The son of George Nelson Hunt Jr. and Jessie Mae Alter Hunt, Hunt was born in Louisville, Kentucky, and attended the University of the South, at Sewanee, Tennessee, where he was awarded a B.A. in 1953. He went on to the Virginia Theological Seminary in Alexandria, Virginia, where he earned his M.Div. degree and was ordained to the ministry in 1956. He received the degree of Doctor of Divinity from Yale University in 1980 and the University of Rhode Island awarded him an honorary L.H.D. in 1995. In June 1955, he married Barbara Noel Plamp, with whom he had three children.
