Rev. Dr. William Edwards “Bill” Alberts passed away on March 22, 2021 at the age of 94 in Canton, MA. Alberts is remembered by his friends as a person of enormous generosity of spirit and compassion who had a continuing and ever growing appetite for justice and fairness.
Alberts was born in Williamsport, PA. After serving in the Navy in World War II (1944-1946), he graduated from Lycoming College in 1951, and later from the Westminster Theological Seminary in 1954. He came to Boston to pursue his Ph.D. in Psychology and Pastoral Counseling at Boston University’s School of Theology (BUST).
In 1971, while serving at the Old West United Methodist Church in the West End, Alberts performed a same sex marriage of two women at the Church. Despite unnerving the hierarchy of the Methodist Conference, two years later in April 1973, Alberts performed another same sex marriage ceremony between two of his students at BUST. As a result, he was forcibly retired by the church.
The church leadership went beyond that and sought to defame him not only as a pastor of the church but also as a man. In a breach of confidence in Alberts’ psychiatric sessions, the church leaders attempted to brand him as “mentally ill”. Alberts sued the psychiatrist and the then bishop for breaching his rights, resulting in a 13-year lawsuit that went from the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court to the United States Supreme Court. The landmark case of Alberts v. Devine et al. has since become a landmark case that protects the privacy rights of all clergy. He records the events of this in his book “The Minister Who Could Not Be ‘Preyed’ Away.”
For the first four to five years after leaving Old West Church, he had to “piece things together” which was when he became a reporter. He did various jobs with a lot of difficulty getting them. In 1978, he found the Community Church of Boston and served there from 1978-1991. During his time there, Alberts participated in the Central American sanctuary movement, providing sanctuary for a Guatemalan refugee for two years.
Later, he worked as a Chaplain in Boston Medical Center for 20 years, an experience which inspired his book “A Hospital Chaplain at the Crossroads of Humanity.” He was also a diplomat at the College of Pastoral Supervision and Psychotherapy. Alberts was also a Unitarian Universalist and a Methodist minister. Those who know him have also called him a humanist.
In the 1950s 1960s, during the era of civil rights, on various occasions he would be symbolically arrested for protesting both locally and internationally for civil rights and social justice. It seemed like whenever something was happening to overturn a bad situation, Bill was usually in the front lines facing it.
Alberts also served on the board of the Asian American Civic Association (AACA). Mary Chin, current CEO of the nonprofit suggested Alberts to serve on the board because of his rich background in organizing for the underdog, and groups of people. The other area that he was very interested in was working with disenfranchised youth.
Chin said, “He allowed his church to be a drop-in center for a lot of the kids who were lost, and some of them were runaways, some of them were getting in trouble with the law. The church became a place for them to come in, and that was also very inspiring for me.”
“Bill was always at the forefront of helpful responses to whatever emerging social phenomenon might be. Even into his 90s, his commitment to the human community never wavered at all,” said Ed Crotty, board member of AACA who had worked alongside Alberts. “One of the things he was always involved in was trying to get helpful, constructive, and positive goals out to the world by way of journalism. He was passionate about reaching people through channels of journalism.”
He wrote numerous research papers, essays, articles on several topics ranging from racism, war, politics, LGBTQIA issues, religion, and pastoral care. On Sept. 18, 2019, Alberts received a Distinguished Alumni Award from BUST. Introducing Alberts for the award, Rev. Scott Campbell said, “Whether the arena be politics, race, poverty, environment, war, economic exploitation, or a score of other affronts to justice, Bill’s critique has grown more incisive, his passion for what is good more true, and his commitment to speak truth to power more consuming.”
Alberts was a regular contributor to online publication CounterPunch. Editor Jeffrey St. Clair said, “Bill Alberts is a moralist, but never a moralizer. Alberts understands human weakness and failings. He’s seen it up close. He has tended to the wreckage. As a witness to the savage history of our generation, Alberts argues that weakness is not the enemy. Indifference to suffering is the real foe; indifference, lack of empathy, is what saps us of our moral footing.”
Alberts’ wife of 45 years Eva said, “He was a remarkable man to me and he never gave up. He was very dogged. If plan A didn’t work he would come up with a plan B, and he would just keep going.”
Even through his final years battling stage four kidney disease, colon cancer, and even COVID-19, Alberts retained his sense of humor through it all. Eva shared an anecdote while he was in hospice care. She said, “The nurses were struggling to get a PICC line started in his arm, […] They were very apologetic for putting him through that, and finally on the fifth try they got it and apologized, and Bill said ‘Well that’s okay, I’m just glad you were able to get it, because otherwise all your efforts would have been in vain’.”