For years, Hull also tried to bridge differences between conservatives and moderates in the Southern Baptist Convention. “He was one of the most consequential Baptist leaders of the last 100 years,” said Beeson Divinity School Dean Timothy George. “He was filled with hope. It was a hope grounded in God’s loving purpose for all creation.”

The Rev. William E. Hull was an unlikely lightning rod. A calm, gentlemanly scholar, he was considered a brilliant New Testament theologian and seminary administrator, one of the most respected in the Southern Baptist Convention.

Born in Birmingham, Hull enrolled at the University of Alabama in 1948 as a pre-med student. Feeling called to the ministry, he transferred to Samford University as a junior and got a religion degree in 1951. He earned a master of divinity degree and a Ph.D. at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky., and began teaching there in 1958.

He was dean of theology in 1970 when he preached a sermon at Crescent Hill Baptist Church in Louisville, Ky., where his friend the late John Claypool (later a priest at St. Luke’s Episcopal Church in Birmingham) was then pastor. The sermon titled “Shall We Call the Bible infallible?” was reprinted in The Baptist Program, a Southern Baptist magazine.

“His answer was no,” said Baptist historian Bill Leonard. “He challenged the idea of biblical inerrancy. It was a sermon that disagreed with and laid out an argument against biblical inerrancy. He said that even if we did have a perfect translation of a perfect text, it would still have to be interpreted by fallible interpreters. Therefore we should not call the Bible infallible.”

Earlier that summer, the Southern Baptist Convention met in Denver and a debate broke out about the theological leanings of the Broadman Bible Commentary. One volume was withdrawn. Hull was one of the authors. There were rumblings among Southern Baptists that their six seminaries were getting too liberal. The Broadman Commentary and the sermon on infallibility made Hull a target.

“He never expected it to be controversial,” Leonard said. “Because he was such a well-known figure, dean of the school of theology, it became fodder for the early efforts to say this is what’s wrong with the seminaries.”

Conservatives began an organized takeover of seminary trustee boards in 1979.

Hull left Southern Seminary to become pastor of the First Baptist Church of Shreveport from 1975-87. He guided the church toward a racially inclusive membership and took part in the first ordination of a woman by a Southern Baptist church in Louisiana – his daughter, Susan Hull Walker. Samford University President Tom Corts hired Hull as provost of Samford University, a post he held until 1996 before going back to teaching as a professor at Samford.

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