John R. Claypool Papers

John Rowan Claypool, IV, was born in Franklin, Kentucky, on December 15, 1930, reared in Nashville, Tennessee, and educated at Mars Hill College (1950) and Baylor University (1952) before moving to the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, where he completed the Bachelor of Divinity and Doctor of Theology degrees (1955, 1959). He was ordained to the ministry in 1953. He married Lue Ann Foster in 1952, and the couple had two children, John Rowan V and Laura Lue. Laura Lue died of leukemia in 1970, an event that transformed Claypool’s preaching ministry. His marriage to Lue Ann ended in divorce in 1981, and he married Ann Wilkinson Scheyd in 1982.

Claypool served as associate pastor at First Baptist Church, Decatur, Georgia, then pastor of Crescent Hill Baptist Church, Louisville, Kentucky; Broadway Baptist Church, Fort Worth, Texas; and Northminster Baptist Church, Jackson, Mississippi. He was Co-Pastor at Second Baptist Church, Lubbock, Texas, before leaving the Baptist denomination and being ordained as an Episcopal priest in 1986. After completing further studies at the Episcopal Theological Seminary of the Southwest in Austin, Texas, John served as Associate Rector of Christ Episcopal Church in San Antonio and then Rector of St. Luke’s Episcopal Church in Birmingham, Alabama, from 1987 until his retirement from full-time parish ministry in 2000. He then served as theologian-in-residence at Trinity Episcopal Church in New Orleans and associate priest at All Saints Episcopal Church in Atlanta. From 2001 to 2005, he was professor of preaching at the McAfee School of Theology at Mercer University in Atlanta. (From Claypool’s obituary and the Archives of the Episcopal Church)