“Bill Hill exemplified the qualities of faith and courage as magnificently as any man I have ever known. He was Daniel and the three young men compressed into one, wearing a black suit and a black bow tie. He believed God was able—and proved it—to the amazement of friend and foe alike. And he had foes, both local and across the church, because of the firm and uncompromising stands he had taken both in the public arena as well as the courts of the church.”

When people speak of the Reformation the date of its start is considered October 31, 1517 when Martin Luther nailed his theses to the church door in Wittenberg. However, as Heiko Oberman’s book Forerunners of the Reformation points out there were forerunners of Luther extending into the late Middle Ages who provided important foundational elements for his work. When Presbyterian Church in America (PCA) members think of the organization of the denomination it is rightly believed to be 1973, however, it also has influential forerunners even though its field of influence was less than Luther’s, one of whom was Bill Hill.

William Edwin Hill, Jr. was born in Richmond, Virginia, July 29, 1907, to Zaida (English) and William Hill, Sr., who was a Presbyterian minister. Young Bill’s great grandfather and grandfather were also Presbyterian ministers. Through the course of thirty-two years of ministry Bill’s father served churches in Virginia, Georgia, and North Carolina. As a child Bill suffered acute rheumatoid arthritis (Stills Disease) which caused severe pain all over his body. He endured the disease until he was about seven years old when its intensity subsided, but he had pain all his life and his physical growth was affected because he would mature to be shorter and slighter than the average man. When a teenager he was called to the ministry, so following graduation from Davidson College he studied theology at Union Theological Seminary, Virginia, before accepting a call to the West End Presbyterian Church, Hopewell, Virginia in 1929. He also served First Church, Hopewell, from 1933 to 1943. Through his years at West End, Bill Hill was able to minister to a primarily blue-collar congregation that grew to over a thousand members.

As the years of ministry passed Hill became increasingly concerned about the doctrinal direction of his denomination, the Presbyterian Church in the United States (PCUS), because of the influence of theological liberalism, higher criticism of the Bible, and the social gospel. He observed that there were many ministers who did not believe the Bible was inspired and inerrant, nor did they believe the work of Christ on the cross was necessary for redemption from sin and fellowship with God. The supernatural was set aside for what was considered a reasonable faith agreeable with science and driven by social concerns rather than the true gospel concerning Christ and the grace of atonement. The state of his church troubled him greatly and as he discussed issues with other ministers, he realized something needed to be done. In conjunction with his West End pastorate, he began holding special services in churches. Hill found that he had taken on a sorely needed ministry because there were too many invitations to accept them all, so he resigned from West End in 1958 to work as a full-time evangelist. In response to growing demand for special services he established Presbyterian Evangelistic Fellowship (PEF) in 1964. By 1968 five evangelists joined Hill, Preston Sartelle, William L. Mosal, Jr., Sam C. Patterson, Reuben Wallace, and George A. Hudson.

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