I’m Robert Williamson Jr. My friends call me Bobby.

I’m Professor and Chair of Religious Studies at Hendrix College in Conway, Arkansas, where I teach courses in biblical studies. I’m also the founding pastor of Mercy Community Church of Little Rock, a multi-denominational worshiping community that welcomes all people–especially those living on the streets. As both a scholar and pastor, I’m interested in the ways that the Bible speaks to life in the contemporary world. I particularly care about the call the Bible places on Christians to resist the powers of systemic injustice that oppress the many in order to enrich the few.

I earned my Ph.D. in Hebrew Bible with distinction from Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia. Before that, I received a post-graduate diploma in Jewish Studies from Oxford University (UK), a Masters of Divinity from Columbia Theological Seminary in Atlanta, and a bachelors degree from Clemson University in Clemson, South Carolina.

I arrived at Hendrix College (Conway, Arkansas) in 2008. I mostly teach courses in biblical studies, including introductions to both the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament. I also teach more focused courses such as “Skeptics in Scripture,” which focuses on the books of Job and Ecclesiastes, and “Revelation and Resistance,” which approaches the book of Revelation as a text of resistance to Empire. My “Race, Gender, Empire & the Bible” course explores biblical texts from the perspectives of gender theory, race critical theory, and postcolonial theory.

During a sabbatical in 2015, I founded Mercy Community Church of Little Rock, a multidenominational worshiping community whose members are mostly homeless or housing unstable. We founded Mercy on the liberation principle that God is more active at the margins of society than at its center. As such, we created a community that was not a ministry to those living on the streets but a ministry with and among them as friends and neighbors–as brothers and sisters in Christ. Believing in the inherent dignity and worth of all people, Mercy provides a place of hospitality and welcome for those who may not find welcome elsewhere.

Much of my teaching, thinking, and writing is an attempt to reconcile these two worlds–the academic classroom and life on the streets. I reflect on systems of injustice that privilege people like me even as they exploit people like my friends at Mercy. My work seeks to expose the complicity of the church in systems of oppression and to encourage the church to alternative modes of life in keeping with the covenantal promises of the biblical tradition.

That’s me in a nutshell. If you want to see the official, academic version of my credentials, take a look at my curriculum vitae here . You can also find me at my official Hendrix College page.