The day before graduation ceremonies at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, California, the man who led the school to become the world’s largest interdenominational seminary died. David Allan Hubbard, 68, died of a heart attack on June 7.
During his 30-year presidency, a post he assumed in 1963 at age 35, Hubbard added a School of Psychology and a School of World Mission to Fuller’s School of Theology, both in 1965.
An Old Testament scholar, Hubbard published 36 books, including “Psalms for All Seasons” and “The Practice of Prayer.”
“David Allan Hubbard was widely acknowledged as a person who took evangelical theological scholarship into a position of leadership in the larger world of higher education,” says Richard Mouw, who succeeded Hubbard as Fuller’s president in 1993. “His influence in theological education was obvious, but he also played a key role in bringing together previously separate segments of the evangelical community in new coalitions.”
For example, Mouw says Hubbard, the son of ordained Pentecostal ministers, “worked to integrate the insights and practices of charismatics into a solid evangelical perspective.” Opening an Office of Women’s Concerns at Fuller, “he insisted, at a time when it was unpopular to do so, that women were encouraged to develop their gifts for the church and society.”
Before joining Fuller, Hubbard taught biblical studies at Westmont College in nearby Santa Barbara. “He was a statesman for the evangelical community,” says David Winter, Westmont’s president. “He constantly built bridges with the Jewish and Catholic communities. On the West Coast, Presbyterians are more evangelical than they are other places, and that’s due to the work of David Hubbard.”
Hubbard endured several controversies. Battles over biblical inerrancy and creationism led some evangelicals to feel betrayed. Emotions ran high, for example, when in 1972 Fuller dropped a phrase that the Scriptures are “free from all error in the whole and in the part” from its Statement of Faith, and when Hubbard, a member of the California Board of Education from 1972 to 1975, voted against mandating equal time for creationism in school texts.
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