Richard Lischer
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Richard Alan Lischer (born November 12, 1943, in
St. Louis, Missouri St. Louis () is the second-largest city in Missouri, United States. It sits near the confluence of the Mississippi and the Missouri Rivers. In 2020, the city proper had a population of 301,578, while the bi-state metropolitan area, which e ...
) is an American author, memoirist, preacher, practical theologian, and professor emeritus at
Duke Divinity School The Divinity School at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, is one of ten graduate or professional schools within Duke University. It is also one of thirteen seminaries founded and supported by the United Methodist Church. It has 39 regular ...
.


Duke Divinity School

After serving as a Lutheran pastor for nine years, Lischer joined the faculty of Duke Divinity School in 1979. He has been interviewed on topics ranging from church liturgy to death, commenting frequently in the New York Times. He has participated in multiple NPR interviews, and in 2010 was a part of the PBS documentary "God in America," where he provides background for the episode on the leadership of Martin Luther King, Jr. during the civil rights movement. He has also explored the interactions of preaching, politics, and literature, notably at Yale Divinity School in his Lyman Beecher Lectures on preaching and reconciliation, as well as in a prize-winning study of Martin Luther King, Jr., ''The Preacher King: Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Word that Moved America,'' for which he was interviewed by Duke News in 2011. He was one of two keynote speakers at the first international symposium on homiletics held at
Heidelberg University } Heidelberg University, officially the Ruprecht Karl University of Heidelberg, (german: Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg; la, Universitas Ruperto Carola Heidelbergensis) is a public university, public research university in Heidelberg, B ...
. In the classroom, he draws both on the church’s long tradition as well as the experience of contemporary preachers as resources for parish ministry. In 2000, he inaugurated Duke Divinity School’s first chair in preaching. Lischer has preached all over the world, most notably at the Washington National Cathedral, and regularly at Duke University Chapel. He is a former president of the Academy of Homiletics and the recipient of the Academy’s Lifetime Achievement Award.


Memoir

Although both a pastor and an academic, it is Lischer's recent memoir work that has received the most public attention. His first memoir is the story of his early ministry, ''Open Secrets: A Memoir of Faith and Discovery'', and is set in middle-America in the early 1970s. It evokes the hidden dramas in a small country church and traces the painful learning curve of its inexperienced minister. Following the book’s publication in 2001, Lischer began a program of research and teaching in spiritual autobiography that has increasingly occupied the latter phases of his career. A second memoir, ''Stations of the Heart: Parting with a Son'', commemorates his son, Adam, who died of cancer in 2005, for which Lischer received attention in national and regional press.


Personal life

Lischer graduated from
Concordia Senior College Concordia Senior College was a liberal arts college located in Fort Wayne, Indiana, and affiliated with the Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod (LCMS). It was founded in 1957 and closed in 1977. The senior college was a new type of institution for ...
in Fort Wayne, IN in 1965, and then from
Washington University in St. Louis Washington University in St. Louis (WashU or WUSTL) is a private research university with its main campus in St. Louis County, and Clayton, Missouri. Founded in 1853, the university is named after George Washington. Washington University is r ...
in 1967 with an MA in English. He earned the Bachelor of Divinity at
Concordia Seminary Concordia Seminary is a Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod, Lutheran seminary in Clayton, Missouri. The institution's primary mission is to train pastors, deaconesses, Missionary, missionaries, chaplains, and church leaders for the Lutheran Chur ...
in St. Louis in 1969. His Ph.D. (Theology) came from King's College London, in 1972. He is married to Tracy Kenyon Lischer, a lawyer in
Durham Durham most commonly refers to: *Durham, England, a cathedral city and the county town of County Durham *County Durham, an English county * Durham County, North Carolina, a county in North Carolina, United States *Durham, North Carolina, a city in N ...
,
North Carolina North Carolina () is a state in the Southeastern region of the United States. The state is the 28th largest and 9th-most populous of the United States. It is bordered by Virginia to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the east, Georgia and ...
.


Publications

Lischer has published more than a dozen books, including ''The Company of Preachers: Wisdom on Preaching from Augustine to the Present'', which was awarded "Best Book in Ministry/Leadership" by Christianity Today. He is also regularly published in ''The Christian Century'' and his essays and opinion pieces have appeared in the ''Washington Post'', the ''Wall Street Journal'', the ''Atlanta Journal Constitution'', the ''Sydney Morning Herald'', the ''Raleigh News and Observer'', and the ''Durham (NC) Herald''. In 2016, a ''
Festschrift In academia, a ''Festschrift'' (; plural, ''Festschriften'' ) is a book honoring a respected person, especially an academic, and presented during their lifetime. It generally takes the form of an edited volume, containing contributions from the h ...
'' was published in his honor. ''Preaching Gospel: Essays in Honor of Richard Lischer'' included contributions from Ellen F. Davis,
Stanley Hauerwas Stanley Martin Hauerwas (born July 24, 1940) is an American theologian, ethicist, and public intellectual. Hauerwas was a longtime professor at Duke University, serving as the Gilbert T. Rowe Professor of Theological Ethics at Duke Divinity Schoo ...
, and Richard B. Hays.


External links


Official website


References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Lischer, Richard 1943 births Living people American male non-fiction writers American Christian clergy American memoirists American Christian theologians Duke Divinity School faculty Concordia Seminary alumni