David Buttrick

The Divinity School.
Vanderbilt University.
Nashville, TN 37240

Drucilla Buffington Professor of Homiletics and Liturgics, Emeritus

Buttrick was born in New York City. He attended Haverford College, and did initial theological education at Union Theological in New York. He pursued additional graduate study in Systematic Theology at Garrett Biblical Institute Contemporary Literature at Northwestern University. He is a member of the United Church of Christ. After nine years in parish ministry at Fredonia, New York, Professor Buttrick accepted a short term editorial appointment with the Presbyterian Board of Christian Education.

In 1961, he joined the faculty of Pittsburgh Theological Seminary where he taught for fourteen years. At Pittsburgh, he was elected William Oliver Campbell Professor of Homiletics and, for many years, was Chair of the school’s Church and Ministry Division. He was also an adjunct Graduate Professor of Rhetoric at the University of Pittsburgh.

In 1975, Professor Buttrick was appointed [Marten] Professor of Homiletics at the St. Meinrad School of Theology. He has been a Visiting Professor at St. Francis Seminary (PA), SS. Cyril Methodius Seminary (PA), Southern Baptist Seminary (KY), Lexington Theological Seminary (KY) and School of Theology (CO).

Since 1982, David Buttrick has been Professor of Homiletics and Liturgics in The Divinity School and a Professor of Religion on the Graduate Faculty of Vanderbilt University. At Vanderbilt, he has directed dissertations for a dozen doctoral students. Professor Buttrick has been elected Chair by three different major theological faculties. Buttrick has spoken at more than ninety Colleges and Universities, including the Beecher Lectures at Yale University and twenty-five other major lectureships.

He has spoken at church assemblies across the United States, in Canada, Great Britain, and Europe. He has written or edited eighteen books, thirty-five chapters in books, and published more than one hundred seventy five articles and reviews. His award„winning major work, Homiletic (Fortress) appeared in Preaching Jesus Christ (Fortress) was issued in 1988 and, another award winner, The Mystery and the Passion (Fortress) in 1992. A Captive Voice: The Liberation of Preaching (Westminster John Knox) was published in 1994; his Beecher Lectures, Preaching the New and the Now, (Westminster John Knox) in 1998. Speaking Parables: A Homiletic (Westminster John Knox) appeared in 2000, followed by Speaking Jesus: Homiletic Theology and the Sermon on the Mount (Westminster John Knox, 2002). His most recent book is Speaking Conflict: Stories of a Controversial Jesus (2007).

Professor Buttrick was chief writer/editor for the Presbyterian Worshipbook (1970), and has been a consultant on worship to the Commission on Church Union, and several Protestant denominations. He has also served on the Catholic Bishops’ Committee on the Homily. Buttrick has been reported in news magazines, newspapers, and religious journals. His memberships are in the Academy of Religion, the Academy of Homiletics, the Religious Speech Communication Association, the North American Academy of Liturgy, and the international Societas Homiletica. He has been included in Who’s Who in America, Who’s Who in Religion, Who’s Who in Education, Who in the South and the Southwest Dictionary of International Biography. Festschrift was published honor of David Buttrick, Preaching as a Theological Task, ed. Thomas Long and Edward Farley (Westminster/John Knox, 1996). In 2001, the Academy of Homiletics voted him a Lifetime Achievement Award. Professor Buttrick is married to Betty More Allaben. They have a daughter, Anne [Mrs. David P. Crumpler], and two truly remarkable grandchildren, Rachel and Benjamin.