Kentucky Baptist Seminary honored Glenn Hinson with a book of letters and drawing by Ike Moody to honor Hinson's 50 years as a teacher.
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LEXINGTON, Ky. (ABP) — The Baptist Seminary of Kentucky honored one of its founding professors for 50 years of teaching by launching an endowed lecture series in his name March 6-7.
The free-standing Baptist school on the campus of the Disciples of Christ-related Lexington Theological Seminary established the E. Glenn Hinson Lecture Series to honor the life and work of its senior professor of church history and spirituality. Future lectures will build on Hinson's legacy of study in spiritual formation, church history, ecumenism and Baptist history.
Baptist Seminary of Kentucky President Greg Earwood said knowledge of his field, experience in the classroom, passion about teaching and love for Christ and the church made Hinson a natural choice when the school set out to hire its first faculty members in 2001.
But Earwood said Hinson, a lightning rod for attacks from the right during the Southern Baptist Convention controversy in the 1970s and 1980s, feared he might hurt the seminary's reputation and attempts to raise money.
"Of course none of that has come to be," Earwood said. "Dr. Hinson has been a valuable representative of our seminary, faithful in his commitment to us, a blessing and encourager to me, and we are grateful."
Hinson's teaching career nearly ended as soon as it began. Near the end of his first year at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in 1959, Hinson noticed trouble hearing some of the questions of his students. That began decades of worsening deafness, which continued to dog him throughout his career.
Not much later, due to working 20 hours a day completing a dissertation while carrying a full teaching load, he wore down and also lost his voice.
"The loss of one vital faculty is difficult, but the loss of two in quick succession can be overwhelming," Hinson said. "I felt the floodwaters roll over me."
Supported by family, colleagues and friends, Hinson said he finally came to accept what the apostle Paul wrote in First Corinthians about his "thorn in the flesh," hearing a message from the Lord, "My grace is sufficient for you."
One of the things Hinson, 77, said he learned over 50 years of teaching is "that you have to play the hand you are dealt." That means teachers "should take account of your limitations."
"I wouldn't give you a nickel for deafness," he said, "but, let me say, I wouldn't take a million dollars for what I have learned because I have had to cope with this handicap."
Loyd Allen, one of Hinson's former students, described his mentor's contribution to the Baptist study of spirituality.
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Hinson said he probably would have been a better teacher with good hearing, but he benefited from improving hearing-aid technology that allowed him to continue his work. Once more at the point of being unable to function in a classroom, Hinson soon will have cochlear implants installed.
Hinson said a second lesson he learned while teaching came in 1960, when he took his first church-history class on a field trip to the Abbey of Gethsemane. Their host was Thomas Merton, a Trappist Catholic monk who wrote more than 60 books on spirituality. To Hinson's horror, one of his students asked why someone with Merton's intellect would waste his life in a monastery.
Hinson said that, rather than rebuking the student, Merton smiled and answered: "I am here because I believe in prayer. That is my vocation."
"You could have knocked me over with a feather," Hinson said. "I had never met anyone who believed in prayer enough to think of it as a vocation."
Hinson pondered Merton's words alongside the Protestant rubric, "God has no hands but our hands, no feet but our feet, no voice but our voice."
"If that is true," he concluded, "our world has to be in an awful mess."
Inspired by the encounter and subsequent trips to Gethsemane, Hinson introduced a course on Classics of Christian Devotion that quickly became one of the most popular classes on campus. It also began to influence a generation of Baptist church historians to integrate spirituality into their teaching about church history.
One of Hinson's former students, Loyd Allen, now a professor at McAfee School of Theology in Atlanta, said all 15 of the moderate Baptist seminaries, divinity schools and houses of studies started since the 1980s have an emphasis on spiritual formation. Each individual teaching those classes has some personal connection with Hinson.
"Glenn started a good work of spiritual formation among us, but it is far, far from over," Allen said." If we truly wanted to honor him, then what we would do is put our energy and our resources into seeing that his work of contemplation and action on spiritual formation for ministers and laity continues."
John Inscore Essick, recently named assistant professor of church history and Hinson's successor at the Kentucky seminary, introduced a panel of Hinson's former students responding to his remarks.
"Seminary professors are often, for better or for worse, like a stone dropped into a calm pool," Essick said. "Ripples, endless ripples, go out from that point."
"You," he said to Hinson, "have been like a very fine stone dropped into a very needy pool, and you have left many ripples as a result of that."
The Baptist Seminary of Kentucky began classes in 2002 with 14 students and held its first commencement with three graduates in 2005. To date the seminary has graduated 13 students. The school offers two master-of-divinity degrees, taught by three full-time and 15 adjunct faculty.
Before coming to the Kentucky seminary, Hinson taught at Baptist Theological Seminary at Richmond from 1992 until retiring in 1999.
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Bob Allen is senior writer for Associated Baptist Press.
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