Russell Hooper Dilday (September 30, 1930 – June 21, 2023) was an American pastor, educator, seminary president, and chancellor of the B.H.
During his sixteen-year tenure, the seminary annual enrollment exceeded 5000 students, making it the largest in American theological education history.
In 1990, Christianity Today released a poll of its readers ranking the effectiveness of American seminaries.
[2] Dilday was fired in March 1994 by what had become a majority conservative-leaning board of trustees in a 26-7 vote during the Southern Baptist Convention conservative resurgence.
"[4] Reflecting the hyper-conservative majority votes of delegates at the 1979 annual meeting of the SBC, the new national organization officers and committees replaced all leaders of Southern Baptist agencies with presumably more conservative people (often dubbed "fundamentalists" by dissenters) who would carry out the takeover agenda.
His only non-Texas pastorate was at Second-Ponce de Leon Baptist Church in Atlanta, a large urban congregation.