John Hines Day
Oct 01, 2009
Presiding Bishop John Hines
John on campus to present 1978 Harvey Lecture
John with biography author Ken Kesselus 1995
John presents last public sermon 1994
Seminary of the Southwest will celebrate its annual John Hines Day on Thursday, October 1. Hines founded Southwest when he was bishop coadjutor of the Diocese of Texas in 1952.
The public is invited to join in the celebration beginning with a Eucharist service at 11:15am in Christ Chapel. The Rev. Charles James Cook, professor-emeritus of pastoral theology, will talk about the life and ministry of John Hines during a 5:00pm reception in the Bailey Center at Rather House. Visitors parking is available in a lot at the southeast corner of East 32nd Street and Duval with entrance off 32nd Street.
John Hines - Founder of Seminary of the Southwest
During a 1981 television interview with Hugh Downs, Bishop Hines said -
"We sought to have a first-class seminary which would not be just a local seminary - we wanted to avoid that - but which would eventually be a seminary of the whole church. It would utilize the wide-open, still frontierish resources of the Southwest in terms of ideas and hopes and expectations and also fiscal realizations, and produce a seminary which could in reality not mind so much whether its graduates are ordained into the ordained ministry - although that would probably be its primary thrust - but would care whether or not their theological education was centered around some kind of dialogue between the Christian faith and culture."
John Hines was the primary influence in the founding of the Episcopal Theological Seminary of the Southwest in 1952 when he was Bishop Coadjutor of the Diocese of Texas. He saw the need of the church to have a seminary of its own in the Southwest and established Seminary of the Southwest to equip people to proclaim the gospel in the world in which they live.
John Hines was a gifted and eloquent preacher and prophet for social justice and human rights. Bishop Hines was Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church from 1965 through mid-1974. Hines preached sermons deeply grounded in Scripture that challenged listeners to a living faith. Hines, who died in 1997, moved to Austin during retirement years in the early 1990s and presented his last public sermon at Southwest's 1994 commencement.
In his biography, John E. Hines: Granite on Fire, the Rev. Kenneth Kesselus (Seminary of the Southwest Class of 1972, aptly described Hines - "He stood fast in the tradition of Old Testament prophets who could not be intimidated or compromised when convinced they understood God's will."
John Hines often prefaced his sermons with the following prayer -
"We pray, O God, that thy word may invade our words, that it may make the complex simple and the weak strong, that by it, the blind may lead the blind without both falling into the ditch, that through it the desperate may find hope, and a whisper scarcely strong enough to reach those in the farthest pew, may give purpose, and power to life. Amen."
Tribute Sermon by Dean-emeritus Durstan McDonald on the death of John Hines - posting soon
