Since my youth, I have had a deep love for history and literature. I remember being struck by the beauty of the poetry of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet in the ninth grade but being embarrassed to admit it. Ninth-grade boys in small-town Indiana didn’t like poetry. I also was so captivated by an excerpt from William Jennings Bryan “Cross of Gold” speech that I read it over and over until I had memorized it.
My love for history and literature remained unfocused until my conversion to Christ at Butler University. At a retreat the speaker read the description of the descent of the New Jerusalem in Revelation 21:1-5. I then saw that Christianity was not only true but beautiful as well. My conversion inflamed a passion for truth and beauty expressed in literature and history, but especially in Scripture and theology. Following that passion, I attended Trinity Evangelical Divinity School and received a Master of Divinity. Added to the love of history, which in some ways is traveling through time to other cultures, was an interest in contemporary cultures. Interest in theology, the Bible and contemporary cultures led to service as a professor in seminaries and Bible colleges in the Caribbean, Portugal and Costa Rica, with significant stints in Russia and India. That travel also led to my marriage to an Anguillian and becoming part of a West Indian family.
Besides picking up a graduate degree in history from Brown University, I received a Ph.D. in theological and religious studies from Drew University. Although most of my course work had been in Medieval and Reformation theology, my dissertation was on G. K. Chesterton, whose flamboyant use of paradox and vivid images fed my love for truth and beauty. I recently retired from teaching humanities at a classical Christian school and can devote myself to my writing and speaking.
I have been writing blog posts for several years as well as short stories, which are unpublished. My YouTube channel "Thinking Wisely with Dr. Isley" (@williamisley1880) comments on literature, philosophy, theology, and cultural issues. My debut novel, The Likeness of Sinful Flesh: A Story of Redemption, published in 2024, tells the story of Miriam, a young ambitious West Indian woman who wants to escape the confines of her small island and dysfunctional family. Her choices lead her into an abusive relationship and cause harm to someone she loves. Wracked with guilt and feeling trapped in a cycle of failure, she questions God's goodness. My second novel, published in 2026, Chasing the Wind: A Philosophical Novel, traces the lives of three unlikely university frieds from the 1960's to the 1970's as each live according to different philosophies of life only to discover that they were chasing the wind.
