Jack Partain

Professor Emeritus of Religion

Jackie “Jack” Gene Partain (1933-2010) was born to Charles Forris and Una Jean Partain in Erath County, Texas. After struggling to start their farm in the midst of drought and depression, his parents moved to the Dallas area, where his father worked in retail sales and his mother in the fashion industry.

During high school, Jack felt a strong sense of call to international missions. He was active in his church, 4-H, and a country music group (playing steel guitar). He graduated in 1950 from Carrollton High School and then from Baylor University in 1954 with a Bachelor of Arts in religion and history, minoring in English literature.

While in graduate school at the University of Texas, he served as pastor of Weir Baptist Church. It was there he met Ruth Lloyd, a pastor’s daughter in Austin, Texas, whom he married on Aug. 6, 1955. They spent their honeymoon driving through the Blue Ridge Mountains to Wake Forest, N.C., where Jack attended Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary. In 1959, he earned a B.Div. degree with a focus in New Testament (Greek) and missions/world religions. From 1956 to 1959, he pastored Brookside Baptist Chapel, Goldsboro, N.C. In 1959, he completed Clinical Pastoral Education at N.C. Baptist Hospital in Winston-Salem.

Following seminary, he served as pastor of Shiloh Baptist Church, Carson, Va., honing his skills and passion for teaching by reinvigorating the church’s Christian education programs and writing for Baptist publications. Jack and Ruth’s first son, William “Will” Daniel, was born in 1960, and second son, Eugene “Gene” Charles, was born in 1962.

Jack fulfilled the calling he sensed in high school when he was commissioned by the Foreign Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention. That fall, 1962, the couple and their two young children set off by ocean liner, then plane, to East Africa to become missionaries. After eight months of language school to learn Kiswahili in Dar es Salaam, Tanganyika (which became Tanzania in 1964), the family moved to Kitale, Kenya, for one year, then to Nairobi, Kenya, where the couple’s third son, David Lloyd was born. When Kenya gained independence from Britain in 1963, they participated in the Uhuru celebrations in Nairobi. In late 1965, they settled in Arusha, Tanzania, where they were stationed for the rest of their missionary experience. While there, Jack and Ruth joined the faculty of the Baptist Theological Seminary of East Africa, teaching and preparing a generation of indigenous pastors.

However, life was not always easy. Food shortages, boys away from home in boarding schools, closed borders due to political conflicts, the deaths of Ruth’s parents, and other issues took their toll on the family. Then on Good Friday 1978, Jack, Ruth and another missionary, Marilyn McMillan, were driving back to Arusha from Dar es Salaam (about 400 miles) when they were involved in an automobile accident. Ruth was critically injured and unconscious for several weeks. After extensive medical evaluation and attention for in different hospitals, Ruth was ultimately transported to the U.S. for intensive and rehabilitative care at the Baylor Hospital in Dallas for both physical and brain injuries. Months in hospital and therapy followed, and Ruth’s recovery was near-miraculous, though she was by no means as before. Ruth was never fully independent again after the 1978 accident (Jack provided ongoing care for Ruth until his death, doing as much as he could to keep her engaged with the world).

When Ruth was able, the family moved to Fort Worth, where Jack completed his seminars at Southwestern Seminary and served as visiting professor of missions. The family never returned to missions in Africa.

In 1980, Jack joined the faculty of religious studies at William Jewell College, Liberty, Mo., as director of the Center for Christian Ministry. In 1983, he earned his Th.D. from Southwestern, completing his dissertation on African theology.

That fall he became professor of religious studies at Gardner-Webb. He served as vice chair of the faculty from 1986-88, and in 1996 was awarded the Fleming-White Award for Excellence in Teaching. He was also recognized with the national Templeton Foundation Award for teaching for developing and facilitating the cross-disciplinary academic course “Issues in Science and Religion.” He also helped create the GW freshmen orientation and the Writing Across the Curriculum programs. He retired in 1998, was named faculty emeritus in 1999.

Jack was noted for his demand for excellence and his readiness to engage students (and anyone who would engage him) into critical thinking. Colleague Dr. Sophia Steibel says, “He was known for answering students’ questions with other questions to make them think.”

Or as the late Dr. Randall Lolley, former Southeastern Seminary president, said: “His role as a professor and a colleague in Christian higher education was profound. He had both wisdom and knowledge. The former was God-given; the latter was earned the old fashioned way: he worked very hard and very long for it because he knew that the young minds he was molding deserved his very best disciplined scholarship.”

Jack was active in N.C. Baptist life, serving two terms on the Convention’s Council of Christian Life and Public Affairs, and serving as an interim pastor. He was also an active member of Boiling Springs Baptist Church, where he was a deacon, Sunday school teacher and member of various committees. He was active in developing Swahili theological textbooks, and he also wrote the commentary on Numbers for the “Mercer Commentary of the Bible.”

Jack was known as an expert rose gardener. For years, Jack tended with great care the GWU rose garden on Main Street; you would hear him speak of each bush and its uniqueness, an enthusiasm he carried over to students. In Lolley’s words, Jack had a “…contagious love for people—all people.” He believed that, created in God’s image, each one has a right to be here—and to flourish.

In 2010, Gardner-Webb dedicated the rose garden grounds and facility in his honor by establishing the Partain Rose Pavilion.

Dr. Frank Bonner, former president of GWU, described Partain as a teacher who made a significant impact in the lives of his students. “Students were empowered and influenced. I believe their experience with Jack helped to strengthen their Christianity. His tending to roses went hand in hand with his tending to young minds,” Bonner said.

Sources:

 Personal information—Eugene C. Roelke Partain, Dr. Darlene Gravett, and the Gardner-Webb Office of University Communications


Updated: February 2015

Public Relations archives, 2018

Ruth Partain Obituary, Nov. 2022

Noel T. Manning II, Dec. 2022