Gregory Alan Thornbury

Early life and education

Thornbury grew up in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania. His father, John Forrest Thornbury, was Pastor of the Winfield Baptist Church outside of Lewisburg. Greg Thornbury chose Messiah College for his undergraduate studies. He graduated from Messiah College in 1993, with a B.A. in communications. At Messiah College, he met his future wife, Kimberly. They married shortly after their simultaneous graduations from Messiah and moved to the campus of Southern Seminary in the summer of 1993. In 1996, Thornbury received a Master of Divinity from Southern Seminary, and subsequently enrolled in the Ph.D. program at Southern with an emphasis in philosophical theology under the supervision of R. Albert Mohler, and completed additional graduate study at Green College in Oxford (now Green-Templeton College). He finished his dissertation in 2001 in the area of religious epistemology. During his days as a graduate student, he came to know Carl F.H. Henry through correspondences and meetings. Thornbury relates how he had come close to losing his faith, but that reading Henry helped secure his faith: "Henry showed me how to be both a scholar and a follower of Jesus."

Professional career

Thornbury was ordained in 1996 at the First Baptist Church (Southern Baptist) of Clarksville, Indiana. Most of his career has been spent in higher education at Union University in Jackson, Tennessee. In 1998, David Dockery of Union recruited him to teach philosophy, and he received tenure in 2006 after being promoted to associate professor. In 2000, he assumed the role of director of the Carl F. H. Henry Center for Christian Leadership Union University news release, after acquiring permission from Henry for the name.

In 2006, Thornbury became the founding dean of the Union School of Theology and Missions at Union University, where he initiated several new graduate programs, including a doctoral program in Singapore. He also supervised Union's Spiritual Life division as vice president, and lead the university's chapel, campus discipleship programs, and mission trips.

He serves as senior fellow for The Kairos Journal, contributing editor for Providence: A Journal of Christianity and American Foreign Policy, and as theological editor for Biblemesh.com. He has also been active in the arts, and has spoken at exhibitions of the work of Carl Perkins, Larry Norman, and Daniel Johnston. He has also served as a visiting professor at Ansgar Teologiske Høgskole in Norway.

The King's College

On July 11, 2013, The King's College named Thornbury as its sixth president. He began his presidency there on August 1, 2013. The announcement was seen as a return to King's founding vision as a Christian, evangelical college and a repudiation of the political direction it had taken during Dinesh D'Souza's tenure. Religious and secular media such as First Things, World Magazine, the Washington Post, the Huffington Post, and The American Spectator covered the appointment.

The King's College compensated Thornbury $294,416 in 2014 and compensated his wife Kimberly Thornbury $175,678 during the same period for a combined total of $469,678.

Writings

Much of Thornbury's writing is concentrated on Baptist and Evangelical Christianity. He is a scholar of Carl F. H. Henry's life and work, and he authored Recovering Classic Evangelicalism: Applying The Wisdom and Vision of Carl F. H. Henry in March 2013. He is the co-editor and co-author of Who Will Be Saved? Defending the Biblical Understanding of God, Salvation, & Evangelism and Shaping a Christian Worldview: The Foundations of Christian Higher Education. He has contributed to volumes such as A Theology for the Church, Faith and Learning: A Handbook for Christian Higher Education, The Lord's Supper: Remembering and Proclaiming Christ Until He Comes.

Scholarship

Books written or edited by Gregory Alan Thornbury include: