Key points:
- Retired United Methodist Bishop Timothy W. Whitaker died March 28, at age 75.
- He led the Florida Conference from 2001 to 2012.
- He was known for his love of the early church fathers and wrote a lengthy essay titled “Learning to Die” after receiving his cancer diagnosis.
Retired Bishop Timothy W. Whitaker, a learned and independent-minded presence in The United Methodist Church, died March 28 at home in Keller, Virginia, after being in hospice care for about a year. He was 75.
Whitaker began to compose an essay last year, after getting bad medical test results.
“The moment has arrived for me when death has become personal,” he wrote. “Recently I was diagnosed with colorectal cancer that has metastasized in my liver. So then in the time that remains for me I have one more thing to learn in life, which is to die.”
Whitaker’s account — titled “Learning to Die” — would extend for more than 14,000 words, touching on his upbringing, his understanding of Christian faith and specifically his views on prayer and the afterlife. He drew from decades of voracious reading, making references to Plato, St. Augustine, Karl Barth, the philosopher Miguel de Unamuno, the novelist Walker Percy, the poet John Berryman — and especially the Bible.
Whitaker’s wife of 53 years, Melba Whitaker, said the essay went by email to a few dozen friends. The original recipients shared it with others, and soon it was on the internet, finding many more readers and becoming the subject of a column by religion writer Terry Mattingly.
Retired United Methodist Bishop Charlene Kammerer called Whitaker’s essay “perhaps his last gift to the church.”
In recent days, Kammerer has been among those paying tribute to Whitaker, who was a pastor in the Mississippi and Virginia conferences and served as bishop of the Florida Conference from 2001 to 2012.
“I will miss Tim, his wisdom, his understated humor, his perspectives on all issues and his good heart,” Kammerer said in a written tribute.
Whitaker was born in Vicksburg, Mississippi, and grew up just north of there in the town of Redwood, where his family attended the Methodist church. In his late-in-life essay, he noted how much of his boyhood was spent walking in the forests and fishing local streams, describing himself as “a guest in Eden.”
He felt a call to ministry early and began to serve country churches while attending Hinds Community College, Melba Whitaker said. From there, he went to Millsaps College in Jackson, Mississippi, graduating summa cum laude.
He had already met Melba, and on their first date gave her a copy of Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s “The Cost of Discipleship.”
“He said, ‘Read this and you will understand who I am,’” she recalled. “I did read it and I did understand. And I married him.”
At Candler School of Theology, Whitaker earned a master of divinity, again with high honors. He was ordained a deacon and later an elder in the Mississippi Conference.
The Whitakers wanted to experience a different part of the country, and in 1975 moved to the Virginia Conference. He first served in the Richmond area, then was given a two-point charge in the Virginia part of the Eastern Shore.
“We fell in love with it,” Melba Whitaker said, adding that they eventually decided they would retire there.
Whitaker would serve other churches before being named superintendent of the Norfolk District. He was endorsed by the Virginia Conference as an episcopal candidate in 2000, but was not elected until the following year, during a special session of the jurisdictional conference, called to fill a vacancy created by the death of Bishop Cornelius Henderson.
For that conference, Whitaker had not put his name forward — but the delegates settled on him in late balloting.
Whitaker’s entire tenure in episcopal leadership would be in the Florida Conference and would include the 2012 General Conference in Tampa.
As bishop, Whitaker was an arresting figure, standing 6-feet-4, with a fondness for bicycling and the music of Van Morrison but also deep knowledge of theology and church history.
He was especially steeped in patristics — the study of the early church fathers.
“Bishop Whitaker was a genuine church theologian,” said the Rev. Jim Harnish, a retired Florida Conference pastor. “He assumed that all the rest of us were as familiar with the early church fathers as he was, and he led out of that deep theological core.”
The Rev. Erik Alsgaard, Florida Conference communications director from 2006 to 2010, described Whitaker as being “on a first-name basis” with the early church fathers.
“He was just steeped in that early church tradition and took that not only as the basis for his teaching and ministry, but for his life,” Alsgaard said.
Whitaker’s reading and reflection led him to take stands on matters of controversy — and to give his reasons. That included posting an essay on the Florida Conference website supporting the denomination’s restrictive policies on homosexuality.
Whitaker opposed abortion and served for many years on the advisory board of Lifewatch, the newsletter of the Taskforce of United Methodists on Abortion and Sexuality. He also contributed essays.
“He had the patience to write, in clear prose, about thorny theological matters facing the church,” said the Rev. Paul Stallsworth, Lifewatch editor. “He had the patience to listen to criticism of his position — and the patience to reply substantively, clearly and kindly.”
Many in the Florida Conference supported the state’s tomato pickers in a strike for better wages and working conditions, and Whitaker joined in that, offering gratitude when the Coalition of Immokalee Workers reached a favorable settlement with Burger King in 2008.
Kammerer recalled that Whitaker served as the Council of Bishops’ representative to bilateral dialogues with other Christian communions. He chaired the council’s task force that produced “God’s Renewed Creation,” a pastoral letter addressing poverty, environmental degradation and the proliferation of weapons and violence. Kammerer was on the task force as well.
“I saw firsthand the character and integrity of my colleague and brother bishop,” she said. “He kept a steady hand and made possible a completion of our most challenging task.”
The Rev. John Powers served as a Florida Conference district superintendent under Whitaker and found him unthreatened by perspectives different than his own.
“He was fair and gracious, more so than many seemed to realize,” Powers said in a social media post. “Even though we had different views on a few issues of the day, Tim was very encouraging of me expressing my disagreements with him publicly through writing responses to articles he had written.”
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In retirement, the Whitakers returned to Virginia’s Eastern Shore. He read in his book-filled office — which included a poster of Van Morrison — and he often walked or drove the countryside, stopping to pick up any litter he saw, his wife said.
Bishop Whitaker was diagnosed in February 2023 with cancer that had metastasized. After an early try with chemotherapy went badly, he decided to stop treatments and enter hospice care, his wife said.
He regained weight and strength for a while. His last months included writing his “Learning to Die” essay and deciding who would inherit his beloved books.
“Young pastors are getting whole sets of Karl Barth and other theologians,” Melba Whitaker said.
About three weeks before he died, Bishop Whitaker reported to his wife having a dream or vision in which people were preparing a table for him, but one of them told him it wasn’t ready yet. She noted, choking back tears, that his death came last week on Maundy Thursday, the day that recalls Jesus’ dining at the table with the disciples.
In his late essay, Whitaker wrote: “The ground of my hope is basic trust in the God of the Gospel, which is all I need for living or learning to die.”
Along with his wife, Whitaker is survived by their two sons and their families, including five grandchildren.
The funeral for Whitaker will begin at 1:30 p.m. U.S. Eastern time on April 8 at Johnson’s United Methodist Church in Machipongo, Virginia. That small Eastern Shore church was one he served early in his Virginia Conference ministry.
Hodges is a Dallas-based writer for United Methodist News. Contact him at 615-742-5470 or newsdesk@umnews.org. To read more United Methodist news, subscribe to the free daily or weekly Digests.
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