Clayton Sullivan

A professor of philosophy and religion at the University of Southern Mississippi for more than thirty years, Clayton Sullivan is well known for his scholarly religious books. That career followed an active Baptist ministry that started during his college years. Since his semi-retirement from teaching, his interest has increasingly turned to the writing of fiction.

After his undergraduate work at Mississippi College in Clinton, Mississippi, he attended the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky, where he earned the Bachelor of Divinity and Doctor of Philosophy degrees. He also holds a Master's degree in Philosophy and Middle Eastern Religions from Temple University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and has engaged in postdoctoral studies at Princeton University, Southern Methodist University, New York's Union Theological Seminary and the Harvard Divinity School. He is a member of the American Academy of Religion and the author of numerous religious articles.

His first book Called to Preach, Condemned to Survive: The Education of Clayton Sullivan details his life story from his birth in Jackson, Mississippi in 1930, his formative years, his years at the seminary, and his first experience as a Baptist minister. The book sheds light on his exposure while attending the seminary to the Post-Enlightenment quest for the historical Jesus; this led to Sullivan's life-long research into Jesus' life and message. It also gives readers the context that shaped Sullivan's voice as a cultural critic on a wide range of topics, including race relations in Mississippi and the Civil Rights movement in the American South. In 2001 Doubleday published his first fictional work, a novella entitled Jesus and the Sweet Pilgrim Baptist Church: A Fable. He was inspired to write Sweet Pilgrim by a dream in which Jesus comes back to earth as a Jewish woman who visits a black church in Mississippi. Since Sullivan was relatively unknown when the book was published and the book's jacket did not carry his picture, many readers assumed he was black. This is a tribute to the authenticity of his characters and his ability to empathize with the struggle of black southerners. It is a fable about the promise of a better day between southern blacks and whites in the wake of the civil rights movement. Morgan Freeman, the Academy award-winning actor, called Sweet Pilgrim "A delightful, if reverent, romp up and down the aisles of a Mississippi Baptist congregation. Fun!" This book has been optioned as a movie and a stage musical.

Rethinking Realized Eschatology , a work of New Testament scholarship, is Sullivan's critique of C. H. Dodd's hypothesis of realized eschatology. His book Toward A Mature Faith: Does Biblical Inerrancy Make Sense? is a discussion of the fundamentalist contention that the Bible is an error-free, infallible document.

The controversial non-fiction book, Rescuing Jesus from the Christians, was written to bring Sullivan's scholarly work to the non-academic reader. The book's thesis gives pause to Christians and non-Christians alike, and poses important questions about the dangers of fundamentalist Christianity.

His novel Why Beulah Shot Her Pistol inside the Baptist Church, published in 2004, was the product of several years' work. The story is a cross section of southern Mississippi life, and brings together Sullivan's life experiences witnessing the hypocrisy of many churchgoers. The character of Beulah is a composite that evolved from his years of mentoring troubled students, many of them young, single mothers struggling to make a better life for themselves and their children.

His latest non-fiction work is The Impossibility of Atheism, written as a response to new age of atheism. In 2006 he released Rescuing Sex from the Christians, which deals with the controversies within Christianity over human sexuality.

Clayton Sullivan and his wife, the former Mae Taylor, live in Hattiesburg, Mississippi. They have one daughter, Charlotte McDonnell, an Atlanta attorney. In 2000, Sullivan retired from a full-time teaching schedule but still enjoys writing and part-time teaching. He and his wife take pleasure in traveling and spending more time with their grandchildren: Clayton (his namesake), Elisabeth, and Taylor McDonnell.