Jeffrey Williams, PhD

President and Chief Executive Officer, CHANGE Initiative

Jeff Williams
jwilliams@ambs.edu
817-733-3410
PhD, Claremont Graduate University, 2005
MA, Vanderbilt University, 1999
MAR, Westminster Theological Seminary, 1997
BA, Franklin and Marshall College, 1995
 

About Jeffrey Williams

Jeff has had a variety of roles in graduate theological education for nearly twenty years. Prior to his arrival at AMBS, Jeff served on the faculty and as an academic administrator at Brite Divinity School at Texas Christian University in Fort Worth, Texas.

Why I am at AMBS

AMBS is filled with deeply committed and compassionate people with a critical mission of educating leaders for the church and equipping agents of peace and reconciliation in the world. The opportunity to find new ways to sustain and enhance AMBS’s work and the work of graduate theological education as a whole is a gift and privilege.   

What I do at AMBS

I direct the CHANGE Initiative, a Lilly Endowment Pathways for Tomorrow Phase Three grant awarded to AMBS in 2022. The mission of the CHANGE Initiative is to research, design, and implement high-quality shared administrative services that provide sustainable, cost-saving solutions to ATS (Association of Theological Schools) institutions.

Publications

  • Taking the Kingdom by Force: Religion and Violence in Early American Methodism, (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2010).
  • Co-editor with Mark G. Toulouse and Dyan Dietz, Institutional Change in Theological Education: A History of Brite Divinity School (Fort Worth: Texas Christian University Press, 2012).
  • “Living Into Brite’s Incorporation, 1989-2009,” with Dyan M. Dietz. Institutional Change in Theological Education: A History of Brite Divinity School. (Fort Worth: Texas Christian University, 2012).
  • “Dying To Save: The Sacrifice of Children in the Harry Potter and The Hunger Games Series.” Journal of Religion and Popular Culture, vol. 30:2 (Summer 2018): 75-86.
  • “Capitalism, the Bible, and American Christianity,” Encyclopedia of the Bible and Its Reception, ed. Hans-Josef Klauck et al (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2012). 
  • “Pacifism and Conscientious Objection,” Encyclopedia of Religion in America, ed. Charles H. Lippy and Peter W. Williams (Washington D.C.: CQ Press, 2010)“‘The Power to Kill and Make Alive’: ‘Violence’ and the Religious World of Early Methodists,” Methodist History XLVI, no. 2 (January 2008): 87-100.

Memberships and associations

  • American Academy of Religion 
  • American Society of Church History