A hallmark of the Asbury University Honors Program is the Honors Program Speaker Series, where nationally recognized scholars join our campus each semester to engage students in meaningful dialogue. Together, we wrestle with topics such as living faithfully in today’s world, developing stronger ways to think and learn, and broadening our worldview through thoughtful, challenging discussion.
Open to the entire community, the Honors Program Speaker Series events enrich the academic and spiritual life of Asbury students while creating space for deeper conversations that matter.
The Honors Program honors@asbury.edu
Tuesday, November 18, 2025, 7 p.m.
In this engaging session, renowned mathematician, apologist, and Oxford professor Dr. John Lennox shares pivotal stories from his career where his Christian faith shaped his decisions, direction, and courage, offering a powerful testimony to God’s work in academic and public life. Dr. Lennox also reflects on the intellectual and cultural challenges facing Christians today, encouraging students to pursue truth with confidence in Christ. The event concludes with a rich Q&A session, where Honors students ask thoughtful questions about faith, vocation, and navigating the modern world as believers.
Dr. John Lennox is an internationally respected speaker, author, and Professor of Mathematics at the University of Oxford. His work focuses on the intersection of science, philosophy, and religion, engaging global audiences in conversations about reason, faith, and the meaning of human existence.
Monday, September 15, 2025, 7 p.m. Shaw CLC Luce Auditorium
Jake Meador
If we take seriously the claim that Jesus is Lord, how and in what manner should this claim impinge upon our ideals, values, obligations and sense of belonging? In our American political and social climate, can we find contentment with tension? Join us for a conversation between author and publisher Jake Meador and Asbury’s President, Dr. Kevin Brown, as they discuss the implications of Christianity on human responsibility and flourishing as laid out in Meador’s book, What Are Christians For?
Jake Meador is the editor-in-chief of Mere Orthodoxy, a contributing editor at Plough, and contributing writer at The Dispatch. His writing has appeared in The Atlantic, Commonweal, First Things, Books & Culture, National Review, and Christianity Today. He lives in his hometown of Lincoln, NE, with his wife and four children.
Monday, November 10, 2025, 7 p.m. Shaw Luce CLC Auditorium
Dr. Jim Beitler
In this talk, we’ll join C.S. Lewis in his study, exploring his published and unpublished writings for lessons on how to read well. As we’ll see, Lewis has much to teach us about reading wholeheartedly—for enjoyment, with and for others, and as Christians seeking to live faithfully in the world.
Dr. Jim Beitler is Director of the Marion E. Wade Center and Professor of English at Wheaton College, where he holds the Marion E. Wade Chair of Christian Thought. His scholarship focuses on the rhetoric of Christian witness and writing as a spiritual activity, looking to C.S. Lewis, Dorothy L. Sayers, Desmond Tutu, and other exemplary communicators as guides for faithful practice. Beitler is the author of three books—Charitable Writing: Cultivating Virtue Through Our Words (with Richard Hughes Gibson, 2020), Seasoned Speech: Rhetoric in the Life of the Church (2019), and Remaking Transitional Justice in the United States (2013)— and he teaches undergraduate courses on C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien, Tolkien and Environmental Stewardship, and Christianity and Fantasy. With Aaron Hill, he hosts the Wade Center Podcast.
Watch this Program on Asbury University’s YouTube Channel
Wednesday, January 22, 2025, 7 p.m. Shaw CLC Luce Auditorium
Dr. Abigail Favale
How do contemporary theories of gender compare to a Christian understanding of gender? This talk will give an overview of the two major understandings of gender in today’s culture and bring those frameworks into conversation with Christian scripture and theology, highlighting the points of consonance and dissonance between them.
Abigail’s most recent book, The Genesis of Gender: A Christian Theory, was published in 2022 by Ignatius Press and has already been translated into multiple languages. Her numerous essays have appeared in MICL’s Church Life Journal, The Atlantic, First Things, Public Discourse, Comment, and elsewhere. Abigail is also a fiction writer and was awarded the J.F. Powers Prize for Short Fiction in 2017.
Dr. Abigail Favale is a writer and professor whose work lies at the intersection of Catholic theology, literature, and women’s studies. Her abiding interest as a writer and scholar is the meaning and dignity of woman, and her work explores sexual difference and embodiment in the Catholic imagination.
Abigail supports MICL programming by writing and teaching on women, feminism, and gender from a Catholic perspective. She holds a concurrent appointment in the Department of Theology, where she teaches on topics like Edith Stein’s Theology of Woman and Religion & Literature.
Tuesday, February 4, 2025, 7 p.m. Shaw CLC Luce Auditorium
This talk tells the story of virtual unwrapping, conceived during the rise of digital libraries and large-scale computing, and now realized on some of the most difficult and iconic material in the world – the Herculaneum Scrolls – as a result of the recent phenomena of big data and machine learning. Virtual unwrapping is a restoration pathway for damaged written material, allowing texts to be read from objects that are too damaged even to be opened. To understand how the scrolls from Herculaneum can possibly be read despite their profound damage, I will describe the non-invasive, technical steps that we invented, and I will discuss the human steps necessary to race toward digital restorations that will have impact for the scholarly world.
The Heritage Science research lab (EduceLab) founded by Seales at the University of Kentucky applies techniques in machine learning and data science to the digital restoration of damaged materials. The research program is funded by the National Science Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Arts and Humanities Research Council of Great Britain, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and Google.
Seales is a co-founder of the Vesuvius Challenge, an international contest formed around the goal of the virtual unwrapping of Herculaneum scrolls. He continues to work with challenging, damaged material (Herculaneum Scrolls, Dead Sea Scrolls), with notable successes in the scroll from En-Gedi (Leviticus), the Morgan MS M.910 (The Acts of the Apostles), and PHerc.Paris.3 and 4 (Philodemus / Epicureanism). The recovery of readable text from still-unopened material has been hailed worldwide as an astonishing achievement fueled by open scholarship, interdisciplinary collaboration, and extraordinary leadership generosity.
Dr. W. Brent Seales is the Stanley and Karen Pigman Chair of Heritage Science and Professor of Computer Science at the University of Kentucky. He earned a Ph.D. in Computer Science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and has held research positions at INRIA Sophia-Antipolis, UNC Chapel Hill, Google (Paris), and the Getty Conservation Institute.
Monday, November 11, 2024, 7 p.m. Kinlaw Board Room
This multimedia examination of how Michelangelo’s David came to be, highlights our hunger for glory, and how our desire for perfection is actually a longing for another world.
Russ Ramsey, author and pastor, grew up in the wheatfields of Indiana. He studied at Taylor University and Covenant Theological Seminary (MDiv, ThM) before becoming a pastor. He and his family live in Franklin, Tennessee. Russ is the author of Van Gogh has a Broken Heart: What Art Teaches Us About the Wonder and Struggle of Being Alive (Zondervan 2024) and Rembrandt is in the Wind: Learning to Love Art through the Eyes of Faith.
Dr. Nadya Williams received her PhD in Classics from Princeton University. She is the author of Cultural Christians in the Early Church (Zondervan Academic, 2023) and Mothers, Children, and the Body Politic: Early Christianity and the Recovery of Human Dignity (IVP Academic, 2024). She is currently completing a guide for Christians on reading the pagan classics for spiritual and moral formation, Christians Reading Pagans (under contract, Zondervan Academic). She is Book Review Editor at Current, and a contributing editor at Providence and Front Porch Republic.
Christians today often assume that the earliest Christians were better than us, that they were zealous converts more counterculturally devoted to their faith than typical churchgoers today. Furthermore, too often today we think of cultural Christianity as a modern concept, and one most likely to occur in areas where Christianity is the majority culture, such as the “Bible Belt.” But what if we are much more similar to earlier Christians than we realize? This is both good and bad news but most of all, this is a call to pursue sanctification.
March 21, 2024, 7 p.m. — Bennett-Bernard Auditorium (Morrison 206)
March 4, 2024, 7 p.m. — Shaw CLC Luce Auditorium
January 31, 2024, 7 p.m. — Shaw CLC Luce Auditorium
Saturday, October 7, 2023 — Shaw CLC Luce Auditorium
Friday, October 6, 2023, 7 p.m. — Shaw CLC Luce Auditorium
Join Dr. Brandon Rickabaugh as he explores the intersection of AI and faith in this thought-provoking lecture from the Asbury University Honors Program. This insightful talk dives into the impact of artificial intelligence on spirituality, offering a deeper understanding of spiritual formation in the digital age.
In this engaging lecture and Q&A session with students, Dr. Rickabaugh explores how AI influences our modern spiritual lives and challenges traditional notions of human flourishing and faith in the context of rapidly evolving technology.
Dr. Brandon Rickabaugh is a philosopher specializing in the relationship between the mind, technology, and human flourishing. As the founder and CEO of the NOVUS Initiative, he is dedicated to examining how these forces intersect and shape our future.
Tuesday, September 19, 2023, 7 p.m. — Kinlaw Board Room
Join author and speaker Kaitlyn Schiess as she discusses her influential book, The Ballot and the Bible: Scripture and Public Life, in this special event hosted by the Asbury University Honors Program. This conversation explores how faith, politics, and Scripture inform public engagement and civic responsibility.
This evening event features a lecture from Kaitlyn Schiess followed by a thoughtful Q&A session with the audience. Students are invited to consider how religion, politics, and public life intersect—and how Scripture shapes our understanding of civic participation.
Kaitlyn Schiess is an author, speaker, and podcaster who focuses on the relationship between faith, culture, and politics. Her work equips Christians to think wisely about public life and biblical engagement.
Wednesday, April 12, 2023, 7 p.m. — Kinlaw Board Room
Wednesday, February 15, 2023
Monday, October 10, 2022, 7 p.m. — Kinlaw Board Room
What does it truly mean to live a happy life? In this thought-provoking Honors Program Colloquium at Asbury University, philosopher, writer, podcaster, and professor Dr. Jennifer Frey explores the classical and contemporary views on happiness, examining how society’s understanding of happiness has shifted from ancient philosophy to modern culture.
Hosted on Asbury University’s campus, this engaging event features a compelling lecture followed by a student-led Q&A discussion, offering deep insight into virtue, meaning, and the pursuit of the good life.
This lecture is part of the Asbury University Honors Program Colloquium Speaker Series, designed to challenge students through high-level academic dialogue and interdisciplinary learning.
Dr. Jennifer Frey is a philosopher, professor, writer, and podcast host known for her work on ethics, virtue, and the philosophy of happiness. 📍
Thursday, October 20, 2022, 7 p.m. — Miller Screening Room
Tuesday, September 13, 2022
Thursday, September 8, 2022, 7 p.m. — Miller Screening Room
How do theism and science relate—and can they coexist? Join Dr. John Lennox and Dr. Paul Nesselroade for a compelling conversation exploring the harmony, tensions, and philosophical depth behind faith and the scientific enterprise.
Watch this Program on Asbury’s YouTube Channel
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.
Join Dr. Calum MacKellar for a thought-provoking lecture on the ethics of genetics and eugenics in this special event hosted by the Asbury University Honors Program. In this insightful discussion, Dr. MacKellar examines the moral and philosophical implications of genetic selection and what it means for human dignity.
Dr. MacKellar offers a deeply reflective look at eugenics and the growing practice of genetic selection. His lecture addresses the complex ethical questions surrounding the value of life, the right to life, and the impact of biotechnology on human identity and dignity. The event is followed by a dynamic Q&A session with students to explore these important ethical issues further.
Dr. Calum MacKellar is the Director of Research at the Scottish Council on Human Bioethics. His research and lectures focus on biochemistry, bioethics, and the ethical questions surrounding genetics, particularly in the context of human life and genetic manipulation.
Watch the Program on Asbury’s YouTube Channel.
Thursday, March 31, 2022, 7 – 8 p.m. — Kinlaw Library Board Room
Dr. Richard Weikart, Professor of History (Retired), California State University, Stanislaus
Join Dr. Richard Weikart for a thought-provoking exploration of human origins, human value, and the question at the heart of philosophical and theological anthropology: Are we created in the image of God—or the result of a cosmic accident?
Asbury University’s Honors Program welcomed Dr. Richard Weikart for an engaging evening examining where true human value comes from. The lecture is followed by a dynamic Q&A session with the audience, expanding the conversation around human existence, purpose, and worldview.
Dr. Richard Weikart is an accomplished author and professor at California State University, and a Senior Fellow at the Discovery Institute’s Center for Science and Culture. His work explores ethics, human nature, the history of ideas, and how worldviews shape our understanding of humanity.
Thursday, October 7, 2021, 8 – 9:30 p.m.
Dr. Chris Bounds, Professor of Christian Doctrine, Indiana Wesleyan University, Wesley Seminary
honorss@asbury.edu