Past Lecture Events

Miles Hollingworth, PhD,  Writer and Philosopher

"On the True Version of An Event: Saint Augustine of Hippo's Conversion"

Thursday, April 6, 2017 at 7:30 p.m.

Miles Hollingworth is an independent writer and philosopher, living in Italy. He is well known for his work on Saint Augustine of Hippo. He is a past winner of the Jerwood Award for Non-Fiction from the Royal Society of Literature and the Elizabeth Longford Scholarship from the Society of Authors. In 2011 he was short listed for the Gladstone History Prize. His new book is  Ludwig Wittgenstein: An Intellectual Biography, to be published by Oxford University Press this fall.

More information can be found  here.

Peter Iver Kaufman, PhD, Professor, George Matthews and Virginia Brinkley Modlin Chair in Leadership Studies

"Leadership and the Humanities"

Thursday, March 9, 2017 at 7:30 p.m.

Kaufman is a professor at the University of Richmond in the Jepson School of Leadership Studies and Professor Emeritus at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill—History and Religious Studies Departments. He studies the political cultures of late antique, medieval and early modern Europe and North Africa. He currently holds the George Matthews & Virginia Brinkley Modlin Chair in Leadership Studies and teaches a wide range of leadership courses.

More information can be found here.

John Inazu, Sally D. Danforth Distinguished Professor of Law and Religion and Professor of Political Science, Washington University

“Confident Pluralism: Surviving and Thriving Through Deep Difference”

Thursday, March 2 at 6:30 p.m.

John Inazu is the Sally D. Danforth Distinguished Professor of Law and Religion and professor of political science at Washington University in St. Louis.  He teaches criminal law, law and religion, and various First Amendment seminars. Inazu's scholarship focuses on the First Ammendment freedoms of speech, assembly and religion, and related questions of legal and political theory. He has written broadly for mainstream audiences in publications including  USA Today, CNN, The Hedgehog Review, The Los Angeles Times and The Washington Post.

More information can be found here.

James K.A. Smith, Professor of Philosophy at Calvin College

“You Are What You Love: The Spiritual Power of Habit”

Thursday, Nov. 3, 2016 at 7:30 p.m.

James K. A. Smith is professor of philosophy at Calvin College, where he holds the Gary and Henrietta Byker Chair in Applied Reformed Theology and Worldview. Trained as a philosopher with a focus on contemporary French thought, Smith has expanded on that scholarly platform to become an engaged public intellectual and cultural critic. An award-winning author and widely traveled speaker, he has emerged as a thought leader with a unique gift of translation, building bridges between the academy, society and the church.

More information can be found here.

Donald L. Drakeman, PhD, Fellow in Health Management at the University of Cambridge; Adjunct Associate Professor in the Notre Dame Law School ***CANCELLED DUE TO REPERCUSSIONS FROM HURRICANE MATTHEW***

“Death sentence for the life sciences? The humanities and the future of medicine”

Thursday, Oct. 20, 2016 at 7:30 p.m. 

Donald L. Drakeman is a fellow in health management at the University of Cambridge and a venture partner with Advent Venture Partners. He is the cofounder of two biotechnology companies that have created new treatments for cancer. His most recent work is entitled Why We Need the Humanities: Life Science, Law and the Common Good (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015).

He has also been a lecturer in politics at Princeton University, where he taught in the area of civil liberties, and has written extensively on church-state issues. He has served as a trustee of Drew University and the University of Charleston, and he is a fellow of the Royal Historical Society and the Society of Biology.

More information can be found here.

Todd Breyfogle, PhD, Director of Seminars, Aspen Institute

“The Earthly City and the Ethics of Exchange: Augustine on the Spiritual Economy”

Thursday, Sept. 15, 2016 at 6:30 p.m. -  Video recording available on ITunes U

Breyfogle has served as a moderator of executive education programs for the Aspen Institute and has published and lectured widely on the great books, political philosophy, theology, literature, and liberal education. He has taught for such institutions as the Iliff School of Theology, the University of Tulsa, Oxford, Cambridge, Princeton, Dartmouth, Wesleyan and the University of Chicago. He currently chairs the board of the American Academy for Liberal Education and serves in the senate of the Phi Beta Kappa Society.

Breyfogle earned a bachelor’s degree at Colorado College (Phi Beta Kappa) in classics-history-politics. He attended Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar, where he read ancient and modern history and patristic and modern theology. He earned a PhD at the University of Chicago’s Committee on Social Thought.

More information can be found at here.

William Schniedewind, PhD, Professor of Biblical Studies, UCLA

“A Short History of the Word of God: Old Testament, Dead Sea Scrolls, New Testament, Early and Modern Church”

Thursday, April 7, 2016

William Schniedewind is a professor of biblical studies at UCLA, serves as the chair of the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures, and holds the Kershaw Endowed Chair of Ancient Eastern Mediterranean Studies. He received a BA in religion from George Fox University (1984), an MA in historical geography from Jerusalem University College, and a PhD in Bible and Ancient Near East from Brandeis University (1992). He has been a visiting scholar at the Hebrew University and a research fellow at the Albright Institute of Archaeological Research in Jerusalem. Schniedewind received George Fox University’s 2013 Outstanding Alumnus Award. He is the author of five books, including How the Bible Became a Book (Cambridge University Press, 1994), which has been translated into seven languages.

Schniedewind's lecture is co-sponsored by the College of Christian Studies and Portland Seminary.

Lauren Winner, Assistant Professor of Christian Spirituality, Duke Divinity School

“Wearing God: Encountering Overlooked Biblical Metaphors for God”

Monday, March 7, 2016 - Video recording available on ITunes U

Lauren F. Winner is the author of numerous books, including Girl Meets God and Mudhouse Sabbath. Her recent memoir, Still: Notes on a Mid-faith Crisis, was named a “Best Book of 2012” in the religion category by Publishers Weekly and was a Christianity Today 2013 Book Award winner in the spirituality category. Her book on overlooked biblical images of God, Wearing God, was published by HarperOne in the spring of 2015. She has appeared on PBS’s Religion & Ethics Newsweekly and has written for The New York Times Book Review, The Washington Post Book World, Publishers Weekly, Books and Culture and Christianity Today. Winner has degrees from Duke, Columbia and Cambridge universities, and she holds a PhD in history. The former book editor for Beliefnet, Winner teaches at Duke Divinity School and lives in Durham, N.C. She travels extensively to lecture and teach.

Wilfred M. McClay, G.T. and Libby Blankenship Chair in the History of Liberty, University of Oklahoma, and also Director, Center for the History of Liberty, OU

“Why Religious Liberty Matters”

Thursday, Nov. 5, 2015

Wilfred M. McClay is the G. T. and Libby Blankenship Chair in the History of Liberty at the University of Oklahoma, and the director of the Center for the History of Liberty. His book The Masterless: Self and Society in Modern America won the Merle Curti Award of the Organization of American Historians for the best book in American intellectual history. Among his other books are The Student’s Guide to U.S. History, Religion Returns to the Public Square: Faith and Policy in America, Figures in the Carpet: Finding the Human Person in the American Past, and Why Place Matters: Geography, Identity, and Public Life in Modern America. He has been the recipient of fellowships from the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the National Academy of Education. He is a graduate of St. John’s College (Annapolis) and received his PhD in history from Johns Hopkins University. (McClay also serves on the Advisory Board of the William Penn Honors Program.)

Professor McClay's lecture is sponsored by the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation and the Intercollegiate Studies Institute.

Melissa Lane, Class of 1943 Professor of Politics, Princeton University

“The Politics of Unsustainability: Plato on the Logic of Constitutional Change”

Monday, Nov. 2, 2015

Melissa Lane is the Class of 1943 Professor of Politics at Princeton University, associate chair of the Politics Department, and an associated faculty member in classics and in philosophy. She holds an A.B. summa cum laude in social studies from Harvard University and an M.Phil. and PhD in philosophy from the University of Cambridge. Her books include The Birth of Politics: Eight Greek and Roman Political Ideas and Why They Matter (Princeton, 2015); Eco-Republic (Princeton, 2012); Plato’s Progeny (Duckworth, 2001); and Method and Politics in Plato’s Statesman (Cambridge, 1998).

She is a 2012 Fellow of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. At Princeton, she is the founding director of the Princeton Program in Values and Public Life, co-chair of the task force on Service and Civic Engagement, and co-convenor of the Climate Futures Initiative. She has contributed to the New York Times and to a number of BBC radio programs.  

Colin Noble, Chaplain, William Clarke College, Sydney Australia

“Resting for God”

Friday, Oct. 30, 2015

Colin Noble has spent the last three decades living on four continents and working in government, corporate, academic and pastoral settings. After working in international banking in Tokyo for several years at the height of the Japanese economic boom, he pursued theological studies at Regent College. He then taught at the University of Sydney for 14 years before taking up his current position as chaplain to an educational community of 1,700 people, a role he has held since 2005. He has master's degrees in education and theology. Colin lives with his wife and daughter in Sydney, where he takes great delight in running in a rest-filled way in the bushland near his home. His son is a sophomore at George Fox University and a member of the William Penn Honors Program. Colin is the author of Working for God (Westbow Press, 2014). 

Matthew J. Milliner, PhD, Assistant Professor of art history at Wheaton College

“Toward 2017: Visualizing Christian Unity”

Thursday, Oct. 8, 2015 - Video recording available on ITunes U

Matthew Milliner teaches across the range of art history, and his scholarly specialization is Byzantine and medieval art, with a focus on how such images inform contemporary visual culture. Dr. Milliner has a Ph.D. in art history from Princeton University, and an M.Div from Princeton Theological Seminary. He is currently a member of the Curatorial Advisory Board of the United States Senate.

Jason Lepojärvi, St Benet's Hall, University of Oxford, UK

"C. S. Lewis's Famous Disagreement with Augustine on Love"

Thursday, April 9, 2015

Lepojärvi is a junior research fellow in theology at St Benet's Hall, Oxford, and a former president of the Oxford C. S. Lewis Society. Born to a Canadian mother and a Finnish father, he studied theology and philosophy at the University of Helsinki, obtaining a PGCE. His master's thesis (2008) on John Paul II's theology of the body and sexuality was later published as the first introduction to the subject in Finnish (2012), and his doctoral dissertation (2015) is on C.S. Lewis's theology of love.

Andy Crouch

"True Power in a World of False Images"

Monday, Feb. 9, 2015

Crouch is the author of Playing God: Redeeming the Gift of Power, published in October 2013. His book Culture Making: Recovering Our Creative Calling won Christianity Today’s 2009 Book Award for Christianity and Culture and was named one of the best books of 2008 by Publishers Weekly, Relevant, Outreach and Leadership. In December 2012 he became executive editor of Christianity Today. He was also executive producer of This Is Our City, a multi-year project featuring documentary video, reporting, and essays about Christians seeking the flourishing of their cities. Crouch serves on the governing boards of Fuller Theological Seminary and Equitas Group, a philanthropic organization focused on ending child exploitation in Haiti and Southeast Asia. He is also a senior fellow of the International Justice Mission’s IJM Institute. His writing has appeared in Time, The Wall Street Journal, and several editions of Best Christian Writing and Best Spiritual Writing. He studied classics at Cornell University and received an MDiv (summa cum laude) from Boston University School of Theology.
 

Christian Sahner, Princeton University

"The End of Christianity in Syria?"

Thursday, Oct. 30, 2014

For 2,000 years, Syria has been home to ancient Christian communities, and now, threatened by civil war and religious fundamentalism, they risk disappearing. This lecture explores the roots of Christianity in Syria and seeks to place the current predicament in historical perspective.

Sahner is a historian of the Middle East and author of the recently released book Among the Ruins: Syria Past and Present (Oxford University Press). A graduate of Princeton University and the University of Oxford, where he studied as a Rhodes Scholar, he is currently completing his doctorate at Princeton, focusing on relations between Muslims and Christians in the formative period after the Arab conquests.

Michael Ward, PhD, Professor of Apologetics at HBU; Director, C.S. Lewis Centre, Oxford, England

"The Heavens are Telling the Glory of God: C.S. Lewis, Narnia and the Planets"

Friday, Sept. 26, 2014

Ward is a leading expert on the works of C.S. Lewis and the author of Planet Narnia: The Seven Heavens in the Imagination of C.S. Lewis. He is senior research fellow at Blackfriars Hall in the University of Oxford, and co-editor of The Cambridge Companion to C.S. Lewis. He presented the BBC television documentary, The Narnia Code (2009). As an Anglican clergyman, he served as chaplain of St Peter’s College at the University of Oxford from 2009 to 2012 and as chaplain of Peterhouse at the University of Cambridge from 2004 to 2007.

Mark A. Noll, PhD, Francis A. McAnaney Professor of History, University of Notre Dame

"The Challenges for Christian Learning: Looking Back, Looking Ahead"

Monday, Sept. 22, 2014 - Video recording available on ITunes U

Noll is author of numerous books, including The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind and The Civil War as a Theological Crisis. During his years at Wheaton College, he was a co-founder of the Institute for the Study of American Evangelicals. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and, in 2006, received the National Endowment for the Humanities medal at a White House ceremony. (Noll also serves on the Advisory Board of the William Penn Honors Program.)

Makoto Fujimura

“A Conversation with Mokoto Fujimura on Faith, Art and Culture”

April 12, 2014

Makoto Fujimura is an artist, writer and speaker recognized worldwide as a “cultural shaper.” A presidential appointee to the National Council on the Arts from 2003 to 2009, Fujimura served as an international advocate for the arts, speaking with decision makers and advising governmental policies on the arts. Fujimura’s work is exhibited at galleries around the world. He is a popular speaker for numerous conferences, universities and museums.

Robert P. George, Princeton University

“Religious Liberty and the Rights of Conscience”

Feb. 6, 2014 - Video recording available on ITunes U

George is Princeton's McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence and director of the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions. Additionally, he is chairman of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom.

George is the author or editor of numerous books in the fields of constitutional law, ethics and legal and political philosophy. Among his book titles are Conscience and its Enemies: Confronting the Dogmas of Liberal Secularism, What is Marriage?: Man and Women: A Defense, and Embryo: A Defense of Human Life. (He also serves on the Advisory Board of the William Penn Honors Program.)

Jeremy Begbie, University of Cambridge/Duke Divinity School

"Re-tuned by God: The Future of Worship"

Nov. 18, 2013

Begbie is a professionally trained musician and theologian who has taught in the United Kingdom and North America and delivered multimedia performance lectures across the world. He is the inaugural holder of the Thomas A. Langford Research Professorship in Theology at Duke Divinity School and founding director of Duke Initiatives in Theology and the Arts, teaches systematic theology and specializes in the interface between theology and the arts. His particular research interest is the interplay between music and theology.

In addition to his role at Duke Divinity School, Begbie is also senior member at Wolfson College, Cambridge, and an affiliated lecturer in the Faculty of Music at the University of Cambridge. Previously, he has been associate principal at Ridley Hall, Cambridge, and honorary professor at the University of St. Andrews.

E.Christian Kopff, University of Colorado, Boulder

“The Devil Knows Latin: Why America Needs the Classical Tradition”

October 18, 2013 - Video recording available on ITunes U

Dr. Kopff has taught at the University of Colorado, Boulder, since 1973. For about five of the last 30 years he has lived in Rome, Italy, teaching and studying. He is editor of a critical edition of the Greek text of Euripides' Bacchae and author of more than 100 articles and reviews on scholarly, pedagogical and popular topics. He currently works with the Classics Department of the University of Urbino, Italy, on ancient Greek lyric poetry. Kopff makes the argument that freedom and creativity in the modern world depends on a continuing contact with the civilizations of the ancient Mediterraneans, Greeks, Romans and Hebrews.

Jane Calvert, University of Kentucky

“Quakerism, John Dickinson, and the Creation of America’s Two Constitutions”

Marvin Olasky, editor of World Magazine

“Renewing the Christian Liberal Arts”

Sept. 13, 2013 - Video recording available on ITunes U

Olasky is editor-in-chief of World magazine and the distinguished chair in journalism and public policy at Patrick Henry College. He is the author of 22 books, including Compassionate Conservatism, Fighting for Liberty and Virtue and The Tragedy of American Compassion. He’s also written 3,000 articles for publications including World, The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal. American.com describes him as "one of the country's foremost evangelical thinkers and writers." Previously, Olasky was a professor at The University of Texas at Austin for two decades and provost of The King’s College, New York City, from 2007 to 2011. Olasky earned an AB from Yale University in 1971 and a PhD in American culture from the University of Michigan in 1976.