Andrew S. Burgess Lecture in
Global Mission

William R (“Bill”) Burrows was born in Belle Plaine, Iowa, in 1942 and entered the Roman Catholic Society of the Divine Word in 1963.  He pursued philosophical and theological studies in the United States and the Gregorian University in Rome, where he received his licentiate in theology from the Gegorian in 1972.  He was ordained a priest in 1971.

From 1972 to 1977, Bill worked as a theology teacher and rural missionary in Papua New Guinea. His work centered on helping Melanesians find ways to interpret Christian doctrine understandable within their cultures.  He began a national series of Aseminars on ordained ministry@ that were aimed at helping Catholic missionaries identify suitable forms of pastoral ministerial structures for Melanesian realities.  In 1977 he began doctoral studies at the Divinity School of the University of Chicago, while working and living at Divine Word Theologate in Hyde Park and at Our Lady of the Gardens, an African American Parish on the far south side of Chicago.  From 1981 to 1985 he taught at Catholic Theological Union on an adjunct basis.

In 1985 he married Linda W Fyfe, worked at the American Medical Association in Chicago from 1986 to 1989, and finished his doctorate in theology in 1987.  His thesis title was: AThe Roman Catholic Magisterium on <Other= Religious Traditions.@  It was done under the direction of Langdon Gilkey, with Anne Carr, Joseph Kitagawa, and David Tracy as advisors.

In 1989, Bill became managing editor of Orbis Books, Maryknoll, New York, where he supervises acquisitions in the areas of interfaith dialogue, history, faith and intercultural adaptation, ecology, ecumenism, and evangelization and mission.

Bill=s lifelong scholarly interest has centered on the adaptation of Christianity in non-Western environments and on Christian relations with persons in other faith traditions, particularly on how Christian mission should be understood and carried on in an ecumenical age.  The Faith Meets Faith Series that he began with Paul Knitter and edits at Orbis has been acclaimed internationally as the most important series of books illuminating interfaith concerns.

Bill  is the author of New Ministries: The Global Context (1980) and editor of Redemption and Dialogue: Reading Redemptoris Missio and Dialogue and Proclamation (1993).  He is the author of numerous articles and lectures widely on questions of Christian mission and interreligious dialogue.  He is currently vice-president and was publisher of the American Society of Missiology.

He has recently finished work on and is awaiting publication of Jacques Dupuis Faces the Inquistion on the work of the late Jacques Dupuis, SJ, in relation to the criticism of it by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.  He is currently working on another book, Mission, Church, Cultures, on evangelization and culture dilemmas facing particular churches in the era of “world” Christianity.

His wife Linda is a school psychologist at the George Fischer Middle School in Carmel, NewYork. Bill and Linda live with Tabby the cat and Cody the dog in Cortlandt Manor in the Hudson Valley, where they built a large post & beam addition to their house.  Mortise and tenon construction knits together massive 8 X 8-inch oak beams C some milled from their own red oak trees C of a home inspired by Bill=s love of barns in his native Iowa.