William Willimon: A Writing Life

by Juli Cragg Hilliard, Religion BookLine -- Publishers Weekly, 3/7/2007

As his Boy Scout troop journeyed to and from the National Jamboree in Colorado Springs, 12-year-old troop scribe Will mailed accounts of their experiences to the council office in his hometown of Greenville, S.C.

The trip by bus took a week each way. He wrote about seeing President Eisenhower—and being disappointed that Ike was old and bald. Returning home, Will discovered the council had been giving his reports to the local newspaper, which had been publishing them.

"Looking back, there must have been something in me that needed to put myself out in print," William H. Willimon said. He's 60 now, a United Methodist bishop and renowned preacher, theologian and author of about 55 books, including Pastor (2002) and, with Stanley Hauerwas, Resident Aliens (1989), both from Abingdon Press. "I sort of got into a discipline, a routine, of reading and writing. I see my writing as an extension of my preaching." Willimon's newest is United Methodist Beliefs: A Brief Introduction, due in May from Westminster John Knox (reviewed below).

Abingdon, the United Methodist press, publishes most of Willimon's books. But WJK—the trade publishing arm of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)—asked him to write this book for a series initiated by Donald K. McKim's Presbyterian Beliefs: A Brief Introduction (2003).

As bishop, Willimon serves the North Alabama United Methodist Conference based in Birmingham. He started seriously writing in 1971 as a first-time pastor at a little country church in Georgia with "a lot of time on my hands." He sent articles to religious periodicals and "very quickly kind of earned a reputation for being provocative," he told RBL.

Willimon's first theology book was The Gospel for the Person Who Has Everything (Judson Press, 1978). He wrote Sighing for Eden (Abingdon, 1985) after learning Greenville in 1947 had been the site of the last U.S. lynching—and that older people he knew had participated.

After working at Duke University from 1976 to 2004 as dean of the chapel and professor of Christian ministry, Willimon became a bishop about three years ago. Writing and reading mean even more now than in academia because they remind him there's more to church life than bureaucracy. He writes with increasing confidence.

"At times people say to me I come across as arrogant or too confident, but I think people like reading or listening to people who appear energized by what they are talking about or have something to say."