Announcing the Cathedral Insights Lecture Series
July 31, 2015
Trinity Episcopal Cathedral presents INSIGHTS
A series of lectures and talks highlighting some of America’s leading religious writers and theologians in the setting of Arkansas’s historic Episcopal Cathedral
What an exciting year! The Theological Enrichment Committee is pleased to announce our inaugural year ofInsights: A Series of Lectures & Talks Highlighting Some of America’s Leading Religious Writers and Theologians. This year’s line up is as follows:
November 7: Eric Metaxas. Eric Metaxas is the author of the New York Times #1 Bestseller, Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy. Named “Book of the Year” by the ECPA, Bonhoeffer also won the 2011 John C. Pollock Award for Biography awarded by Beeson Divinity School and a 2011 Christopher Award in the Non-fiction category. Called a “biography of uncommon power,” Bonhoeffer appeared on numerous 2010 “Best of the Year” lists and was featured in the Wall Street Journal, Publishers Weekly, The New Republic, Harper’s, Kirkus (starred review), NPR, FoxNews, C-SPAN’s Book TV, Christianity Today, The Weekly Standard, and First Things. Bonhoeffer has sold more than 700,000 copies and has been translated into 17 languages. It was recently ranked #21 on the Amazon.com listing of Most Highlighted Books of all time.
ABC News has called Metaxas a “photogenic, witty ambassador for faith in public life,” and The Indianapolis Star described him as “a Protestant version of William F. Buckley.”
Metaxas was the keynote speaker at the 2012 National Prayer Breakfast in Washington DC, an event attended by the President and First Lady, the Vice President, members of Congress, and other U.S. and world leaders. Previous keynote speakers have included Mother Theresa, Bono, and Tony Blair. That speech and Eric’s essay on the experience, were put into a book, No Pressure, Mr. President: The Power of True Belief in a Time of Crisis.
Metaxas will be speaking at Trinity Episcopal Cathedral on his latest book, Miracles: What they are, Why they happen, and How they can change your life. Metaxas is made possible by generous donations from Ben & Walter Hussman, Julie & Chris Keller, and Bill Dillard III.
Feburary 18: Diana Butler Bass. Diana Butler Bass is an author, speaker, and independent scholar specializing in American religion and culture. She holds a Ph.D. in religious studies from Duke University and is the author of eight books, including Christianity After Religion: The End of Church and the Birth of a New Spiritual Awakening (HarperOne, 2012). Her other books include A People's History of Christianity: The Other Side of the Story (HarperOne, 2009), nominated for a Library of Virginia literary award.
Diana regularly consults with religious organizations, leads conferences for religious leaders, and teaches and preaches in a variety of venues. She blogs at The Huffington Post and Patheos and regularly comments on religion, politics, and culture in the media including USA TODAY, Time, Newsweek, The Washington Post, CBS, CNN, FOX, PBS, and NPR.
From 1995 to 2000, she wrote a weekly column on American religion for the New York Times Syndicate. She is a contributing editor for Sojourners Magazine has written widely in the religious press, including Christian Century, Clergy Journal, and Congregations.
From 2002 to 2006, she was the Project Director of a national Lilly Endowment-funded study of mainline Protestant vitality—a project featured in Newsweek, U.S. News and World Report, the Washington Post, and the Los Angeles Times.
She is the recipient of numerous grants and awards including an honorary Doctor of Divinity degree from The General Theological Seminary in New York. Diana also serves on the boards of the Beatitudes Society and Public Religion Research.
Diana has taught at Westmont College, the University of California at Santa Barbara, Macalester College, Rhodes College, and the Virginia Theological Seminary. She has taught church history, American religious history, history of Christian thought, religion and politics, and congregational studies.
Diana will be speaking at Trinity Episcopal Cathedral on her best-selling book Christianity for the Rest of Us: How the Neighborhood Church is Transforming the Faith (2006) which was named as one of the best religion books of the year by Publishers Weekly and was featured in a cover story in USA TODAY.
April 2: Elaine Pagels. Elaine Pagels joined the Princeton faculty in 1982, shortly after receiving a MacArthur Fellowship. Perhaps best known as the author of The Gnostic Gospels, The Origin of Satan, and Adam, Eve and the Serpent, she has published widely on Gnosticism and early Christianity, and continues to pursue research interests in late antiquity. Her most recent books include Beyond Belief: The Secret Gospel of Thomas (was on the New York Times best-seller list) and Reading Judas: The Gospel of Judas and the Shaping of Christianity, co-authored with Karen King of Harvard. Her current project is working on a book entitled Revelations, which will explore the New Testament Book of Revelation and other Jewish, Christian, and Pagan books of Revelation written around the same time. Pagels is made possible by a generous donation from the Cindy Bost Vision Trust.
April 28: Glennon Doyle Melton. In her own words: For twenty years I was lost to food and booze and bad love and drugs. I suffered. My family suffered. I had a relatively magical childhood, which added an extra layer of guilt to my pain and confusion. Glennon – why are you all jacked up when you have no excuse to be all jacked up?
My best guess is that I was born with an extra dose of sensitivity to life’s brutality and my own nakedness. I didn’t want to walk through life’s battlefield of rejection, friendship, and tender love naked. So when I was eight years old, I made up my own little world called addiction and I hid there for decades. I felt safe. No one could touch me.
On Mother’s Day 2002, unwed and addicted, I found myself holding a positive pregnancy test. I decided to become a mother and vowed to never again have another drink, cigarette, drug, unhealthy relationship, or food binge. I found myself marrying a man I’d known for ten sober nights.
Twelve years later, I’m still married to that man I barely knew, and I’m also the mother of three kids, two mutts, a geriatric guinea pig and the two most majestic banyan trees you’ve ever seen. I’m also a Sunday School teacher, an award-winning blogger, a New York Times bestselling author, speaker, and the founder and president of Together Rising – a non-profit that serves women who need help getting back on their feet. Underneath and on top of all that I’m a Recovering Everything. Every morning, I open my eyes and immediately understand that I am still that girl on the bathroom floor, holding that pregnancy test like a terrifying invitation, trying to decide whether to stay down on the cold floor or get up and walk.
Most days I decide to walk, because I was right when I was little. Life is brutal. But it’s also beautiful. Brutiful, I call it. Life’s brutal and beautiful are woven together so tightly that they can’t be separated. Reject the brutal, reject the beauty. So now I embrace both, and I live well and hard and real.
My job is to wake up every day, say yes to life’s invitation, and let millions of women watch me get up off the floor, walk, stumble, and get back up again.
- See more at: http://momastery.com/
Each lecture will begin at 6:30 in the Cathedral, with a reception following in Morrison Hall. Books will be available to purchase and have signed. There will be a Sponsors & Patrons reception prior to the lecture. For more information on sponsorships, please contact Annie Burton at annie@trinitylittlerock.org.
Tickets to Eric Metaxas, Diana Butler Bass and Glennon Doyle Melton are $25 for general seating or $100 for patron tickets (which include an invitation to the Sponsors & Patrons reception and reserved seating). General admission to Elaine Pagels is free, but tickets are still required. Patron Tickets are also available for Pagels for $100. Tickets are available to purchase online as follows:
Eric Metaxas: http://insightsmetaxas.eventbrite.com
Diana Butler Bass: http://insightsbutlerbass.eventbrite.com
Elaine Pagels: http://insightspagels.eventbrite.com
Glennon Doyle Melton: General Admission Tickets are not on sale yet. Patron Tickets are available at: http://insightsglennon.eventbrite.com