His published works include a trilogy on the Powers: Naming the Powers (1984), Unmasking the Powers (1986), and Engaging the Powers (1992), all from Fortress Press.

Engaging the Powers received three "Religious Book of the Year" awards in 1993.

Doubleday Books will publish a condensed version of the Powers trilogy in 1998 under the title, The Powers that Be.

He is also the author of The Bible in Human Transformation (Fortress, 1973), Transforming Bible Study (Abingdon, second edition, 1990), and other works, including over 140 articles. He is a member of the American Academy of Religion, the Society of Biblical Literature, Studiorum Novi, Testamenti Societas, and the Fellowship of Reconciliation, and has lectured at over seventy universities. He has led workshops on nonviolence and other thremes all over North America, as well as in South Africa, Northern Ireland, East Germany, South Korea, New Zealand, and South and Central America.

He is a United Methodist Minister, works for a Presbyterian seminary, and attends Quaker meeting. For five years he served as pastor of a church in southeast Texas.