Ranmi Bae recognized with Norman W. Cox Award for Best Article
TUCKER, Ga. — The Baptist History & Heritage Society presented Ranmi Bae with its 2026 Norman W. Cox Award for Best Article on May 19 during the Society’s luncheon and awards ceremony at its 2026 joint annual conference.
The award recognizes the best article published in the Baptist History & Heritage journal during the preceding year. Bae was honored for her article, “Cultural Mediators in a Divided Era: Early Korean International Students at Baylor University, 1948–1956,” published in Baptist History & Heritage (Vol. LX, No. 1, 2025). The article examines the experiences of Korean international students at Baylor University during the years before, during and immediately after the Korean War.
Drawing on Baylor campus publications, Baptist denominational sources, administrative correspondence and student narratives, Bae shows how Korean students served as cultural mediators in a period shaped by war, anti-communism, Baptist missions, institutional growth and racial segregation. Her article traces how Baylor’s interest in international students intersected with President William R. White’s vision for “intercultural projects,” the emerging relationship between Korean Baptists and Southern Baptists, and the postwar need to train Korean leaders for church, educational and civic life.
Bae’s work gives close attention to Korean students such as Hi Juck Ryu, Chon Dong, June Kim and Sung Ki Lee, highlighting both the opportunities and challenges they encountered at Baylor. These students were often presented in campus and denominational publications as symbols of Christian mission, anti-communist conviction, academic promise and gratitude toward American and Baptist support.
At the same time, Bae explores the more complex realities beneath those portrayals, including language barriers, financial hardship, loneliness, family separation, displacement and the trauma of war.
The article also broadens the study of Baptist higher education and race by examining Asian students within Baylor’s segregated mid-20th-century context. Bae argues that Korean international students occupied a racially ambiguous position—one that complicates a simple Black-White framework for understanding Baylor’s history. Their presence and achievements helped reshape perceptions of Asians on campus, even as those portrayals contributed to the emerging “model minority” stereotype that would later influence American views of Asian immigrants.
The award is named in honor of Norman W. Cox, who served as the first executive secretary-treasurer of the Historical Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention from 1951 to 1959. The Historical Commission established the Norman W. Cox Award in April 1975 to encourage the writing of exemplary articles in Baptist history.
Bae is a Ph.D. candidate in the Historical Studies of Religion at Baylor University. Her areas of concentration include the Holiness movement, women’s and gender history, World Christianity, and colonial and postcolonial studies. She earned a Master of Theology from Duke Divinity School, a Master of Divinity from Seoul Theological University, where she was valedictorian, and a Bachelor of Arts in Theology from Seoul Theological University.
Her scholarship includes forthcoming peer-reviewed articles in American Baptist Quarterly and Wesleyan Theological Journal, as well as publications in Baptist History & Heritage, Commonplace and the Christian History Institute. Bae received the Torbet Prize from the American Baptist Historical Society in 2024 and serves as a graduate assistant at Baylor University. She is ordained as a pastor in the Korean Evangelical Church of America.
“Ranmi Bae’s article stood out to the selection committee for its originality, careful research and timely contribution to Baptist history,” said BHHS Executive Director Aaron Weaver. “By tracing the stories of early Korean international students at Baylor, she helps us see how Baptist institutions, missionaries, denominational networks and international students intersected in the postwar and Cold War years. Her work broadens our understanding of Baptist history beyond familiar boundaries and gives voice to students who helped mediate culture, faith and identity in a divided era.”
Members of the 2026 Norman W. Cox Award selection committee included BHHS Board of Directors members Cynthia Wise Mitchell, Mandy McMichael, Jerry Faught, Glenn Jonas and Nathan Taylor, along with BHHS Executive Director Aaron Weaver. Joe Coker serves as General Editor of the Baptist History & Heritage journal.
View photos from the 2026 Conference here.
Founded in 1938, the Baptist History & Heritage Society is a nonprofit organization with members worldwide, including Baptist scholars, clergy, laity, students and congregations. BHHS helps Baptists discover, conserve, assess and share their history, bridging the worlds of the academy and the congregation through publications, conferences, resources and seminars.
To learn more about the Society, become a member or support its work, visit www.thebhhs.org.