Richard Lischer

Richard Alan Lischer (born November 12, 1943, in St. Louis, Missouri) is an American author, memoirist, preacher, practical theologian, and professor at Duke Divinity School.^[1]

Duke Divinity School

After serving as a Lutheran pastor for nine years, Lischer joined the faculty of Duke Divinity School. He has been interviewed on topics ranging from church liturgy^[2] to death,^[3] commenting frequently in the New York Times. He has participated in multiple NPR interviews,^[4] 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.^[5] 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,^[6] for which he was interviewed by Duke News in 2011.^[7] He was one of two keynote speakers at the first international symposium on homiletics held at Heidelberg University.^[8] 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.^[9] 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,^[10] and regularly at Duke University Chapel.^[11] He is a former president of the Academy of Homiletics and the recipient of the Academy’s Lifetime Achievement Award.^[12]

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,^[13] 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,^[14] for which Lischer received attention in national and regional press.^[3][15][16]

Personal life

Lischer is married to Tracy Kenyon Lischer, a lawyer in Durham, North Carolina. They have a daughter, Sarah, who teaches political science at Wake Forest University, and three grandchildren.

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.^[17]

References