Christopher Hamlin

Christopher M. Hamlin (born October 9, 1959 in Macon, Georgia) is pastor of Tabernacle Baptist Church in Graymont.

Hamlin grew up in Macon, Georgia and graduated from Southwest High School in 1977. He earned a bachelor of arts at Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia in 1981 and a master of divinity at Colgate Crozer Theological Seminary in Rochester, New York in 1984.

Hamlin came to Birmingham in 1990 to take the pulpit of 16th Street Baptist Church. While there, he completed a doctorate in ministry as a Proctor-Ross Fellow at the United Theological Seminary in Dayton, Ohio in 1996. His dissertation analyzed the dual role of 16th Street Baptist as a memorial and an "open door church".

In 1993 Hamlin proposed installing a casting of John Waddell's 1964 sculpture "That Which Might Have Been: Birmingham, 1963" as a public memorial to the victims of the 1963 bombing of 16th Street Baptist. That proposal was not realized, and the event was later marked by a stone monument at the church in 2011, and a memorial sculpture at the corner of Kelly Ingram Park in 2013.

In 2000 Hamlin was hired at UAB as an assistant to the provost and director of the Birmingham Institute for Aesthetic Education arts program with Birmingham City Schools. He later served as chaplain and education specialist for UAB's 1917 Clinic, until retiring in 2023. He also served as a facilitator for the Birmingham Regional Chamber of Commerce's Project Corporate Leadership program for six years.

Hamlin was appointed by Governor Bob Riley's HIV Commission for Youth, Children, and Adults in 2003. He has also been active in the Birmingham Sister City Commission, the Morehouse College National Alumni Association and its Birmingham Chapter, the Omicron Lambda Chapter Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, Leadership Alabama, Leadership Birmingham, and the [{Birmingham Minister's Discussion Group]].

Hamlin served as interim pastor at Baptist Church of the Covenant in the early 2000s, and in the same role at Tabernacle Baptist Church in 2003 before he accepted the full-time pastorate in 2004.

Hamlin and his wife Sara have two children and three grandchildren.

Preceded by: '	Pastor of 16th Street Baptist Church 1990–2000	Succeeded by: Arthur Price
Preceded by: Edsel Davis	Pastor of Tabernacle Baptist Church 2008–2018	Succeeded by: current

Publications

• Hamlin, Christopher (1998) Behind the Stained Glass: A History of Sixteenth Street Baptist Church. Crane Hill Publishers ISBN 9781575870755
• Hamlin, Christopher M. & Sarah Jackson Shelton (2013) The Teaching Church: Congregation as Mentor. Smyth & Helwys ISBN 9781573126823

References

• Waddell, Amy (September 15, 2013) "That Which MIght Have Been, Birmingham, 1963" : 50 Year Anniversary." [sic] Huffington Post