Wednesday, April 12, 2023, 7 p.m. — Kinlaw Board Room
Christians, Imagination, and Social Imaginaries
Karen Swallow Prior, Ph. D., is Research Professor of English and Christianity and Culture at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary. She is the author of Booked: Literature in the Soul of Me (T. S. Poetry Press, 2012), Fierce Convictions: The Extraordinary Life of Hannah More—Poet, Reformer, Abolitionist (Thomas Nelson, 2014), and On Reading Well: Finding the Good Life through Great Books (Brazos 2018). She is co-editor of Cultural Engagement: A Crash Course in Contemporary Issues (Zondervan 2019) and has contributed to numerous other books. Her writing has appeared at Christianity Today, The Atlantic, The Washington Post, First Things, Vox, Relevant, Think Christian, The Gospel Coalition, Religion News Service, Books and Culture and other places.
Wednesday, February 15, 2023
Plastic People, Liquid Worlds
Dr. Carl Trueman, Ph.D., is a Christian theologian and ecclesiastical historian. He was Professor of Historical Theology and Church History at Westminster Theological Seminary, where he held the Paul Woolley Chair of Church History. In 2018, Trueman resigned his position at Westminster to become a full-time undergraduate professor at Grove City College, serving as Full Professor in their Department of Biblical and Religious Studies as of the fall semester of that same year.
Among Trueman's books are John Owen: Reformed Catholic, Renaissance Man, The Creedal Imperative, Fools Rush in Where Monkeys Fear to Tread: Taking Aim at Everyone, and Republocrat: Confessions of a Liberal Conservative. In 2020, Trueman published what is probably his most popular and widely read book, The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self: Cultural Amnesia, Expressive Individualism, and the Road to Sexual Revolution. His most recent book, Strange New World: How Thinkers and Activists Redefined Identity and Sparked the Sexual Revolution, is a condensed version of his previous book. He contributes to First Things (Journal of Religion and Public Life), blogs regularly at Reformation21, and co-hosts the Mortification of Spin podcast.
Trueman is an ordained minister in the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, and was the pastor of Cornerstone OPC in Ambler, Pennsylvania.
Thursday, October 20, 2022, 7 p.m. — Miller Screening Room
Pierre Sauvage is an Emmy-winning French/American documentary filmmaker. A child survivor of the Holocaust who only learned that he was Jewish at the age of 18, Sauvage is best known for his 1989 feature documentary Weapons of the Spirit, being reissued in 2022 in a newly remastered edition. That highly acclaimed documentary tells the story of the "conspiracy of goodness" of a mountain community in France that defied the Nazis and took in and saved thousands of Jews, including Sauvage, who was born there. Described by Tablet Magazine as "a filmmaker of rare moral perception," Sauvage, also a lecturer and a former film scholar, is the founder and President of the nonprofit Chambon Foundation. Three other documentaries by Sauvage will be released or re-released in 2022: Not Idly By—Peter Bergson, America and the Holocaust, Yiddish: the Mother Tongue, and We Were There: Christians and the Holocaust.
Monday, October 10, 2022, 7 p.m. — Kinlaw Board Room
Dr. Jennifer Frey is Associate Professor of Philosophy at U of SC, is host and creator of philosophy, literature, and theology podcast, Sacred and Profane Love. Her talk entitled Classical and Contemporary Views on Happiness is open to the public.
Jennifer A. Frey is associate professor of philosophy at the University of South Carolina, where is currently the Peter and Bonnie McCausland Faculty Fellow in the College of Arts and Sciences. Prior to UofSC, she was Collegiate Assistant Professor of Humanities at the University of Chicago, where she was a member of the Society of Fellows in the Liberal Arts. She earned her Ph.D. at the University of Pittsburgh and her B.A. at Indiana University in Bloomington. She has published widely on virtue and moral psychology. Her writing has been featured in Breaking Ground, First Things, Image, The Point, and USA Today, among others. She is the host of a popular philosophy, theology, and literature podcast titled Sacred and Profane Love. She lives with her husband and six children in Columbia, SC.
Tuesday, September 13, 2022
Dr. Rebecca DeYoung (Ph.D. Notre Dame) has taught at Calvin University for over 20 years. She studies the seven deadly sins and virtue ethics.
She recently published a new edition of Glittering Vices and won an essay prize from The Character Project for her analysis of the virtue of courage in Being Good: Christian Virtues for Everyday Life. She speaks widely, works in prison education, and is exploring philosophy for children.
Theism and Science: A Conversation with Dr. John Lennox.
Watch an interview with Dr. John Lennox and Dr. Paul Nesselroade, Director of the Asbury University Honors Program at the Oxford Center for Christian Apologetics.
John Lennox is Emeritus Professor of Mathematics at Oxford University and Emeritus Fellow in Mathematics and Philosophy of Science at Green Templeton College. He is an internationally renowned speaker on the interface of science, philosophy, and religion, well known for public debates with public intellectuals such as the late Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins, and Peter Singer.
In addition to being co-author of two mathematical monographs for Oxford University press and his mathematical research papers, he has written a series of books exploring the relationship between science, philosophy and theology including
Can Science Explain Everything? (2019);
2084 – Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Humanity (2020); and
Cosmic Chemistry: Do God and Science Mix? (2021)
Watch the interview
Thursday, March 31, 2022, 7 - 8 p.m. — Kinlaw Library Board Room
Dr. Richard Weikart, Professor of History (Retired), California State University, Stanislaus
Are You the Image of God or a Cosmic Accident? — This presentation will examine the ways that many prominent Western thinkers in the past three centuries have contributed to the erosion of the Judeo-Christian sanctity-of-life ethic. Prominent intellectuals from the Enlightenment to the present claim that humans are the product of mindless, random, purposeless processes and thus have no intrinsic value. This has not only contributed to mass murder in communist and fascist regimes in the past century, but has also opened the door to widespread acceptance of abortion, assisted suicide, euthanasia, and transhumanism, especially among the educated elites.
Thursday, February 10, 2022, 4 - 5 p.m. — Kinlaw Library Board Room
Dr. Calum MacKellar, Director of Research for the Scottish Council on Human Bioethics and Visiting Lecturer in Bioethics at St. Mary’s University in London
Resurrecting Eugenics: Should only Healthy Children be Born? — With the possible selection of a future child’s health, athletic prowess or intelligence becoming ever more likely in the context of new developments in human reproduction, concerns are growing about the consequences of such selection on modern society.
Unnerving similarities between the discredited eugenic programmes of early twentieth century regimes may now be resurfacing under a new guise of a more ‘sanitised’ selective eugenics. There is, therefore, an urgent need to evaluate both current and future selection practices from a Christian perspective.
Thursday, October 7, 2021, 8 - 9:30 p.m.
Dr. Chris Bounds, Professor of Christian Doctrine, Indiana Wesleyan University, Wesley Seminary
The Imago Dei, Incarnation, and Human Dignity — Dr. Bounds will outline the Christian concept and historic significance of the Imago Dei with the Eternal Son’s incarnation; particular attention will be given to Wesleyan-Holiness distinctives. Application of this core doctrine will be brought to bear on some issues associated with contemporary life.