F. Burton Nelson

Christian Century, April 20, 2004

F. Burton Nelson, 79, one of the world's leading scholars on the life and work of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, died March 22 in Chicago after a brief illness. Former vice president of the International Bonhoeffer Society, he was the coauthor, with Geoffrey B. Kelly, of The Cost off Moral Leadership: The Spirituality of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, published in 2002, and coeditor with Kelly of A Testament to Freedom: The Essential Writings of Dietrich Bonhoeffer.

He was also a founding member of the Annual Scholars' Conference on the Holocaust and the Churches and was honored by the conference in 2000 with its Eternal Flame award for his contributions to Holocaust studies. He began teaching theology and ethics at North Park Theological Seminary in 1960. He was serving as the school's research professor of Christian ethics at the time of his death.