Bishop Will Willimon
Haunted by God with Flannery O’Connor

August 1 - 7 

I have sometimes wondered in recent years about how many mainline Protestants and Catholics consciously raise the issue of their redemption or salvation. I must confess that “Will I be saved?” doesn’t keep me up nights – and it isn’t because I’m all that good. Even so, my recent bout with cancer turned my attention to last things – but only until my tests after treatment came back clear.

On the other hand, one still hears people on opposite sides of many issues – abortion, the death penalty, gay rights, war – condemn their opponents to damnation, in effect claiming that folks on their side will be saved.

Like Flannery O’Connor, my family and I were Catholics raised in a pre-Vatican Council church that seemed a lot clearer about who would and wouldn’t be saved. Good Catholics would make it into heaven – that was a given. Nevertheless, concern about his eternal fate tortured my father way past a time when he had the energy to sin wildly, which had never been the case anyway. One of the saddest conversations I ever had with this good man took place about a year before he died.

Dad: “Do you know of any monasteries where they’ll pray for you in perpetuity after you die?”
Carl: “I’m sure I can find out. I don’t think you have much to worry about, Dad. You’re generous. You’ve been a good dad, go to church faithfully, deliver Meals on Wheels. How come you’re asking?”
Dad: “I just wanted to know.”
Carl: “Dad, do you think God loves you?”
Dad: (long pause) “Well, yes? . . . But . . .”

But . . . My father and many of us had or have this “but” hanging in the air when we ponder redemption. So I look forward to talking about this question of who can be saved with Will Willimon – and with Flannery O’Connor.

In one of my previous lives I was a professor of American Literature. Naturally I taught Flannery O’Connor’s works from time to time. In virtually every story, O’Connor placed her characters in a situation in which they faced a moral decision – a decision between salvation and damnation. They were given a “moment of grace” during which they had the power to select the good. O’Connor didn’t allow wiggle room either. At the end of the story, the reader knew the fate of each character.

So, who can be saved? How do we recognize our “moment of grace?” Bring your musings about and stories around redemption. This should be a provocative session with a master preacher and teacher who has clearly tackled this subject from many perspectives.
– Carl Koch, Director

More about Will Willimon

Bishop Willimon Tackles Question of Salvation

Who Will Be Saved? is the central question of Bishop William H. Willimon's book.

"In the last few years, teaching and preaching in our churches, I've found a good deal of interest, and some confusion, in regard to what Christians believe about salvation in Jesus Christ," commented Bishop Willimon. "We Wesleyans have always taken an orthodox view of how and whom Jesus Christ saves. But we have also stressed salvation as part of the active, seeking, relentlessness of God into all corners of creation, all types of humanity."

Professor Walter Brueggemann of Columbia Theological Seminary says Who Will Be Saved? "is Willimon, teaching Bishop, at his best."  He praised Willimon's exposure of "distorted, moralistic, exclusionary notions of ‘being saved'" as well as his "nerve for the truth." 
Professor Stanley Hauerwas of Duke says, "With his usual wit and wisdom Willimon makes what we thought we understood odd."  

The book deals with issues of the scope of God's salvation in Jesus Christ, the place of other faiths in Christian views of salvation, heaven, forgiveness, eternal damnation, universal salvation and many other matters related to the main theme of salvation.  Dr. Robert Ratliff, Willimon's editor at Abingdon Press, says, "I think this may be Will Willimon's best book. His many readers will really appreciate the quality of his thought and his writing in this engaging book."

For much more about Bishop Will Willimon go to www.northalabamaumc.org. There you can find a complete listing of his books, speeches, awards, and also connect to his podcasts. You can tap into his blog at http://willimon.blogspot.com.

Bishop Willimon has written sixty books. View his works on Amazon