The impact of Will D. Campbell (part three)
Wednesday, June 5, 2013
I am going to start compiling some of the testimonies to Will’s importance that I’m receiving in response to my efforts to pay tribute to him (read parts one and two, immediately preceding on this blog). Here, for instance, is what Phil Ziegler wrote from the University of Aberdeen:
I remember what a revelation it was to discover a full run of Katallagete in the Emmanuel College library in Toronto when I was a student there in the 1990s. Reading in it helped to break things open for me – that a radical biblical theology of grace and radical politics were related was a thought I couldn’t have formed in the United Church before that encounter. Somebody with access to them should scan a full set of these and offer them as a kind of digital archive.
Katallagete should not be mentioned solely in connection with Will, however. It was a joint effort with Jim Holloway (James Y.) and could not have existed without him.
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Here is another response, from the Rev. Craig Higgins, a friend and superb preacher:
I just read your blog posts on the passing of Will Campbell. I too only met him once, as an undergrad at Mercer University, where he was considered nothing less than a saint. (His book, The Stem of Jesse, is about Mercer, of course. And I studied under Joe Hendricks Hendricks, Mary Wilder, Bob Otto, and a bunch of the people mentioned in that book. Although, by the time I got there in the Fall of 1979, the worst of those struggles was over.) I am thankful to have a copy of The Glad River, inscribed, “To Craig, part of the neighborhood. Will Campbell.”
