New Methodist bishop is ready to ‘wreak havoc’
By John H. Adams, The Layman Online, August 30, 2004
In late August, as Will Willimon describes it, some of his fellow faculty members at Duke University gave him a “Goodbye, Mr. Chips” sendoff so that he could dodder off to Birmingham to serve the North Alabama Conference as one of 52 U.S. bishops in the United Methodist Church.
Duke photo by Jim Wallace
Will Willimon of Duke now is a Methodist bishop. It was the second time he had been nominated for the episcopacy in the 8.3-million-member denomination. Eight years ago he got shellacked, possibly because of one of his campaign promises: “Vote for me and I’ll wreak havoc in your name.” They believed him, for he had once sarcastically suggested that Methodists, to stop their embarrassing membership losses, ought to refill them by admitting baptized pets.
The new Methodist bishop – as of Sept. 1 – is 58 years old, but he acts as puckish as the day when, 20 years ago, he stepped foot on the campus of Duke University in Durham, N.C., to become dean of the Duke University Chapel and a professor in the Duke Divinity School.
In the chapel, mounting the staircase to the aerie they call a pulpit, he sometimes seemed out of place in Duke’s Sunday display of high-church pomp befitting a European cathedral. Willimon is Greenville, S.C., to the core. He speaks with a Southern accent and his face turns red when he shifts into high-tempo irony, sarcasm and iconoclasm, of which he has an endless supply.
But, from that lofty preaching perch, he has a way of peeling away the outer crustiness. He once told the congregation, mostly students, “When I consider how demanding the Gospel is, I can’t believe how many of you got dressed this morning and came down to hear about it.”
A friend suggested that Willimon, upon becoming a bishop, essentially an administrative job in the United Methodist Church, would run out of kindling. “I don’t want them to silence you,” the friend said. Willimon’s wife, Patsy, listening on another phone, snapped back, “No one’s been able to shut him up yet.”
Indeed, and people listen when Willimon speaks – Duke students, Methodists, Baptists, Episcopalians, Presbyterians, Pentecostals. During his time at Duke, he wrote most of his 50 books (est. 1,000,000 sales) and preached in pulpits all over America. He became an international gadfly for Duke, and only one person – not the school’s president – outranked him in name recognition. The bigger name, of course, is Mike Krzyzewski, a.k.a. “Coach K,” for whom an on-campus tent town is named. “Krzyzewskiville” is where the university’s budding scholars become its “crazies” – literally camping out for nights to queue up for tickets to watch Coach K’s basketball team stomp some other university’s.
Willimon, unable to match the mania over basketball, earned his fame by the quaint practice of theology, a declining science in American Protestantism. And he’s revered and detested, depending on whose theological ox he gores.
Few cross the aisle so easily. For instance, Willimon has written prolifically for both Christian Century, the magazine of liberal Protestantism, and Christianity Today, the counterpart for evangelicals.
Perhaps his best known book – written with Duke Divinity School colleague Stanley Hauerwaus – is Resident Aliens, subtitled “A provocative Christian assessment of culture and ministry for people who know that something is wrong.” They take a dim view of the so-called “progressive” political harping by mainline Protestant denominations and their ecumenical alliances.
Willimon and Hauerwaus say, “We would like a church that again asserts that God, not nations, rules the world, that the boundaries of God’s kingdom transcend those of Caesar, and that the main political task of the church is the formation of people who see clearly the cost of discipleship and are willing to pay the price.”
Yet Willimon doesn’t shun all political issues. He opposes abortion, and made that clear in an address to Presbyterians Pro-Life during the 1999 General Assembly. He says he is fully committed to the United Methodist Church’s policy that prohibits the ordination of practicing homosexuals and union services for homosexual couples.
On the latter, Willimon was subjected to scathing attacks because the Duke administration decided that Duke Chapel could be used for blessing same-sex unions. In fact, Willimon opposed such services in the chapel but was at odds with Nannerl Keohane, then the university’s president. The final decision came after a task force recommended allowing the chapel to be used for the same-gender ceremonies.
Willimon publicly defended the decision under the rubric of Duke’s policy of recognizing all religious groups – Christian, Jewish, Islam and otherwise. Some of his critics said he should have stayed the course, even if it cost him his job. But the Duke Chapel issue was not his to decide. Besides, Willimon believes it was much ado about little.
“For me, it’s not an issue that has kept that much of my interest,” he told The Layman Online. “I’ve said that to the gay activists and I’ve said that to the anti-gay activists. Working with college students for 20 years, I found they’re awfully impressed with their sexuality. I tried to get them to talk about something else.”
But the little issue mushroomed after United Methodist Action, an evangelical publication that is part of the Institute on Religion and Democracy, ran an appeal to its readers. “Ask Chapel Dean Will Willimon to renounce the new policy. If the university persists in carrying it through, ask Rev. Willimon to resign his position as dean in protest.” The appeal included Willimon’s phone and e-mail address.
He says he got hundreds of e-mails a day. His temperature also rose. He responded with a tirade published in Christian Century in which he defended and explained the Duke policy and lashed back at “Mark Tooley’s cyberstorm troops.” Tooley is an IRD associate who directs the work of UM Action.
“Well, I’m not resigning,” Willimon said in his column. “Because this past Holy Saturday we gathered about the font and in a darkened chapel illumined by flickering candlelight joined the Holy Spirit in making three new Christians. Despite all our academic defenses here at Duke, Jesus got three more … Sorry, UM Action, you’re going to have to push me out of here with a crowbar.”
Willimon himself troubled the Duke students on another issue. Alarmed by inebriation and rowdiness on campus, Willimon addressed the issue through the Duke pulpit, his classes and walk-by discussions with students. That set off a backlash among students who argued that they had the right to study hard and party hard.
Eventually, though, Willimon wrote a 21-page report for Keohane titled “Old Duke – New Duke,” a document that was produced after three months of interviewing hundreds of students, faculty and staff and spending six weekends attending on- and off-campus parties. The report – a postmodern version of an old-fashioned Methodist temperance movement – may not have resolved heavy drinking at Duke, but it pricked the campus conscience.
His best one-liner during the anti-drinking movement came during a discussion when he said he thought people drank because they felt regret. “You’re only 18, what do you have to regret?” he asked the students.
Willimon recently completed his scholarly swan song at Duke, a soon-to-be published book on the preaching and teaching of Karl Barth.
“I think that Barth, by far, was the greatest theologian,” Willimon said. “He was decidedly Reformed and against everything we’ve been teaching the last 30 years. He had great contempt for pietists and Methodists and such a robust view of God. He had very little interest in evangelism because he thought that was so counter to so much theology.”
During the interview with The Layman Online, Willimon was reminded that he sounds suspiciously more Calvinist than he does Methodist, and he half-heartedly agreed, but added, “Promise not to tell the Methodists that they’ve got a prominent Calvinist.”
For that matter, Willimon is not easy to box in theologically. But he does have a straightforward message for Protestants. “The mainline is getting sidelined,” he said. “My message is that Jesus is just really interesting. He’s on the loose, on the move.” He adds to that a stern view of discipleship, of radical commitment to the lordship of Christ.
He is particularly worried about attracting younger people. “I keep telling the mainline they need to get back in touch with their younger members.”
By “younger members,” Willimon was referring to people who are not inspired by traditional worship, but are willing to experiment in worship – everything from contemporary songs to Gregorian chants and speaking in tongues.
Methodists and Presbyterians have “found a way to make church attractive to people over 65,” he said, but not to young people.
With young people in mind and a new – albeit administrative – pulpit, Willimon said he hoped to get off to a flying start in Alabama.
He will do so by having the bishop’s council discuss a secular book on management titled First, Break All the Rules.
Willimon believes he can provide some personal insights.