Biographical Presentation

Hello friends!

My presentation discusses Dr. Michael Haykin, the Professor of Church History and Biblical Spirituality at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and the Director of The Andrew Fuller Center for Baptist Studies.

Michael Anthony George Haykin was born Azad Hakim on November 24, 1953, in Birmingham, England, to his Kurdish father, Simon, and Irish mother, Theresa. In 1965, he and his father anglicized their names when the family moved to Canada, settling in Ancaster, Ontario, near Hamilton.

In 1971, Michael entered the philosophy program at the University of Western Ontario. During this time, despite his Marxist ideals and his interest in Eastern religions and the New Age movement, he moved from agnosticism to theism after writing an essay concerning the existence of God.

In 1972, he transferred to the University of Toronto, and in 1973, while home for vacation in Hamilton, he met his future wife, Alison, at the Pizza Parlour, where they both worked. Alison attended Stanley Avenue Baptist Church, and Michael began attending with her. Even after he resumed his studies in Toronto, he continued attending church, returning home every weekend. At this time, he was in his third year of University. The contrast between the Gospel preached by his pastor, Bruce Woods. The dire philosophy he was studying, led him to Christ in February 1974.

He was baptized in April 1974 and graduated from University of Toronto shortly after. He would not go far, however, as he would then begin the Master of Religion program at Wycliffe College, which is an evangelical Anglican seminary right in the heart of UofT. He and Alison were married on November 5, 1976, and after completing his master's, he continued to Wycliffe's Doctor of Theology program, focusing his studies on the Early Church Fathers.‌

Through his graduate studies, he became particularly interested in the Holy Spirit, even becoming involved for a short time in the charismatic movement. This led him to write his dissertation on a fourth-century controversy over the deity of the Holy Spirit.

He completed his Th.D in 1982 and began teaching at Central Baptist Seminary, which would later merge with London Baptist Bible College to become Heritage Baptist College and Seminary. Unfortunately for Dr. Haykin, Evangelicals were not much interested in his area of expertise. In his book, Rediscovering the Church Fathers, he writes: "A few years after I had completed my doctoral studies in fourth-century pneumatology… I came to realize that I would have to develop another area of scholarly expertise, for very few of the Baptist congregations with which I had contact were keenly interested in men like Athanasius, and Basil of Caesarea".

Fortunately for us, this other "area of scholarly expertise" was the Reformation and Puritan Era, as well as the English Baptist Movement, which, along with his earlier interest in the Holy Spirit, helped "revealed a deep dependence upon the work of the Holy Spirit on the part of the key figures in these movements." On a personal note, I had the privilege of taking Dr. Haykin's course on Biblical Spirituality among Reformation and Puritan figures. I highly recommend his book The God Who Draws Near. This quote from his introduction captures his passion for this topic:

"It is the Spirit who enables believers, from various racial, social, and religious backgrounds, to find true unity in Christ and together worship God. In fact, without the Spirit, worship and the glorification of Jesus Crhsit cannot take place. And it is the Spirit who is the true Guarantor of orthodoxy."‌

After serving as Principal of The Toronto Baptist Seminary from 2003 to 2007, Dr. Haykin took up his present position at SBTS. Happily for Dr. Haykin, this post allowed him to highlight his expertise in the church fathers as Evangelical attitudes toward the subject had changed considerably since he started his academic career. In announcing his appointment, SBTS described him as "A prolific author and noted scholar in areas of early church history, Baptist history and Christian spirituality."

The wealth of articles and books he has published on this subject has led two of his former students to describe Dr. Haykin as "a truly Renaissance man of church history." These publications, along with the impact he has had on the numerous students he taught in multiple theological institutions in Canada, the United States, and abroad, will surely leave an indelible legacy for many years to come.