William Laurence Sullivan

Under threat of dismissal for liberalism in his scripture courses, Sullivan requested to be relieved of his teaching duties and in 1908 was transferred back to parish ministry and mission work.

In 1910 he resigned his pastorate in Austin, Texas, severed his ties with the Church, and wrote a polemic on papal authority, "Letters to His Holiness Pope Pius X".

[1] During this period he also spent six years as a book reviewer for one of the most prestigious of the city's many daily newspapers, The Herald Tribune.

An indefatigable preacher, he delivered over forty sermons during a single month in 1916, while traveling in the West Coast for the Church.

From 1924 to 1928 he served as pastor in Missouri at St. Louis' Church of the Messiah, taught at Meadville Theological School and traveled as a lecturer.

In 1929 he had accepted the Germantown ministry, his final one, where, after six years as a pastor, he was memorialized as "...towering in his ability to lift and to lead, yet warmly near in his tender concern for the smallest human suffering; a man oppressed by the problems of this world's evil, but radiant in his faith in a Kingdom yet to be".