Wabash Mourns Stephen Webb ’83
• March 7, 2016
Share:
Wabash College mourns Stephen H. Webb, who died unexpectedly on March 5, 2016 in Brownsburg, Indiana. Dr. Webb taught philosophy and religion at Wabash for 25 years, and was a 1983 summa cum laude graduate of the College.
Webb was a Christian theologian, a distinguished teacher, and a prolific author. He graduated from Wabash College in 1983, where he majored in Religion, and studied under Eric Dean, Hall Peebles, Raymond Williams, and Bill Placher.
He did his graduate work at The Divinity School of the University of Chicago, studying under David Tracy, and completing an award-winning dissertation on the theology of Karl Barth. He returned to Wabash in 1987, where he had a double appointment in Religion and Philosophy, and taught for 25 years. A master of the Socratic method, he was known for the energy, wit, and learning that he brought to the classroom, and the immense care that he showed for his students.
In addition to his regular courses on theology, he taught courses on Bob Dylan, C.S Lewis, African-American religion, men and masculinity, existentialism, Judaism, and the Holocaust.
His many books included Re-Figuring Theology: The Rhetoric of Karl Barth; On God and Dogs: A Christian Theology of Compassion for Animals; The Gifting God: A Trinitarian Ethics of Excess; Jesus Christ, Eternal God: Heavenly Flesh and the Metaphysics of Matter; and, most recently, Mormon Christianity: What Other Christians Can Learn from the Latter-Day Saints.
He also published numerous articles and reviews, ranging over such topics as vegetarianism, John Updike, Ethiopian Christianity, Reinhold Niebuhr, pedagogy and politics, and theo-acoustics and Roman Catholic liturgy.
Visitation will be from 3 p.m. to 7 p.m. on Thursday, March 10, 2016, at Matthews Mortuary, Brownsburg. Funeral Services will be at 11 a.m. on Friday, March 11 in Englewood Christian Church, Indianapolis, with reception to follow at the church. Friends and colleagues may send condolences to the family at this online guestbook.
A complete obituary was published in today's Indianapolis Star.