Seton Hall Magazine, Winter 2003 - Seton Hall University

Reverend Christina Hindley, J.D. ’84, M.Div. has found her
calling in life: serving as chaplain and director of
pastoral care at White Plains Hospital Center
in New York State. But the road she traveled to
become a spiritual leader in the healthcare field
was anything but direct.
Growing up in Mercer County, she
attended Trenton State College (now
The College of New Jersey), where she
majored in music education. As a studentteacher
in the early 1970s, she learned
that she especially enjoyed working
with adults — a revelation that led
her upon graduation to forgo teaching
music and instead enter the
business world, first in banking
and later as a paralegal.
While working at the
law firm of Destribats &
Hamilton in Hamilton,
New Jersey, she came into
contact with several Seton
Hall University alumni —
Jay Destribats, J.D. ’64,
Richard Hamilton, J.D. ’74,
Anthony Massi ’75/J.D. ’78
and Michael Paglione, J.D.
’78. “These colleagues
encouraged me to go back to school for my
law degree,” she says. “And they spoke so
highly about Seton Hall’s law school.” So, she
started making the trek to Newark for classes,
not knowing that the law school experience
would significantly change her life.
“While I always considered myself to be a
critical thinker, I often viewed the world in
terms of black and white, right or wrong,
good or evil,” Reverend Hindley explains. “ I quickly learned that
no issue can be resolved that simply. The Law School courses
opened my eyes to unending shades of gray, teaching me to argue
both sides of an issue. Issues in law, just like issues in life, are not
black and white. Critical thinking requires effort, humility and
genuine care for others. Seton Hall School of Law elicited those
qualities, challenged my world view and changed my life.”
While her critical thinking skills were being challenged in the
classroom at night, she was putting her education to good use
during the day. She worked for the New Jersey Economic
Development Authority (NJEDA), which provides loans and
issues tax-exempt bonds to help the state’s companies start or
expand businesses. She monitored whether the companies created
jobs and did what they promised to do with these public funds.
32 SETON HALL UNIVERSITY MAGAZINE
Her Calling to Healthcare Ministry Began in Law and Music
At the Seton Hall University School of Law, where she earned her law degree
before becoming a minister, Reverend Christina Hindley, J.D. ’84, M.Div. found
that a focus on ethics and accountability resonated throughout the curriculum.
“I try to help people find
answers to their questions
about life, death, suffering
and hope without imposing
my beliefs on them.”
“I remember being affected at Seton Hall by the Professional
Responsibility and Ethics class,” Reverend Hindley
says. “The essence of this course — the need to
be vigilant in our efforts to behave ethically and
to be accountable — resonates throughout
the Law School curriculum, and applies not
only to the legal profession but to the
corporate world and religious life as well.”
After graduating with a law degree in
1984, she continued working for the
NJEDA and launched a part-time, private
law practice, specializing in estate
settlements, wills and living wills.
Looking back, she realizes that while
meeting with clients whose loved
ones had died, and listening to
their family stories, she was
facilitating their grief process.
In 1989, Hindley turned
39, the same age her mother
was when she died. The
attorney found herself doing
some serious soul search-
ing. “I was happy with
my life,” she says, “but I felt
that there was something else
I was supposed to do.”
In 1991, while in Atlanta
for a conference, she spent a week at a
Christian commune that ministers to the
homeless. She later attended an open house
at the Columbia Theological Seminary. At
the end of her two-week stay in Atlanta, she
was ready to enroll at the Presbyterian seminary.
She says, “The education I received
continued the education in ethics that I
received at Seton Hall,” she says. “My
world view and belief system were challenged once again. It was
here that I learned how God is at work in the world and the part
I was called to play in that work.”
Her eyes were opened on many fronts at Columbia Theological
Seminary. She calls a hospital visitation course a “redemptive
experience,” for it made her realize, she recalls, how she could
“bring all my life experience to ministry and help people find
strength and cope with their illnesses.”
Following graduation, Reverend Hindley completed a one-year
residency with the Tri-Hospital Clinical Pastoral Education Center
in Atlanta to prepare for a chaplaincy. That year, she suffered the
loss of her seminary prayer partner, Vanessa Knight, to ovarian cancer.
“I participated in her ordination in July 1995 and in her funeral
just one month later,” she says quietly. “The focus of my seminary