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The current MethodistThinker Podcast features an address by the late Bishop William R. Cannon, a theologian and church historian who authored more than a dozen books, including History of Christianity in the Middle Ages, Theology of John Wesley, and Evangelism in a Contemporary Context.

Bishop William R. Cannon

William Ragsdale Cannon was born in Tennessee in 1916. He attended the University of Georgia, where he earned a B.A., and then went on to Yale Divinity School and Yale University, where he completed a Ph.D. in 1942.

He then joined the faculty of the Candler School of Theology at Emory University in Atlanta and spent the next 25 years teaching church history. From 1953-1968, he also served as Candler’s dean.

In 1968, William R. Cannon was elected to the United Methodist episcopacy, and over the next 16 years he served Annual Conferences in North Carolina, Virginia, and Georgia.

After retiring to North Georgia in 1984, he served as bishop-in-residence at Northside UMC in Atlanta. A decade after his 1984 retirement, Bishop Cannon became one of the principal founders of the Confessing Movement Within the United Methodist Church, calling on the UMC to “retrieve its classical doctrinal identity.”

Bishop Cannon died in 1997 at the age of 81. Emory University’s Cannon Chapel is named in his honor.

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This address on this week’s podcast was delivered at the 1982 United Methodist Congress on Evangelism, meeting in Nashville, Tennessee.

To listen, use the audio player below (22 min.) — or right click (Windows users) to download an mp3 (10.5MB).

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