BANGOR – The Bangor Theological Seminary New Testament Language and Literature professorship will be renamed in October in honor of the Rev. Dr. Burton H. Throckmorton Jr.

A dinner and announcement of the seminary’s New Testament chair will be held at 6 p.m. Oct. 9 in Wellman Commons, after the opening of the art exhibit, “Barrenness and Fertility,” in the Hutchins Art Gallery.

Events on Oct. 10 will begin at 2 p.m. with a musical presentation by BTS student Jeffrey McIlwain and Friends. Students will portray “Women of the Hebrew Bible” and give a presentation on “Gender, Race and Class” from 2:30 to 4:30 p.m. A dinner will be held at 5:30 p.m., followed by a lecture and the installation service at the Hammond Street Congregational Church.

Dr. David J. Trobisch, the Throckmorton-Hayes Professor of New Testament Language and Literature, will discuss “Stephen King and the Book of Acts” at 7:30 p.m. Then, he and the Rev. Dr. Susan Davies will be installed as Jonathan Fisher Professor of Christian Education, and Dr. Ann Johnston, R.S.C.J., as the George A. Gordon Professor of Old Testament.

The event will be part of the Celebration of Teachers and Theological Education.

Throckmorton, 78, joined the BTS faculty in 1954. He is known for his scholarly work, such as editing “The Gospel Parallels, 5th Edition,” “The Inclusive Language Lectionary” and “The New Testament and Psalms: An Inclusive Version.”

His support for expanding the role of women in the ministry and his work on gender-neutral language earned him a spot on Phil Donahue’s TV show in the early 1980s where he suggested that God was not necessarily male.

Throckmorton’s students feel a deep emotional and intellectual attachment to him. When he spoke at Convocation in January, former and current students gave him a three-minute standing ovation. Women graduates of BTS have expressed deep gratitude to Throckmorton for his support of their joining the ministry when there were few women clergy in Maine.

The Rev. Linda Campbell-Marshall, pastor of the John Street United Methodist Church in Camden, graduated from BTS in 1975. “I was first called to the ministry when I was 13, and I thought, ‘God’s got a wrong number. I’m a girl,”‘ she recalled in a 1999 interview. “Burt was very good at peeling away those cultural assumptions we’ve all grown up with to show us what the Scriptures really say, especially when what we thought the Bible was saying ran counter to what we heard God saying.”

Born and raised in New Jersey, the son of a Presbyterian insurance salesman, he and his sister, Joan, performed as a tap dancing duo in the 1930s. During his seven years of study at Union Theological Seminary in New York he supported himself by teaching ballroom and tap dancing. It was while teaching there that he met Ansley Coe, the woman who would become his wife and, eventually, the president of BTS.

For more information, call 942-6781.