in 1971, an elder in the United Methodist Church in 1976, and he carried recognition in the Wesleyan Church for a number of years, resulting from his appointment at Houghton College. Early in his career, he intentionally related to multiple denominational streams through his ministerial pursuits. Academic career William Brackney was an assistant professor in the History department of Houghton College for three years following his graduate studies, during which time he also served as the pastor of two United Methodist congregations in upstate New York (Limestone and Machias Charges). In 1979 he was appointed to the position of executive director of the American Baptist Historical Society, and Archivist of the American Baptist Churches USA, service which lasted until 1986. This role also involved being curator of the Samuel Colgate Baptist Historical Collection. In this period he was also an associate professor in church history at Colgate Rochester Divinity School, as well serving on the senior staff of the American Baptist Board of Educational Ministries (BEM) in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania. In 1986 he was named vice president and dean, and professor of the history of Christianity, at the Eastern Baptist Theological Seminary in Philadelphia. For eleven years, from 1989 until 2000, Brackney was the principal and dean of McMaster Divinity College in Hamilton, Ontario, and was also the professor of historical theology. Concurrently, he was dean of the Faculty of Theology in McMaster University. During this tenure he was also a member of the Historical and Theological Departments of the Toronto School of Theology, an ecumenical cluster of eight institutions conjoined to the University of Toronto, for six years. He left McMaster in 2000 to become a professor of religion at Baylor University, also serving as the chair for the department of Religion and the founding director of Baylor University's program in Baptist studies. Brackney also served as an adjunct professor at Baylor's George W. Truett Theological Seminary and for two years was the pastor of Blue Ridge Baptist Church in Marlin, Texas. In 2006 he was appointed a distinguished professor at Acadia University in Wolfville, Nova Scotia, and the following year he was named the first occupant of The Millard R. Cherry Chair in Christian Theology and Ethics at Acadia Divinity College, Acadia University, a position from which he retired in 2017. In 2017 he was appointed Pioneer MacDonald Professor of Baptist Theology and Ethics and director of the