Jesus Politics points to this article at the Baptist Studies Bulletin about another former Southern Baptist Theological Seminary Professor I had, Glenn Hinson.

Hinson is reviewing a book , A Pilgrimage of Faith: My Story, by Henlee Hulix Barnette, an ethics professor and theologian whom I wrote a paper on while taking Baptist Theologians in Historical Perspective (I had requested Clarence Jordan as my topic, but got assigned Barnette since there were more than one person requesting Jordan; the assignments of “second choices” were done by selecting “those who would be close to the first choice”. I got to interview Barnette during the course of writing that paper.)

But this is a most Accurate one-sentence depiction of the theological approach of the Southern Baptist Convention’s educational apparatus: Shut Down Searching. Shut it DOWN. This is why all of the former Professors of mine in 1980 who are not retired are teaching somewhere else. This is why Al Mohler is installed as President. This is why I have to tell people when I tell them where I went to school that it was “pre-takeover”; when Southern Baptists weres still a mainline denomination (meaning, for all the problems of mainlines, there is a common thread: diversity).

Jesus Politics: E. Glenn Hinson on Henlee Barnette

A Pilgrimage of Faith is an inspiring story, but it has some very sad parts. Perhaps the most grievous for someone who has been privileged to share a considerable stretch in Henlee Barnette’s pilgrimage is what has happened to the people who brought Henlee Barnette to a vital Christian faith, nurtured him, ordained him, and sustained him in his ministry. Where will prophets come from in a denomination which has shut down searching? Among his final petitions as he finished his autobiography was this: “Let me die thinking. I have always had a hunger to know more. Here we see things ‘through a glass darkly.’ No one has all this truth.”