Paul Waitman Hoon
Prepared by James F. White
Paul Hoon was a fourth generation Methodist minister. He died late in October, 2000, shortly after celebrating his fiftieth wedding anniversary to his second wife, Alice Hoon. He was 90 years old. I believe he last attended a NAAL meeting in Princeton in 1979. After graduating from Yale College and Divinity School, he did a Ph. D. at Edinburgh University.
He served churches in Connecticut, New York, and Pennsylvania. From 1953 until 1975 he taught preaching and worship at Union Theological Seminary. He wrote a classic study of the theology of worship published in 1971 as The Integrity of Worship. He was the principal writer of the United Methodist funeral rite. His wife Alice survives him and lives in Pennswood Village, Newtown, Pennsylvania. He influenced a generation of students at Union and made major contributions to the revision of Methodist rites.