The 1866 conference of the Swedish Baptists, which would eventually lead to the creation of the
Baptist Union of Sweden in 1889, decided to found a seminary for the new and growing movement, calling it Bethel Seminary (). It opened in 1866 and Colonel
Oscar Broady of the
Union Army was the seminary's first rector. Swedish Baptist pioneer
Anders Wiberg helped raise funds through the
American Baptist Missionary Union to support the seminary in its early years. In the beginning, Bethel Seminary was located in , Stockholm First Baptist Church's chapel, on Malmskillnadsgatan 48 in central Stockholm, but as of 1883 the school's address was Engelbrektsgatan 18 and in 1966 the seminary moved to Bromma. From 1994, (Bethel
folk high school) was located in the later premises of Bethel Seminary in
Bromma, Stockholm, which became on 1 February 2014.
Enskilda Högskolan Stockholm (University College Stockholm) has been located next to Bethel Seminary's old premises since 2002. University College Stockholm is a kind of successor to the Bethel Seminary. It was founded in 1993 as a merger of the Bethel Seminary in Bromma and the then-
Mission Covenant Church's counterpart Theological Seminary () on Lidingö. In the first year the activities were divided between Bromma and Lidingö, after which the entire school was located in Lidingö. After the college outgrew the premises there, new premises were built next to the old Bethel Seminary premises in Bromma, which were inaugurated at the start of the autumn term in 2002. In 2008, the then- (which until then had been located in Gothenburg) was also added. == Notable students ==