The Authors

Bill Tammeus came to The Kansas City Star in 1970 as a reporter, spent nearly 27 years as a columnist on the paper's editorial page and then moved his column in March 2004 to the weekly Faith section. He took formal retirement July 1, 2006, but continued to write a weekly Faith column for the paper on a freelance basis until mid-November 2008. For 10 years his work was syndicated by the New York Times News Service, and for six by Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services.

A graduate of the University of Missouri School of Journalism, Bill was a member of the Star staff that won the 1982 Pulitzer Prize for local reporting. His many other awards include several from the National Society of Newspaper Columnists and the American Academy of Religion. He also received the 2005 Wilbur Award given each year to the best religion column in the country. He received the David Steele Distinguished Writer Award from the Presbyterian Writers Guild in 2003 and is the author of A Gift of Meaning, published by the University of Missouri Press in 2001.

Bill is past president of the National Society of Newspaper Columnists. He's married with two children, four stepchildren and six grandchildren.