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Courtland Smith and John L. Humber, Olin T. Binkley Memorial Baptist Church: A Twenty Year View, 1958-1978 (1978).Open the sourceAll sources
Searched the full chronology of 9,006 dated events and 77 storylines, not only the highlights. Showing 1–20.Back to highlights
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Civil rights era · 1945–1975
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The Yates Baptist Association picks the Glen Lennox area for a new Baptist church
The Yates Baptist Association's church extension committee chose the Glen Lennox side of Chapel Hill for a new congregation and asked Dr. Fred W. Ellis to join the committee. The church that grew from it, Binkley Memorial, began as an association extension project backed by University Baptist Church, not as a split.
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The Yates Association approves buying three acres on the 15-501 Bypass for the new church
Fred W. Ellis secured an option on two acres on the 15-501 Bypass east of Chapel Hill and proposed adding a third, for $7,000 in all with $1,000 down, half of it pledged by the Baptist State Convention. The extension committee approved on August 30 and the association board on September 29, 1957.
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Four families hold the first study meeting toward a new Baptist church in Chapel Hill
The Ellis, Berkut, Moffitt and Wagoner families met at Fred Ellis's home to begin a long series of studies on what the new church should be, agreeing to stay active at University Baptist until it launched. The book credits these studies with setting the church's open-membership and interracial course.
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Binkley Church joins the North Carolina Council of Churches
Right after it organized in September 1958, the new Binkley congregation asked to be received as an individual member of the North Carolina Council of Churches and was accepted.
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Binkley Church holds its Sunday services in Gerrard Hall
For about six years after its founding the Binkley congregation worshipped in Gerrard Hall on the UNC campus, held church school in other university buildings and used a large house at 508 East Franklin Street as its church house.
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The Yates Association declines to receive Binkley and deeds it the bypass lot
After a year of watchcare and a further year's delay, the Yates Baptist Association voted at its 1960 session not to receive Binkley as a member because it admitted members not baptized by immersion. At the same session it deeded the 15-501 Bypass lot to the church on condition the church pay the $350 still owed.
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Binkley Church breaks ground for its fellowship hall and education wing
Having traded its bypass lot for a larger one just to the north, the congregation broke ground for a fellowship hall and education wing designed by F. Carter Williams. A $25,000 gift from Myers Park Baptist Church in Charlotte made it possible to award the building contracts.
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Binkley Church asks to join the American Baptist Convention
After long study Binkley applied to the American Baptist Convention, in part because that body belonged to the National and World Councils of Churches and the Southern Baptist Convention did not. It became one of a small number of churches affiliated with both conventions.
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The Binkley Kindergarten opens in the new church building
Binkley's first community project was a state-approved kindergarten run as a separate nonprofit, with the church giving space and utilities in return for scholarships for poor children. It ran until 1977, when public kindergartens came in and it became a preschool for younger children.
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Binkley rewrites its constitution to open full membership to all Christians
After a self-examination the church revised its constitution, offering membership to people from any Christian church rather than only the evangelical tradition. It also dropped the bar that had kept members not baptized by immersion from serving as deacons, officers or convention messengers.
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Binkley Church adds a classroom wing
A growing congregation needed more church school space, and in 1968 Binkley built a wing addition, with David Basile leading the building committee. The church paired the project with an outreach effort in Carr Court.
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Binkley members move a small house to Carr Court for a community center
To help Carr Court, a poor Black neighborhood in Carrboro, start a youth program, Binkley members tore down an old house that blocked the way and moved in a small building given by University Baptist Church. By February 1969 it had a director, and Binkley paid the center's budget for eight years in cooperation with the Multi-Purpose Center.
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A daycare center for Ridgefield's working mothers opens, with infants at Binkley
When the Chapel Hill Housing Authority opened the Ridgefield Apartments for low-income families at the end of Estes Drive, Binkley joined the Authority and the Community Church to start a daycare center. Older children met at the Ridgefield community center and infants and toddlers in Binkley's nursery, which the church gave rent-free.
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Binkley votes to join the new American Baptist Churches of the South
Binkley took part in forming the American Baptist Churches of the South and approved membership on July 18, 1970. Robert Seymour, Sam Hill, Henry Hellmers and Bob DesJardins helped organize the body, most of whose churches were Black congregations.
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Binkley gives a room for a daycare center for developmentally disabled children
In July 1971 Binkley lent a room to the Orange County Association of Retarded Children for a daycare program. Starting with five children it grew into a five-day school with 18 pupils and seven teachers, sponsored by the Orange Mental Health Association and the church, before moving in June 1978 to county space at the Northside Center.
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Carr Court residents form their own committee to run the community center
By 1972 the people of Carr Court had formed the Carr Court Administrative Committee, which wrote the job description for the center's director and hired one. The book counts this growth in local leadership among the measures of the project's success.
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Binkley defends its open membership to the state convention's Committee of Eleven
When the Baptist State Convention named a Committee of Eleven to study churches that took members not baptized by immersion, Binkley replied that refusing other baptisms would treat the church as divided and that expelling such churches would violate local autonomy. The convention did not pass expulsion that fall and defeated a voting-rights amendment in 1974.
Recent decades · 1976–2026
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Binkley takes over the Ridgefield daycare and renames it the Binkley Child Care Center
When the Community Church and the Housing Authority withdrew in 1976, Binkley took on the whole daycare operation and housed it at the church. It renamed it the Binkley Child Care Center to show where it was, serving the same families. The summer day camp the church had hosted moved to the Ridgefield center that year.
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Meals-on-Wheels begins serving from the Binkley Church lounge
Binkley gave its church lounge to the community-sponsored Meals-on-Wheels program, which delivered hot meals at low cost five days a week to people living alone who could not cook for themselves. By 1978 Memorial Hospital was catering it.
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Carrboro moves to take over the Carr Court program from Binkley
In June 1976 the Town of Carrboro, through its Recreation Commission, planned to take full charge of the Carr Court program and condemned the old center building, ending Binkley's eight years of support.
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