Joel Hunter

About Joel Hunter

Joel Carl Hunter (born April 18, 1948 in Shelby, Ohio), is the senior pastor of Northland, A Church Distributed in Central Florida. He is the author of numerous books, including A New Kind of Conservative (Regal 2008) and Church Distributed (Distributed Press 2008). A leading evangelical voice for compassion issues, Dr. Hunter, who accepted the presidency of the Christian Coalition in 2006, resigned just six months later because the CC board felt that a broadening of agenda beyond gay and abortion to topics like sustainability, and poverty would alienate the base, which subsequently brought his name into national recognition. He delivered the closing benediction on the final day of the 2008 Democratic National Convention.

Joel Carl Hunter was born April 18, 1948 about 75 miles north of Columbus, Ohio in the town of Shelby, Ohio. His parents were Wilbur Hunter, a decorated World War II veteran, and Jean Hunter, a homemaker. When his father died in 1952 from bronchogenic carcinoma of the lungs, Jean went to school to become a beautician and then opened a salon in a room built onto the back of the house. From there she was able to work and keep a close eye on her two children, Joel and older sister Michele. For the next several years as his mother developed an alcoholism that would later claim her life, Joel spent much of his time with his maternal grandparents, Lena and Carl Bashore. It was from his grandmother that he was introduced to Christian life as she made him attend church each Sunday where he first heard from pastor, Dr. Stanley Shoemaker, "Nothing in your life will ever come right until you give it to Jesus." In 1957, Jean married Herb Ovens, a factory worker in a carbon paper mill. For the remainder of his youth, Joel had a stable home life, doing well in school and excelling in sports. He graduated from Shelby High School in 1966 the president of his class and captain of the football team.

After high school, he attended Ohio University and majored in history and government. While there, he became involved in many of the movements on campus, later saying "if the mashed potatoes in the cafeteria were lumpy, we found a reason to protest." More substantially, he put much of his energy into the civil rights movement after he was impassioned for the cause by the words and actions of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.. In fact, it was in April 1968, after the assassination of Dr. King, that he had a crisis of faith and one night, wandered into Galbraith Chapel on campus. It was there that knelt at the altar and dedicated his life to Jesus, remembering the words of his childhood pastor. From that point onward, he felt called into ministry. He graduated from Ohio University with a Bachelor of Science degree in education.