Biblical scholar enjoys his return visit to Killyleagh

Biblical scholar enjoys his return visit to Killyleagh

19 April 2023

A SCHOLAR and reader in Biblical studies made an emotional return journey to Killyleagh at the weekend.

The Rev Bill Campbell joined members of Killyleagh Presbyterian Church for morning worship on Sunday, 60 years after he visited Killyleagh for the first time to preach in the pulpit of the town’s 1st Presbyterian Church in Plantation Street.

In April 1963 he was a fresh-faced minister, newly qualified from Union Theological College, at Queen’s University, in Belfast when he first arrived in Killyleagh. 

He succeeded the Rev David Lapsley as minister at Plantation Street and he recalls serving alongside the Rev J C Boggs, who was the minister of the neighbouring 2nd Killyleagh Presbyterian.

In Killyleagh on Sunday as he and his wife Professor Dr Kathy Campbell joined the congregation in the pews at the Catherine Street meeting house, he was welcomed by the church’s Clerk of Kirk Session, Mr Graham Furey.

Mr Campbell will celebrate his 88th birthday next month and he delighted in recalling the names of many of the families who had been there on that first morning to welcome him 60 years ago.

He was delighted to catch up with relatives of a number of those family members after the service including people whom he had married and others who had worshipped under his ministry, “I wanted to come back, 60 years after I first preached here, to join the worship and meet people who remembered me,” he said.

“Killyleagh was a great place with great people,’’ he said.

Mr Campbell enjoyed a fruitful ministry in Killyleagh that lasted four years from 1963 to 1967 before he decided to return to academia and he spent three years working towards earning his PhD at New College, University of Edinburgh.

In due course, he took up his first lectureship at – what was to become – the University of Sunderland in the north east of England, where he progressed from being a lecturer in New Testament to senior lecturer in Humanities. 

After five years in the north east of England, the family moved to Birmingham where Bill was appointed Head of Religious and Theological Studies at Westhill College.

His most notable publication has been a commentary on Paul’s letter to the Romans which was published by the international publishing house Bloomsbury.

It was his record of research publications that facilitated his move to King’s College, London and finally to the University of Wales, Lampeter (now University of Wales, Trinity Saint David).