Bill Long is a writer, wordsmith, legal scholar/consultant, historian and theological expert living in the Pacific Northwest. More specifically, his consulting is primarily with executive directors and boards as they articulate and implement their mission and goals. With respect to theological expertise, Bill is not only a seasoned teacher but is skilled at helping churches and other religious institutions identify and discover their priorities.
Among his 15 books is the award-winning history of the Oregon death penalty: A Tortured History: The Story of Capital Punishment in Oregon (2001). His most recent books have been on Homer's Iliad (Everyone is Angry; Homer's Iliad Book I (2010)), words (Word Wealth: 300 Words for Pleasure and Profit (2010)), education theory (It's All the Basics: Teaching and Learning for the 21st Century (2010)) and biblical studies (Wisdom Seeking: 30 Days with the Book of Proverbs (2009)). He is currently working on Cracking the Code of Milton: Reading Paradise Lost, Book I, many of which essays are posted on this site.
From 2003-06 he was a Visiting Professor of Law at Willamette University College of Law in Salem, Oregon. Before Willamette he was a litigation attorney with Stoel Rives LLP in Portland, OR (2000-03), a professor of history and government at Sterling College in KS (1990-96), interim senior pastor at Westminster Presbyterian Church in Portland (1988-89), and a professor of religion and humanities at Reed College in Portland (1982-88). During a sabbatical from Reed, he was a senior editorial writer for The Oregonian (1985), Oregon's largest circulating daily newspaper.
In addition to his books, Bill has authored numerous articles on subjects of law, religion and history, with special emphasis on the death penalty in America. He has also written more than 4,400 mini-essays on this web site primarily on legal subjects, words, history, exposition of classic texts (such as Shakespeare and the Bible), and reviews of current events or movies. To date he has posted on this site the equivalent of more than sixty-five 200 to 240-page books of mini-essays.
Bill holds the B.A (honors) and Ph. D. from Brown University in Providence, R.I., the J.D. from Willamette University College of Law (# 1 in the Class of 1999), the M.Div. from Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, South Hamilton, MA (summa cum laude) and was the recipient of a prestigious DAAD (Deutscher akademischer Austauschdienst) award for research and dissertation writing at the University of Tuebingen, Germany (1980-81).
Bill has studied 17 languages, taught Biblical Greek and has placed second twice and third once in the National Spelling Bee. The order of languages studied and year begun is as follows: (1) English--native; (2) Spanish--1964; (3) Latin--1966; (4) Classical Greek--1971; (5) Biblical Hebrew--1972; (6) French--1978; (7) German--1978; (8) Syriac--1979; (9) Aramaic--1979; (10) Turkish--2002; (11) Italian--2006; (12) Chinese--2010; (13) Tibetan--2010; (14) Sanskrit (2010); (15) Russian (2011); (16) Ukrainian (2011); and (17) Georgian (2011).
He neither hunts nor fishes nor plays golf, but he knows people who do.
His greatest delight, however, is in following the lives of his children, 29 and 25. Without them he would not know who is dating whom in the celeb world, nor would he have otherwise been acquainted with Swedish death metal music.
For a more detailed autobiographical statement, click here.
For recent ruminative autobiographical essays, click here.
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