On Jan. 29, a spiritual giant died quietly, yet with the force that reflected all of his life.
Glenn Hinson was a Baptist professor in the fields of church history and spirituality. He was on the frontlines of the war against the fundamentalist takeover of the last bastion of academic and religious freedom in the Southern Baptist Convention, Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky.
I had the honor to know and learn from him when he was the professor of spirituality at Baptist Theological Seminary at Richmond in 1994. In his classes and my time with him 31 years ago, I knew I needed to absorb every word, story and morsel of prophetic energy from this mystic in order to authentically follow the ways of Jesus. I was grateful to serve as his teaching assistant, where I not only learned but emulated his spiritual practices then and now.
Ginny Brown Daniel
Hinson began every spirituality class with 5 minutes of silence. I will confess that for a graduate student working multiple jobs (and not really a morning person), these 5 minutes were brutal. And I wasn’t the only one. Sometimes, I could hear a classmate snoring during our time of silence. He began his class this way because, as he would teach us, this silence allows us to open like a flower to the morning sun that is God. And from that place of openness, we became vessels of the divine.
What he taught us in his lectures was learned in his own life. He shared that when he was a professor of church history at Southern Seminary, his professional life was driven by the need to write, be published and achieve academic success. And then he took one of his classes to a nearby monastery to visit a monk named Thomas Merton, and his life was forever changed. Merton taught him the need to slow down, let go of the empty drive to climb a professional ladder and listen for the divine within in order to live more faithfully to the prophetic teachings of Jesus Christ.
Just as Merton spoke out against the Vietnam War from the stillness of his spiritual life, Hinson summoned that same spiritual practice for the war of another kind just 15 years later as he fought against the fundamentalists (the grandparent version of white Christian nationalists today) in his beloved Southern Baptist Convention.
From stillness comes action, which is how he leveraged his tenured position at the most prestigious SBC seminary to fight against those forcing rigid doctrines and dogmas to be taught in class and on paper. He spoke out against seminary board members and administration as they dismantled the pillar of academic freedom once treasured as historically Baptist. Hinson shared that he would walk around the gates of the seminary as his expression of the prophets in the Hebrew Scriptures, who would march around the gates of the city to protest the atrocities of the empire. Subsequently, I took up this practice as I have marched around the gates of the Texas State Capitol to protest the atrocities enacted on our most vulnerable neighbors.
“He was the wise sage we all looked to as we created this beacon of true religious freedom.”
When he came to BTSR in 1992, he came with the wisdom of this trauma-inducing experience to help birth a new expression of what it means to be historically Baptist. He was the wise sage we all (students, faculty and board members) looked to as we created this beacon of true religious freedom. There was something bold and exciting to be a part of a new organization committed to women in ministry, LGBTQ leadership and racial justice — that is, until we weren’t.
When the seminary began to look for bigger buildings and more money to sustain itself, it began to chip away at these prophetic expressions of inclusion, which for me, led to the penultimate reversal with a visiting professor teaching a class about pastors and their wives. This caused Hinson to walk the gates of our young seminary and warn us against the dangers of concretizing an institution.
I have returned back to his wisdom as I joined the United Church of Christ and experienced the injustices of sexism, racism, homophobia and white supremacy.
He taught us the highest burnout rate of ministers is in the first five years of ministry; and so, he counseled us to take a sabbath day every week where we could truly rest from our job. For 26 years, this sabbath practice has renewed my spirit for the difficult work ahead. In my first pastorate, I began to practice a day of silence each month, where I went to a local monastery to sit in silence, draw, journal, read and listen. I am still in ministry because of these spiritual practices.
Hinson was a prophetic mystic who grounded himself in the spiritual practices of mystic ancestors like Julian of Norwich, Teresa of Avila, Brother Lawrence and Douglas Steere, so he could more fully protest the atrocities of injustice within religious institutions. And I, as his student, learned the importance of imbedding my daily life with spiritual practices of walking, yoga, journaling and silence so I can protest the injustices of the American empire and advocate for God’s justice among us now.
I am grateful for my humble teacher from Missouri, who changed the world through his spiritual practice. Well done, good and faithful servant, well done.
Ginny Brown Daniel is an ordained minister who is a keynote speaker and writes on faith and politics in Texas. Visit her website at www.ginnybd.com.
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