was a covenant expression of that conviction.
His vision was not for programs — it was for people. He believed that every young man or woman who answered the call to ministry deserved a rigorous academic foundation equal to their spiritual calling. His name on this school is not a memorial — it is a mandate.
Rosa McKissic stood as the sustaining force behind the family's covenant with the Little Rock community and with Arkansas Baptist College. Her investment was not merely financial or institutional — it was deeply personal. She understood that education transforms families across generations, not just individuals within a single lifetime.
Her name on this school honors the women of faith who have always been the backbone of the Black church's educational enterprise — intercessors, educators, and builders who rarely occupied the headlines but always shaped the outcomes.
Arkansas Baptist College was founded in 1884 by the Colored Baptists of Arkansas — a denomination born out of the determination of freed men and women who understood that their spiritual liberation demanded an educational infrastructure. From its earliest days, ABC was never simply a college. It was a covenant institution: a pledge made by a people to their children and their children's children that education rooted in faith would be available, accessible, and excellent.
The School of Christian Studies carries forward the specific dimension of that covenant that has always been most central to the Black Baptist tradition: the formation of ministers, educators, and leaders who are equipped not merely with degrees, but with a theology of purpose — a conviction that their calling is inseparable from their academic formation.
"We are not training graduates. We are forming stewards. The difference is not academic — it is theological."
— Dr. Nathanael A. Palmer D.Min. · McKissic School of Christian StudiesThe McKissic School of Christian Studies is built on a philosophy that has already produced the founders of two of the largest American Christian denominations and the woman who globalized Pentecostal missions. At this school, faith is not added as an elective. In Christian Studies at Arkansas Baptist College, you are not simply learning about faith. Instead, you are processing the entire world through it.
The B.A. in Christian Studies requires 122 credit hours across four concentration tracks — Theology & Biblical Studies, Pastoral Ministries, Christian Education, and Intercultural Studies — all anchored in a shared core of biblical literacy, theological reasoning, and ministerial ethics. Students graduate not merely credentialed but called, equipped, and sent.
As a Historically Black College and University, Arkansas Baptist College brings to Christian Studies a context that no majority institution can replicate. The Black church is the oldest surviving democratic institution in America — the sanctuary, the civic center, the school, and the movement headquarters of a people who built a civilization under the most hostile conditions imaginable.
The McKissic School trains ministers and educators to lead within that tradition — to honor its genius, to address its wounds, and to equip it for its next chapter. Our graduates are not simply Christian — they are contextually rooted Christian leaders, formed in the soil of the African American religious tradition at one of its oldest institutional homes.
"At ABC, you don't just study the church. You study YOUR church — the one that kept the community alive when nothing else would."
— Rev. Henry L. Parker, Jr., MM · Co-Author, McKissic Legacy RecordFrom the birth of Elias Camp Morris in 1855 to the formal naming of the McKissic School in 2026 — 171 years of faith, formation, and world-changing leadership rooted in Little Rock, Arkansas.
Born into slavery, Elias Camp Morris would rise to become one of the founding architects of Arkansas Baptist College and the first president of the National Baptist Convention. His life — from bondage to the Baptist presidency — is the inaugural chapter of this school's covenant story.
Charles Price Jones — future co-founder of the Church of God in Christ (COGIC) and the Church of Christ (Holiness) USA — is born. His later education and ministry formation at ABC would help spark one of the largest Pentecostal denominations in American history.
Charles Harrison Mason — future founder of the Church of God in Christ — is born. He would matriculate at ABC's Minister's Institute in 1893, graduating in 1895, before his transformative Azusa Street experience that catalyzed the modern Pentecostal movement.
The Colored Baptists of Arkansas establish Arkansas Baptist College as a Ministers' Institute at Mt. Zion Baptist Church, Little Rock — just 19 years after the end of slavery. The founding vision is inseparable from Christian formation: education rooted in the Baptist tradition, accessible to a liberated people building a new future.
The Ministers' Institute is formally renamed Arkansas Baptist College — becoming the only Baptist-affiliated HBCU west of the Mississippi River. The institution's identity as a place of both theological and academic formation is now permanently enshrined in its name.
Joseph Albert Booker is installed as Arkansas Baptist College's first president, a post he holds for 39 years until his death in 1926. His steady leadership transforms the college from a fledgling institute into a recognized institution of higher learning for Black Baptists across the South.
Charles Harrison Mason enrolls at ABC's Minister's Institute on November 1, 1893, graduating in 1895. His time on this campus plants the seeds that will later bloom into the Church of God in Christ — today one of the largest Pentecostal denominations in the world.
Elias Camp Morris is elected the first president of the National Baptist Convention — an office he holds for 27 years. That same year, Mason meets Charles Price Jones at ABC, and the Holiness movement takes root on this campus, setting the stage for a denominational revolution.
While walking the streets of Little Rock — near the ABC campus — Charles Harrison Mason receives the name "Church of God in Christ" in a divine revelation. The proximity to this institution is not incidental: ABC's soil was the seedbed of a movement that now claims over 6 million members worldwide.
Following Mason's Azusa Street Revival experience, COGIC is formally organized as a Pentecostal denomination. Jones splits off to form the Church of Christ (Holiness) USA. Two global denominations — both traceable to ABC's campus — are now independently established.
Lizzie Robinson — a former Matron of Arkansas Baptist College — organizes the COGIC Women's Department, launching an international missions enterprise that globalizes Pentecostal Christianity. The woman who globalized Pentecostal missions walked these same halls.
E. Alice Taylor graduates from Arkansas Baptist College — one of ABC's early women graduates. She goes on to become a prominent NAACP leader in Boston, carrying the school's legacy of purpose-driven leadership far beyond the Arkansas state line.
Joseph Robert Booker — son of ABC's first president — earns his B.A. from Arkansas Baptist College. He becomes a civil rights attorney, working alongside Thurgood Marshall in landmark cases that would shape the course of American legal history.
Donnie Lee Lindsey, Sr. graduates from Arkansas Baptist College. He is later elevated to Bishop of the COGIC Second Jurisdiction of Arkansas in 1974 — another ABC alumnus whose ministry leadership reshapes a denomination.
Rev. Henry L. Parker, Jr. becomes Chair of the Department of Fine and Performing Arts at ABC, a role he holds through 2022. His tenure shapes the worship and formation vision of the institution, weaving the arts into the fabric of Christian studies at ABC.
Nathanael A. Palmer earns his B.A. in Religious Studies from Arkansas Baptist College, graduating Summa Cum Laude — beginning a journey that will take him to Memphis Theological Seminary (M.Div., Summa Cum Laude) and Beeson Divinity School at Samford University (D.Min.), before returning to ABC to shape the next generation.
Dr. Nathanael A. Palmer completes his Doctor of Ministry at Beeson Divinity School, Samford University. His dissertation — Has God Spoken? — reflects the theological rigor that defines his teaching. Rev. Henry L. Parker, Jr. simultaneously joins ABC's faculty as Associate Professor.
Dr. Nathanael A. Palmer is called as Senior Pastor of First Baptist Church, Highland Park, Little Rock — while simultaneously serving as Associate Dean of the McKissic School of Christian Studies. His dual role as pastor and professor embodies the school's conviction that the academy and the pulpit must remain inseparably joined.
The Department of Religious Studies is formally renamed the James & Rosa McKissic School of Christian Studies — honoring Rev. James E. McKissic and Rosa Daniels McKissic for their generational covenant with Arkansas Baptist College. Rev. Parker and Dr. Palmer co-author A Legacy of Faith, Formation & Leadership, the school's official historical record.
The McKissic School is built on three inseparable convictions — the same convictions that animated the founders, shaped the faculty, and now form the students who carry the legacy forward.
Every course, every practicum, every capstone is anchored in a living theological conviction — not faith as a prerequisite, but faith as the animating center of intellectual life. The McKissic School refuses the secular academy's divorce of scholarship from spiritual formation.
A degree is not the goal — a formed leader is. Formation at the McKissic School means integrating intellectual rigor, spiritual discipline, ethical accountability, and cultural rootedness into a single, coherent human being. We form whole people, not just credentialed professionals.
The McKissic School trains leaders — not managers, not career ministers, but genuine leaders who enter the room tested, equipped, and ready. The legacy of James and Rosa McKissic demands graduates who lead with sober-minded confidence: people who have conquered the ordinary to manage the extraordinary.
The McKissic Legacy Record was authored by two faculty members whose combined tenures at Arkansas Baptist College represent decades of investment in Christian formation, academic excellence, and institutional covenant.
Rev. Henry L. Parker, Jr. holds a Master of Music in Jazz Studies from the University of Arkansas at Monticello (2021) and a Doctor of Worship Studies from Webber Institute of Worship Studies. He served as Chair of the Department of Fine and Performing Arts at Arkansas Baptist College from 2007 to 2022, and as Associate Professor at ABC from 2021.
Rev. Parker's vision for the integration of worship arts and theological formation has shaped the McKissic School's understanding that Christian education encompasses the whole person — mind, spirit, and creative voice. His co-authorship of the Legacy Record reflects his lifelong investment in the institutional memory and forward mission of ABC.
Dr. Palmer is Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at Arkansas Baptist College and, since July 2024, Senior Pastor of First Baptist Church, Highland Park, Little Rock, Arkansas. He earned his B.A. in Religious Studies from ABC (Summa Cum Laude, Class of 2010), his M.Div. from Memphis Theological Seminary (Summa Cum Laude), and his D.Min. from Beeson Divinity School at Samford University.
Dr. Palmer is the McKissic School's signature story: an ABC alumnus who returned to invest in the next generation — simultaneously scholar, pastor, and practitioner. His co-authorship of the Legacy Record is itself an act of covenant: the graduate returning to shape the institution that formed him.
History is not merely the chronicle of events — it is the testimony of a people to the faithfulness of God and the courage of those who carried the covenant forward under pressure, in obscurity, and often without recognition. The McKissic Legacy Record was written to ensure that the story of this school — and the family whose name it bears — is never lost to institutional amnesia.
Every institution that survives its founding generation does so because someone decided to remember. This document is that act of remembrance: a declaration to students who will walk these halls in 2046 and 2066 that they are not starting something new — they are continuing something holy.
"The names James and Rosa McKissic are not carved in marble for decoration. They are inscribed in this institution as a charge — a covenant obligation to every student, every professor, and every administrator who passes through this door to honor the sacrifice those names represent."
— From the Preface, A Legacy of Faith, Formation & Leadership, 2026The James & Rosa McKissic School of Christian Studies is not a monument to the past — it is a living institution, forming the next chapter of the legacy right now. Your enrollment is your covenant entry.
