Methodist

Bonnie Wheeler
Southern Methodist University
Ph.D., Brown University


Bonnie Wheeler is Professor of English and Medieval Studies at Southern Methodist University, where she directs the Medieval Studies Program. She completed her undergraduate work at Stonehill College and received her Ph.D. from Brown University. Prior to taking her position at SMU, Professor Wheeler taught at Columbia University…

This course presents the lives, based on the latest scholarly interpretations, of four medieval women who still shimmer in the modern imagination: Heloise, the abbess and mistress of Abelard; the prophet Hildegard of Bingen; the legendary Queen Eleanor of Aquitaine; and the woman-warrior and saint, Joan of Arc.

Jimmy Creech, a United Methodist pastor in North Carolina, was visited one morning in 1984 by Adam, a longtime parishioner whom he liked and respected. Adam said that he was gay, and that he was leaving The United Methodist Church, which had just pronounced that “self-avowed practicing homosexuals” could not be ordained. He would not be part of a community that excluded him. Creech found himself instinctively supporting Adam, telling him that he was sure that God loved and accepted him as he was. Adam’s Gift is Creech’s inspiring first-person account of how that conversation transformed his life and ministry.