With degrees from some of the world's most noted schools (Washington University in St Louis, Southern Seminary, Oxford University), Hinson has taught in some of America's most distinguished educational institutions (Southern Seminary, Wake Forest University, Catholic University of America, Notre Dame, Emory University), and has played a modest role in some of the most momentous ecumenical developments in Christian history since the Reformation of the sixteenth century. Who could have foreseen much less predicted any of those happenings from a glance at his early years growing up in dire poverty in the Missouri Ozarks during the Great Depression?