Trinity Forum Senior Fellows are distinguished scholars, thinkers, and leaders who articulate and embody the best of Christian thought. Learn more about them and their topics of expertise below. If you are interested in having one of our Senior Fellows serve as a speaker at an upcoming event, please contact us at mail@ttf.org.
Professor of Theology and Director of the Center for Applied Christian Ethics at Wheaton College
Vincent Bacote (Ph.D., Drew University) is a professor of theology and the director of the Center for Applied Christian Ethics at Wheaton College in Wheaton, Illinois. Publications include the books Reckoning with Race and Performing the Good News: In Search of a Better of a Evangelical Theology and The Political Disciple: A Theology of Public Life and he has contributed to books including Cultural Engagement: A Crash Course in Contemporary Issues, The Church’s Social Responsibility, and Black Scholars in White Space.
In addition to being a Trinity Forum Senior Fellow, he is a fellow for the Center for Public Justice and has been an assistant theology editor for Christianity Today. He has been a columnist for Comment and has also had articles appear in magazines such as The Banner, Books and Culture, Christianity Today, Think Christian and re:generation quarterly and journals such as The Journal of Markets and Morality, Christian Scholars Review, Urban Mission and the Journal for Christian Theological Research. An avid tennis player, occasional bass guitarist and incessantly curious person, he lives in the Chicago area with his family.
Professor of Medicine and Director of the Center for Clinical Medical Ethics at Columbia University
Lydia Dugdale, M.D., MAR, is a professor of medicine and the director of the Center for Clinical Medical Ethics at Columbia University. Prior to her 2019 move to Columbia, she was the associate director of the Program for Biomedical Ethics and founding co-director of the Program for Medicine, Spirituality, and Religion at Yale School of Medicine. She is an internal medicine primary care doctor and medical ethicist, focusing on end-of-life issues, the role of aesthetics in teaching ethics, moral injury, and the doctor-patient relationship.
Dr. Dugdale edited Dying in the Twenty-First Century and is author of The Lost Art of Dying. She attended medical school at the University of Chicago, completed residency training at Yale-New Haven Hospital, and holds a MAR in ethics from Yale Divinity School. Lydia lives with her husband and daughters in New York City.
Professeur Associé at Faculté Libre de Théologie Réformée; former Professor of Apologetics at Westminster Theological Seminary
William Edgar was the professor of apologetics, coordinator of the Apologetics Department, and chairman of the faculty at Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia until his retirement in 2022.
He was born in Wilmington, North Carolina, in 1944, and he was raised in Paris, France. He studied at St. George’s School (secondary), Harvard University (Honors A.B. in Music), Westminster Theological Seminary (M.Div.), and the University of Geneva (D.Th.). He taught at the Brunswick School in Greenwich, Connecticut, and at the Faculté Libre de Théologie Réformée in Aix-en-Provence, France, where he continues as Professeur Associé.
Dr. Edgar belongs to a number of learned societies, including the American Musicological Society, the Evangelical Theological Society, the American Historical Association, and the Society for Ethnomusicology. He served as the President of the Huguenot Fellowship and is currently on their Board of Trustees. He is on the editorial committee of La Revue Réformée. He regularly takes part as a speaker in the Veritas Forum programs. He also serves on the Institutional Review Board and the Medical Ethics Committee of The Chestnut Hill Hospital.
Edgar is an ordained minister in the Presbyterian Church in America, and has served on several denominational committees. His books include Taking Note of Music, Reasons of the Heart, La Carte Protestante, The Face of Truth: Lifting the Veil, Truth in All Its Glory: Commending the Reformed Faith, History of the Reformed Presbyterian Church of North America 1871-1920, and A Supreme Love: The Music of Jazz and the Hope of the Gospel. He has written numerous articles on such subjects as cultural apologetics, the music of Brahms, the French Huguenots, and African-American aesthetics. His favorite avocations are soccer and jazz piano. He plays regularly with a professional jazz band.
He is married to Barbara Smyth Edgar, the administrator of the Huguenot Fellowship and a French teacher at the Westminster Language Institute. They have two children and three grandchildren. Their son, William Keyes Hill-Edgar, is a senior attorney with Viacom Productions in New York. He is married to the former Allison Hill, a medical doctor. They have two sons, William Morgan, and John Gordon. The Edgars’ daughter, Deborah Boatwright, is a graduate of Fuller Theological Seminary, and presently practices as a marriage and family therapist in Monrovia, California.
Publications and Scholarly Work
• A Supreme Love: The Music of Jazz and the Hope of the Gospel (2022)
• History of the Reformed Presbyterian Church of North America 1871-1920 (2019)
• Suffering and the Goodness of God (2018)
• Created and Creating: A Biblical Theology of Culture (2016)
• Does Christianity Really Work? (2016)
• A Transforming Vision: The Lord’s Prayer as a Lens of Life (2014)
• Schaeffer on the Christian Life: Countercultural Spirituality (2013)
• Christian Apologetics Past and Present (Volume 1, To 1500): A Primary Source Reader (2009)
• Christian Apologetics Past and Present (Volume 2, From 1500): A Primary Source Reader (2009)
• Truth In All Its Glory: Commending the Reformed Faith (2004)
• Reasons of the Heart: Recovering Christian Persuasion (2003)
• The Face of Truth: Lifting the Veil (2001)
Opinion columnist for The New York Times
David French is an Opinion columnist for The New York Times. He was previously a columnist for Time, and a senior editor at The Dispatch. A graduate of Harvard Law School, French is a former senior writer for National Review and a former senior fellow at the National Review Institute. He is also a former constitutional litigator and a past president of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education. He is a New York Times bestselling author, and his most recent book, Divided We Fall: America’s Secession Threat and How to Restore Our Nation, was released in 2020. French is a former major in the United States Army Reserve and is a veteran of Operation Iraqi Freedom, where he was awarded the Bronze Star.
Trinity Forum Appearances and Remarks
March 12, 2021 | “Faith, Fear, & Conspiracy,” an Online Conversation with David French
Related Trinity Forum Readings
Fall 2021 | The Federalist Papers, introduced by David French
Publications and Scholarly Work
• Divided We Fall: America’s Secession Threat and How to Restore Our Nation (2020)
• Rise of ISIS: A Threat We Can’t Ignore (2015)
• A Season for Justice: Defending the Rights of the Christian Home, Church, and School (2002)
Contemporary artist, curator, writer, and founder of the International Arts Movement Fujimura Institute
Makoto Fujimura is a contemporary artist, curator, writer, and founder of the International Arts Movement and Fujimura Institute.
Fujimura was born in 1960 in Boston, Massachusetts. Educated bi-culturally between the U.S. and Japan, he graduated from Bucknell University in 1983 and received an MFA from Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music with a Japanese Governmental Scholarship. His thesis painting was purchased by the university, and he was invited to study in the Japanese Painting Doctorate program.
A presidential appointee to the National Council on the Arts from 2003-2009, Fujimura served as an international advocate for the arts, speaking with decision makers and advising governmental policies on the arts. In 2014, the American Academy of Religion named Makoto Fujimura as its “2014 Religion and the Arts” award recipient. His work has been featured in numerous museum exhibits, including the Tikotin Museum in Israel and the Gonzaga Jundt Museum. The New York Times columnist David Brooks has called Fujimura’s work “a small rebellion against the quickening of time.” Poet Christian Wiman has termed Fujimura’s new book Art+Faith: A Theology of Making “a tonic for our atomized time.”
Fujimura is married to Haejin Shim Fujimura, the managing partner of Shim & Associates, P.C. and the CEO of Embers International, Inc. They work together to connect creation of beauty with bringing justice into the world to end human trafficking in our generation.
Speaker’s Bureau
January 29, 2021 | “Art + Faith: A Theology of Making” an Online Conversation with Makoto Fujimura
August 7, 2020 | “Culture Care: Mending to Make New” an Online Conversation with Makoto Fujimura
September 19, 2017 | “Culture Care” an Evening Conversation in Indianapolis, IN with Makoto Fujimura
November 4, 2016 | “Culture Care in a Fragmented Modern World” an Evening Conversation in Washington, DC with Makoto Fujimura
March 31, 2016 | “Beauty in a Broken World” an Evening Conversation in Columbia, SC with Makoto Fujimura
Related Trinity Forum Readings
“Babette’s Feast” by Isak Dinesen, featuring an original introduction by Makoto Fujimura
“Four Quartets” by T. S. Eliot, featuring an original introduction by Makoto Fujimura
Publications and Scholarly Works
• Art+Faith: A Theology of Making (2021)
• Culture Care: Reconnecting with Beauty for Our Common Life (2017)
• Silence and Beauty: Hidden Faith Born of Suffering (2016)
• Golden Sea (2013)
Poet, former Chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts and California Poet Laureate
Dana Gioia is an internationally acclaimed poet and writer. Former California Poet Laureate and Chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, Gioia was born in Los Angeles of Italian and Mexican descent. The first person in his family to attend college, he received an A.B. and a MBA from Stanford and an M.A. from Harvard in Comparative Literature. For 15 years, he worked as a businessman before quitting at age 41 to become a full-time writer.
Gioia has published six full-length collections of verse, most recently Meet Me at the Lighthouse. His collection 99 Poems: New & Selected won the Poets’ Prize as the best new book of the year. His third collection, Interrogations at Noon, was awarded the American Book Award. Gioia is best known as a central figure in the revival of rhyme, meter, and narrative in contemporary poetry. Critic William Oxley has called Gioia, “probably the most exquisite poet writing in English today.”
An influential critic, Gioia has published four books of essays. His controversial volume, Can Poetry Matter?, was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle award. The book is credited with helping to revive the role of poetry in American public culture. Gioia has also edited or co-edited two dozen best-selling literary anthologies, including An Introduction to Poetry (with X. J. Kennedy) and Best American Poetry 2018. His essays and memoirs have appeared in BBC Radio, The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The Washington Post, The New York Times, and Hudson Review.
Gioia has written four opera libretti and collaborated with musicians in genres from classical to jazz. His work has been set to music by Morten Lauridsen, Lori Laitman, Dave Brubeck, Ned Rorem, Paul Salerni, and numerous other composers. He collaborated with jazz pianist Helen Sung on her vocal album, Sung With Words. His dance opera (with Paul Salerni), Haunted, premiered in 2019.
Gioia has been an important advocate for the arts and arts education. From 2003 to 2009 Gioia served as the chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts where he helped create and launch the largest programs in the agency’s history, including Poetry Out Loud, The Big Read, Shakespeare in American Communities, and Operation Homecoming: Writing the Wartime Experience.
Gioia also served as the California State Poet Laureate from 2015 to 2019. During his tenure, he became the first laureate to visit all 58 counties of California. His statewide tour became the subject of a BBC Radio documentary.
In addition to the American Book Award and Poets’ Prize, Gioia has won many awards including the Laetare Medal from Notre Dame, Presidential Citizen’s Medal, Aiken Taylor Award in Modern Poetry, and Walt Whitman Champion of Literacy prize. He has been awarded 10 honorary doctorates.
Gioia teaches each fall semester at the University of Southern California, where he holds the Judge Widney Chair of Poetry and Public Culture. He divides his time between Los Angeles and Sonoma County, California.
Speaker’s Bureau
May 1, 2020 | “Poetry and Beauty in Solitude” an Online Conversation with Dana Gioia
September 11, 2019 | “Poetry, Imagination, and Spiritual Formation” an Evening Conversation in Washington, DC with Dana Gioia
April 20, 2016 | “Why Poetry Matters” an Evening Conversation in Washington, DC with Dana Gioia
April 1, 2014 | “Why Beauty Matters: The Significance of Beauty in Art, Faith, and Politics” an Evening Conversation in Nashville, TN with Dana Gioia
October 18, 2012 | “Poetry, Prayer, and Passion” an Evening Conversation in Washington, DC with Dana Gioia
Related Trinity Forum Readings
“God’s Grandeur” by Gerard Manley Hopkins, featuring an original introduction by Dana Gioia
“Sacred & Profane Love” by John Donne, featuring an original introduction by Dana Gioia
Publications and Scholarly Work
• Studying with Miss Bishop (2021)
• La Oscuridad Intacta (2020)
• The Catholic Writer Today and Other Essays (2019)
• 99 Poems: New & Selected (2017)
• Pity the Beautiful: Poems (2012)
• The Art of the Short Story (2005)
• Disappearing Ink: Poetry at the End of Print Culture (2004)
• Can Poetry Matter?: Essays on Poetry and American Culture (2002)
• Interrogations at Noon: Poems (2001)
• Nosferatu: An Opera Libretto (2001)
• The Gods of Winter (1991)
• Daily Horoscope: Poems (1986)
Recent Articles
Why Beauty Matters (First Things)
Executive Director of Organizational Development for Wolfsberg
Prabhu Guptara is the executive director of organizational development of Wolfsberg—a platform for executive and business development (a subsidiary of UBS A.G., formerly the Union Bank of Switzerland).
He has also served as a trustee and chairman of The Trinity Forum in Europe.
Professor Guptara is a widely recognized authority on the impact of technology, strategy, long-range trends, intellectual capital, knowledge management, corporate social responsibility, comparative and cross-cultural ethics, and on leadership issues.
He is a Freeman of the City of London and of the Worshipful Company of Information Technologists. He has served on the boards of numerous international organizations, and he continues to supervise Ph.D. research in Switzerland. He also continues to lecture by invitation at universities and business schools around the world, and to organize and speak at international conferences.
He has written for Financial Times, The Guardian, and The New York Times. He enjoys being a judge for international competitions in the fields of fiction, poetry, and executive development.
Guptara is a Hindu follower of Jesus. He and his wife Philippa have four children, and they reside in Switzerland.
LaBrosse-Levinson Distinguished Professor of Religion, Culture and Social Theory at the University of Virginia; Executive Director of the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture
James Davison Hunter is the LaBrosse-Levinson Distinguished Professor of Religion, Culture and Social Theory at the University of Virginia and the executive director of the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture. He completed his doctorate at Rutgers University in 1981, and he joined the faculty of the University of Virginia in 1983. Widely published and nationally recognized, Dr. Hunter has received numerous literary awards for his work regarding the problem of meaning and moral order in a time of political and cultural change in American life. He has written a wide range of essays, articles, reviews, and books. His most recent book is entitled Science and the Good: The Tragic Quest for the Foundations of Morality. The Los Angeles Times named Hunter as a finalist for their 1992 Book Prize for Culture Wars: The Struggle To Define America. In 2004, he was appointed by the White House to a six-year term to the National Council of the National Endowment for the Humanities. In 2005, he won the Richard M. Weaver Prize for Scholarly Letters.
Over the years, Hunter’s research findings have been presented to audiences on National Public Radio and C-Span, at the National Endowment for the Arts, and at dozens of colleges and universities around the country including Columbia, Harvard, Vanderbilt, Notre Dame, and Holy Cross College. He also has been a consultant to the White House, the Bicentennial Commission for the U.S. Constitution, the Pew Charitable Trusts, and the National Commission on Civic Renewal.
Publications and Scholarly Work
• Science and the Good: The Tragic Quest for the Foundations of Morality (2018)
• To Change the World: The Irony, Tragedy, and Possibility of Christianity in the Late Modern World (2010)
• Is There a Culture War?: A Dialogue on Values and American Public Life (with Alan Wolfe) (2006)
• The Death of Character: Moral Education in an Age without Good and Evil (2001)
• Evangelicalism: The Coming Generation (1993)
• Culture Wars: The Struggle To Define America (1992)
• American Evangelicalism: Conservative Religion and the Quandary of Modernity (1983)
Professor of Neurobiology at Stanford University Medical Center
William Hurlbut is a physician and consulting professor in the Department of Neurobiology at Stanford University Medical Center. After receiving his undergraduate and medical training at Stanford, he completed postdoctoral studies in theology and medical ethics, studying with Robert Hamerton-Kelly, the Dean of the Chapel at Stanford, and subsequently with the Rev. Louis Bouyer of the Institut Catholique de Paris.
Dr. Hurlbut’s primary areas of interest involve the ethical issues associated with advancing biomedical technology, the biological basis of moral awareness, and studies in the integration of theology and philosophy of biology. He was instrumental in establishing the first course in biomedical ethics at Stanford Medical Center, and he subsequently taught bioethics to over 6,000 Stanford undergraduate students in the human biology program.
Hurlbut is the author of numerous publications on science and ethics, including the co-edited volume Altruism and Altruistic Love: Science, Philosophy, and Religion in Dialogue and “Science, Religion and the Human Spirit” in the Oxford Handbook of Science and Religion. He has organized and co-chaired two multi-year interdisciplinary faculty projects at Stanford University, “Becoming Human: The Evolutionary Origins of Spiritual, Religious and Moral Awareness” and “Brain Mind and Emergence.”
Hurlbut has testified to the National Academy of Sciences Embryonic Stem Cell Research Guidelines Committee and the Senate Appropriations Committee’s Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services and Education, and he has presented to UNESCO, the Pan American Health Organization, the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, as well as at major medical centers and universities around the world. He has worked with NASA on projects in astrobiology, and he has been a member of the Chemical and Biological Warfare Working Group at the Center for International Security and Cooperation.
From 2002-2009, Hurlbut served on the President’s Council on Bioethics. He is the author of Altered Nuclear Transfer, a proposed technological solution to the moral controversy over embryonic stem cell research, which received funding from the NIH in January 2010 for continuing studies on primates in anticipation of research with human cells.
Speaker’s Bureau
December 4, 2020 | “CRISPR, Gene Editing, and Human Flourishing” an Online Conversation with William Hurlbut
Related Trinity Forum Readings
“The Birthmark” by Nathaniel Hawthorne, featuring an original introduction by William Hurlbut
Sally D. Danforth Distinguished Professor of Law and Religion at Washington University; founder of the Carver Project and the Legal Vocation Fellowship
John Inazu is the Sally D. Danforth Distinguished Professor of Law and Religion at Washington University in St. Louis. His teaching and scholarship focuses on the First Amendment freedoms of speech, assembly, and religion, and related questions of legal and political theory.
Inazu’s next book, Learning to Disagree: The Surprising Path to Navigating Differences with Empathy and Respect, will be published by Zondervan in Spring 2024. He is also the author of Liberty’s Refuge: The Forgotten Freedom of Assembly and Confident Pluralism: Surviving and Thriving Through Deep Difference, and co-editor (with Tim Keller) of Uncommon Ground: Living Faithfully in a World of Difference.
Inazu is the founder of The Carver Project and the Legal Vocation Fellowship. He is a senior fellow at Interfaith America, where he co-directs (with Eboo Patel) the Newbigin Fellows and Evangelicals in a Diverse Democracy. He serves on the boards of The Carver Project, the John Burroughs School, and InterVarsity Christian Fellowship. He also serves on the advisory boards of the Bech-Loughlin First Amendment Center at the University of Texas School of Law and the Honors College at the University of Tulsa.
He holds a B.S.E. and J.D. from Duke University and a Ph.D. in political science from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He clerked for Judge Roger L. Wollman of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit and served for four years as an associate general counsel with the Department of the Air Force at the Pentagon.
His weekly newsletter, *Some Assembly Required,” can be found at https://johninazu.substack.com/.
Trinity Forum Appearances and Remarks
March 30, 2017 | “Confident Pluralism in a Turbulent Age,” an Evening Conversation with John Inazu
June 12, 2020 | “Christian Pluralism: Living Faithfully in a World of Difference,” an Online Conversation with John Inazu, Trillia Newbell, & Michael Wear
Director of the Hamilton Center for Classical and Civic Education at the University of Florida; Editor-in-Chief of the Texas National Security Review
William Inboden is the professor and director of the Hamilton Center for Classical and Civic Education at the University of Florida. He previously served as the William Powers, Jr. Chair and executive director of the Clements Center for National Security, associate professor at the LBJ School of Public Affairs, and distinguished scholar at the Robert S. Strauss Center for International Security and Law, all at the University of Texas-Austin. He also serves as editor-in-chief of the Texas National Security Review. Dr. Inboden’s other current roles include associate with the National Intelligence Council, member of the CIA Historical Advisory Panel, and member of the State Department’s Historical Advisory Council.
Previously, he served as the senior director for strategic planning on the National Security Council at the White House, where he worked on a range of foreign policy issues including the National Security Strategy, strategic forecasting, democracy and governance, contingency planning, counter-radicalization, and multilateral institutions and initiatives. Inboden’s government service also includes work at the Department of State as a member of the policy planning staff, as a special advisor in the Office of International Religious Freedom, and as a staff member in both the United States Senate and the House of Representatives. He also served as head of the London-based Legatum Institute, and as a Civitas Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.
Inboden’s newest book, The Peacemaker: Ronald Reagan, The Cold War, and the World on the Brink, is a synthetic overview of the Reagan Administration’s Cold War strategy and foreign and defense policies. He is also the author of Religion and American Foreign Policy, 1945-1960: The Soul of Containment, co-editor of The Last Card: Inside George W. Bush’s Decision to Surge in Iraq, Hand-Off: The Foreign Policy That George W. Bush Bequeathed to Barack Obama (Brookings Institution Press), and has published numerous articles and book chapters on American foreign policy, the presidency, and American history.
Inboden is a life member of the Council on Foreign Relations. His commentary has appeared in numerous outlets including The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, USA Today, Foreign Policy, Politico, National Review, The Hill, World, Weekly Standard, NPR, CNN, and BBC. He has lectured widely in academic and policy settings, testified before the U.S. House Armed Services Committee and the US Congress Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe, and received numerous research and professional development fellowships.
Inboden has received multiple teaching awards including recognition as a “Texas 10” by the Texas Exes Alumni Association and selection as “Lecturer of the Year” at the LBJ School. His classes Presidential Decision-Making in National Security and Ethics and International Affairs were voted as “Best Class in the LBJ School” and “Class Most Likely to Challenge Your Assumptions.” Inboden received his Ph.D. and M.A. degrees in history from Yale University, and his A.B. in history with honors from Stanford University. He lives in Gainesville, Florida, with his wife and two sons.
Inboden served on the Trinity Forum Board of Advisors for several years, in addition to presenting as a speaker and panelist at a Trinity Forum Academy Conference on faith and foreign policy.
Speaker’s Bureau
September 27, 2016 | “Just War in the Age of Terror” an Evening Conversation in Nashville, TN with Will Inboden
Related Trinity Forum Readings
“The Origins of Totalitarianism” by Hannah Arendt, featuring an original introduction by Will Inboden
Clifford L. Penner Presidential Chair Emeritus and Professor Emeritus at Fuller Theological Seminary
Mark Labberton is the Clifford L. Penner Presidential Chair Emeritus and Professor Emeritus of Preaching at Fuller Seminary. He served as Fuller’s fifth president through 2022, after being appointed to the position in 2013. As Fuller’s president, Dr. Labberton brought to his leadership a deep awareness of the urgency of the gospel of Jesus Christ and a passion for the vital role that Fuller Seminary plays in the enactment of that gospel. For Labberton, this urgency was informed by a sense of the critical and unique contribution Fuller is called to make to the global church.
Freedom and joy are concepts Labberton intentionally infused into his presidency, committing to lead with openness and a spirit of gratitude. With his long history in pastoral ministry, he brought relational warmth and an authentic concern for the individual. Through his term as president, Labberton led with a vision for preparing Christian leaders holistically for their callings, nurturing each student’s personal, spiritual, academic, and global formation.
A Washington State native, Labberton embraced a personal relationship with Jesus Christ on the threshold of his undergraduate years at Whitman College (B.A.). After earning his degree, he came to Fuller for his M.Div., a time he calls “a tremendously influential season” in his life. He was ordained in the Presbyterian Church (USA) and began what was to become three decades of pastoral ministry—along the way, meeting and marrying his life partner, Janet Morrison Labberton.
Labberton had served for 16 years as senior pastor of First Presbyterian Church of Berkeley, California, when he joined Fuller’s faculty in 2009 as Lloyd John Ogilvie Associate Professor of Preaching and director of the newly established Lloyd John Ogilvie Institute of Preaching (now Brehm Preaching—A Lloyd John Ogilvie Initiative). In early 2013, he received the call to the presidency, succeeding Richard J. Mouw on his retirement, and on July 1, 2013, stepped into service as Fuller Seminary’s fifth president.
Labberton brought more than rich pastoral experience to his leadership role at Fuller. “My interest in ministry has always been defined by the needs and realities of the world,” he has said, and an intentional awareness of God’s work in the global church led him to deep friendships with leaders in the majority world. He co-founded the Christian International Scholarship (now ScholarLeaders) to help fund the advanced theological education of those leaders, and served on the board for 17 years. He was chair and board member of Langham Partnership (previously John Stott Ministries), which provides scholarships, books, publishing, preaching seminars, and more for majority-world scholars and pastors. He also serves on the board of International Justice Mission.
Labberton has been a popular and well-traveled speaker for years, and continues to speak in the US and internationally. In addition to publishing articles in various periodicals such as The Atlantic, Christianity Today, and others, he has authored or edited Still Evangelical?; Called: The Crisis and Promise of Following Jesus Today, The Dangerous Act of Loving Your Neighbor: Seeing Others Through the Eyes of Jesus, and The Dangerous Act of Worship: Living God’s Call to Justice. He hosts the podcast Conversing from FULLER studio, where he speaks with a broad spectrum of leaders on critical issues of our day.
Trinity Forum Appearances and Remarks
January 22, 2016 | “The Crisis and Promise of Following Jesus Today” an Evening Conversation with Mark Labberton
August 13, 2021 | “Public Faith in Polarized Times” an Online Conversation with Mark Labberton, Claude Alexander, and Walter Kim
Chief Policy Officer at Friends of the Global Fight Against AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria
Mark P. Lagon is a specialist and practitioner on global institutions, global health, human rights, and human trafficking. He is the chief policy officer at Friends of the Global Fight Against AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria, where he coordinates the nonprofit’s administration and congressional outreach, policy advocacy and coalition management, and research content. Ambassador Lagon is also an Adjunct Professor in the Master of Science in Foreign Service Program at Georgetown University.
In the NGO world, he has served as the president of Freedom House. Previously, he was the executive director and CEO of the leading anti-human trafficking nonprofit, Polaris. In the Executive Branch, he served in three successive roles at the Department of State: member of the Secretary of State’s policy planning staff, Deputy Assistant Secretary of International Organization Affairs, and, ambassador-at-large, directing the Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons. Earlier, on Capitol Hill, he was senior staffer at the Senate Foreign Relations Committee responsible for international organizations and human rights, and he served as deputy director at the House Republican Policy Committee.
He is co-editor with Anthony Clark Arend of the book, Human Dignity and the Future of Global Institutions, and he is the author of The Reagan Doctrine: Sources of American Conduct in the Cold War’s Last Chapter. He has recently become a regular on “Mornings with Carmen LaBerge,” heard live Monday through Friday, 7-9 a.m. nationwide on The Faith Radio Network.
He received his Ph.D. in government from Georgetown University, and his A.B. from Harvard University.
Speaker’s Bureau
August 30th, 2017 | “Faith and International Development” an Evening Conversation in Washington, DC with Ambassador Mark Lagon
Publications and Scholarly Work
• Human Dignity and the Future of Global Institutions (2014)
• The Reagan Doctrine: Sources of American Conduct in the Cold War’s Last Chapter (1994)
Recent Articles
• Leveraging Digital Technology to Improve Health Systems and Equity Worldwide (Friends of the Global Fight)
• Ending Female Genital Mutilation (American Purpose)
• Multilateral Renovation and Innovation: Don’t Let a Crisis Go to Waste (National Interest)
• Revitalizing Human Trafficking Policy Twenty Years In (Council on Foreign Relations)
• Why Inclusion Is Important for U.S. Foreign Policy (Foreign Policy)
• In Fragile States, Disease Outbreaks Don’t Stay Local for Long (Foreign Policy)
Recent Speaking Engagements
• Global Insights: Responding to Global Health Challenges (World Affairs Council of New Hampshire)
• Panel on Combating Human Trafficking and Modern Slavery (Council on Foreign Relations)
• The Valley of the Shadow of Death: A Choice Between Two Futures (The Reconnect with Carmen LaBerge)
Professor Emeritus of Mathematics at Oxford University
John Lennox, professor of mathematics at Oxford University (emeritus), is an internationally renowned speaker on the interface of science, philosophy, and religion.
He is a native of Northern Ireland, where he studied at the Royal School Armagh. He was then the exhibitioner and senior scholar at Emmanuel College, Cambridge University, from which he received his M.A., MMath and Ph.D. At Cambridge University, he also attended the last lectures of C.S. Lewis. He worked for many years in the Mathematics Institute at the University of Wales in Cardiff, which awarded him a DSc for his research. During his 26 years there, he spent a year at each of the universities of Wuerzburg, Freiburg (as an Alexander von Humboldt Fellow) and Vienna. Dr. Lennox has lectured extensively in Eastern and Western Europe and North America on mathematics, apologetics, and the exposition of Scripture. He also holds a M.A. and DPhil from Oxford University (by incorporation) and a M.A. in bioethics from the University of Surrey.
He has published over 70 peer-reviewed articles on mathematics, co-authored two Oxford Mathematical Monographs, and has worked as a translator of Russian mathematics. He also speaks French and German.
In addition, Lennox has taught on science and religion in the University of Oxford and on apologetics and biblical exposition at the Oxford Centre for Christian Apologetics, and he has been involved in teaching on the Oxford University Programme for Executive Education at the Said Business School. Lennox is the author of many books on the relations of science with religion and ethics, the most recent of which is 2084: Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Humanity.
He debated Professor Richard Dawkins in the “God Delusion Debate” with the Fixed Point Foundation in Birmingham, Alabama in 2007. He also debated Christopher Hitchens at the Edinburgh Festival and Dr. Michael Shermer of Sceptic Magazine in Sydney, both in 2008. He has produced a DVD titled Science and the God Question with Professor Alister McGrath, and these DVDs and some CDs are available of his lectures at the Fixed Point Foundation.
During the Cold War, Lennox made repeated visits over 25 years to many of the Communist countries, and since the collapse of communism, he has visited Russia repeatedly, speaking in universities and academies of science. He teaches at many Christian conferences around the world, expounding books of Scripture in what he calls “apologetic exposition”—that is, showing how Scripture engages with the big worldview questions that are being asked in contemporary society. He spoke at the Keswick Convention in the UK and New Horizon in Northern Ireland in 2008.
He has been married to Sally (for 40 years), and they have three children and four grandchildren, and they live in the countryside near Oxford. His hobbies include languages, amateur bird-watching, and astronomy.
Speaker’s Bureau
May 29th, 2020 | “Where is God in a Coronavirus World?” an Online Conversation with John Lennox
September 29, 2016 | “Cosmic Chemistry: Do Science and God Mix?” an Evening Conversation in Nashville, TN with John Lennox
Selected Publications and Scholarly Work
• 2084 – Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Humanity (2020)
• Determined to Believe?: The Sovereignty of God, Freedom, Faith, and Human Responsibility (2018)
• Against the Flow: The Inspiration of Daniel in an Age of Relativism (2015)
• Christianity: Opium or Truth? (2014)
• God and Stephen Hawking: Whose Design Is It Anyway? (2011)
• Seven Days That Divide the World: The Beginning According to the Genesis and Science (2011)
• Gunning for God: Why the New Atheists are Missing the Target (2011)
• God’s Undertaker: Has Science Buried God? (2009)
• Key Bible Concepts (2001)
Presidential scholar-in-residence at New College of Florida; C.S. Lewis Scholar for Public Life at Grove City College
Joseph Loconte, Ph.D., is a presidential scholar-in-residence at New College of Florida and the C. S. Lewis scholar for public life at Grove City College. He has served as the director of the Simon Center for American Studies at the Heritage Foundation and as Senior Fellow in Christianity and Culture at The King’s College in New York City. He previously served as a distinguished visiting professor at Pepperdine University’s School of Public Policy, and as senior fellow and co-director of the Evangelicals and Civic Life program at the Ethics & Public Policy Center in Washington, D.C.
He has testified before Congress on international human rights and served as a human rights expert on the 2005 Congressional Task Force on the United Nations, contributing to its final report, “American Interests and U.N. Reform.” He served as an informal advisor to the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives. More recently, Dr. Loconte was a speechwriter for British MP Andrew Mitchell, Shadow Secretary of State for International Development.
Loconte has been a frequent contributor to print and broadcast media. For 10 years, he was a monthly commentator on religion and the public square for National Public Radio’s All Things Considered. His other media appearances include the BBC, CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, and Aljazeera Television. In 2007 he co-hosted Britain and America, a weekly political program on the London-based 18 Doughty Street, the UK’s first internet-television program. His commentary has appeared in The New York Times, The Times of London, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, The Weekly Standard, The New Republic, The American Interest, National Review, and Books and Culture. He is a regular contributor to The Huffington Post and the London-based Standpoint.
Loconte is the author of several books, including A Hobbit, a Wardrobe, and a Great War: How J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis Rediscovered Faith, Friendship, and Heroism in the Cataclysm of 1914-1918, God, Locke, and Liberty: The Struggle for Religious Freedom in the West, The Searchers: A Quest for Faith in the Valley of Doubt, and The End of Illusions: Religious Leaders Confront Hitler’s Gathering Storm.
He received his M.A. from Wheaton College, and he earned his Ph.D. in history at King’s College London, University of London. A native of Brooklyn, N.Y., he divides his time between New York City and Washington, D.C.
Speaker’s Bureau
April 24th, 2020 | “Suffering, Friendship, and Courage: What Lewis & Tolkien Teach us about Resilience & Imagination” an Online Conversation with Joe Loconte
October 20th, 2017 | “The Forgotten Keys to American Freedom” an Evening Conversation in Washington, DC with Os Guinness and Joe Loconte
June 20th, 2015 | “The Fascinating Friendship between C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien” an Evening Conversation in Washington, DC with Joe Loconte
Publications and Scholarly Work
• God, Locke, and Liberty: The Struggle for Religious Freedom in the West (2014)
• The Searchers: A Quest for the Faith in the Valley of Doubt (2012)
• Christianity and Human Rights Christians and the Struggle for Global Justice (2009)
• Toward an Evangelical Public Policy: Political Strategies for the Health of the Nation (2005)
• The End of Illusions: Religious Leaders Confront Hitler’s Gathering Storm (2004)
• Seducing the Samaritan: How Government Contracts Are Reshaping Social Services (1997)
Victor Davis Hanson Chair in Classical History and Western Civilization at Hillsdale College
Wilfred M. McClay is the Victor Davis Hanson Chair in Classical History and Western Civilization at Hillsdale College. He has served as the director of the Center for the History of Liberty.
Dr. McClay’s 1994 book, The Masterless: Self and Society in Modern America, won the Merle Curti Award of the Organization of American Historians for the best book on 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, with Ted V. McAllister, Why Place Matters: Geography, Identity, and Public Life in Modern America.
He served for 11 years on the National Council on the Humanities, and 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 Ph.D. in history from Johns Hopkins University.
Speaker’s Bureau
March 28th, 2013 | “The Strange Persistence of Guilt in a Post-Religious World: How it Affects our Public Life and What We Can Do About It” an Evening Conversation in Washington, DC with Bill McClay
Related Trinity Forum Readings
“The Children of Light and the Children of Darkness” by Reinhold Niebuhr, featuring an original introduction by Wilfred M. McClay
Selected Publications and Scholarly Work
• Figures in the Carpet: Finding the Human Person in the American Past (2007)
• Religion Returns to the Public Square: Faith and Policy in America (2003)
• A Student’s Guide to U.S. History (2000)
Director of the Faith & Work Initiative at Princeton University; President of the Avodah Institute
David W. Miller is director of the Princeton University Faith & Work Initiative and the president of the Avodah Institute. He is also an associate research scholar who teaches at Princeton. Prior to this, he was at Yale University for five years, where he served as the executive director of the Yale Center for Faith & Culture.
Dr. Miller brings an unusual bilingual perspective to the academic world, having spent 16 years in senior positions in international business and finance. He did undergraduate studies at Bucknell University and received his Ph.D. and M.Div. degrees from Princeton Theological Seminary. He is an ordained minister in the Presbyterian Church (USA). While working on his doctorate in 1999, Miller co-founded The Avodah Institute. Avodah’s mission is to help leaders integrate the claims of their faith with the demands of their work.
Prior to working in academia, Miller lived and worked in London for eight years, where he was an equity partner in a private bank specializing in international investment management, corporate finance, and mergers and acquisitions. Before that, he was a senior executive and director of the securities services and global custody division of Midland Bank PLC (now part of the HSBC Group). He first moved to London as the managing director of the European operations of State Street Bank and Trust, a leading U.S. securities services bank. He began his management career in the U.S. after graduating from Bucknell University in 1979, working for IBM for eight years in a variety of sales and marketing management positions in New Jersey and New England. Miller also speaks German, having lived, studied, and worked in Germany.
He serves as an advisor to several corporate CEOs and senior executives on questions pertaining to ethics, values, integrating faith and work, and becoming a faith-friendly company. He is a frequent speaker at gatherings of business leaders, industry associations, academic conferences, and large church programs. His views are often cited in the media, including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, Dallas Morning News, Fortune Magazine, Forbes, NPR, ABC, NBC, and CNN.
He finds inspiration in the lives and writings of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Martin Luther King, Jr., and John Stott. His wife, Karen, is a former lawyer and law school professor. He enjoys being with his nieces, playing tennis, bridge, and tandem cycling. He is active in the National Multiple Sclerosis Society.
Related Trinity Forum Readings
“Why Work?” by Dorothy Sayers, featuring an original introduction by David W. Miller
Selected Publications and Scholarly Work
• God at Work: The History and Promise of the Faith at Work Movement (2006)
Editor-in-Chief at Christianity Today; former president of the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention and provost and dean of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary
Russell Moore is editor-in-chief at Christianity Today. The Wall Street Journal has called Moore “vigorous, cheerful, and fiercely articulate.” In 2017, he was named to Politico Magazine’s list of top 50 influence-makers in Washington, D.C., and he has been profiled by such publications as The Washington Post and The New Yorker.
Moore was the president of the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention from 2013 to 2021. Prior to that role, Moore served as provost and dean of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky, where he also taught theology and ethics.
Moore is the author of several books, including The Courage to Stand: Facing Your Fear Without Losing Your Soul, Onward: Engaging the Culture without Losing the Gospel and The Storm-Tossed Family: How the Cross Reshapes the Home. His most recent book is Losing Our Religion: An Altar Call for Evangelical America. A native Mississippian, he and his wife Maria are the parents of five sons.
Author, contributing editor at Comment, and former Professor of English, Christianity & Culture at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary
Karen Swallow Prior has served as research professor of English and Christianity and Culture at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary. She writes frequently on literature, culture, ethics, and ideas, and her most recent book is The Evangelical Imagination: How Stories, Images, and Metaphors Created a Culture in Crisis. Her writing has appeared at Christianity Today, The Atlantic, The Washington Post, First Things, Vox, Think Christian, The Gospel Coalition, Books and Culture, among others. She is also the author of Booked: Literature in the Soul of Me, Fierce Convictions: The Extraordinary Life of Hannah More—Poet, Reformer, Abolitionist and On Reading Well: Finding the Good Life through Great Literature.
Dr. Prior gives frequent lectures and talks on her work. Among the places she has spoken are Wheaton College, University of Minnesota, Indiana Wesleyan University, Northwestern University, Grace College, Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, The Gospel Coalition Conference, Redeemer University College, Toronto Baptist Seminary, United Theological Seminary, Festival of Faith and Writing, Baptist General Convention of Oklahoma’s Women’s Conference, Roanoke Regional Writers Conference, The Row House Forum, Q Boston, the Glen Workshop, and the Humane Society of the United States.
She completed her Ph.D. at the State University of New York at Buffalo and her undergraduate studies at Daemen College in Amherst, New York. Her academic focus is British literature, with a specialty in the 18th century, a period she loves for its emphasis on philosophy, ethics, aesthetics, and community, as well as its efforts at correcting the universal human impulse to gravitate toward extremes. Her scholarly work has appeared in 1650-1850: Ideas, Aesthetics, and Inquiries in the Early Modern Era, The Shandean, The Scriblerian, and various literary encyclopedias.
Prior is a contributing editor for Comment, a founding member of The Pelican Project, a Senior Fellow at the International Alliance for Christian Education, a Senior Fellow at the L. Russ Bush Center for Faith and Culture, and she is a former member of the Faith Advisory Council of the Humane Society of the United States. She and her husband live on a 100-year-old homestead in central Virginia with dogs, chickens, and lots of books.
Speaker’s Bureau
May 21st, 2021 | “Reading Jane Austen: A Novel Approach to Virtue” an Online Conversation with Karen Swallow Prior
April 27th, 2020 | “On Reading in Quarantine” an Online Conversation with Karen Swallow Prior
September 25th, 2018 | “On Reading Well: Finding the Good Life Through Great Books” an Evening Conversation in Nashville, TN with Karen Swallow Prior
Related Trinity Forum Readings
“A Christmas Carol” by Charles Dickens, featuring an original introduction by Karen Swallow Prior
“Pride and Prejudice” by Jane Austen, featuring an original introduction by Karen Swallow Prior
Publications and Scholarly Work
• The Evangelical Imagination: How Stories, Images, and Metaphors Created a Culture in Crisis (2023)
• Tess of the d’Urbervilles: A Guide to Reading & Reflecting (2022)
• On Reading Well: Finding the Good Life through Great Books (2018)
• Fierce Convictions: The Extraordinary Life of Hannah More: Poet, Reformer, Abolitionist (2014)
• Booked: Literature in the Soul of Me (2012)
Former Professor of English, Academic Dean, and Director of the Center for Christian Studies at Gordon College
Dan Russ has served as professor of English at Gordon College in Wenham, Massachusetts, where he also served as academic dean and the director of the Center for Christian Studies. From 2002 to 2003, he was the executive director of Christians in the Visual Arts at Gordon College, where the CIVA office is housed.
Dr. Russ was project director for the curriculum Children of Prometheus: Technology and the Good Life, wrote forewords for Trinity Forum Readings, served as a resource scholar for other Trinity Forum curriculum projects, and was the editor of the online journal, Provocations.
He was the headmaster of Trinity Christian Academy, a K–12 College Preparatory School in Dallas, Texas, from 1994–2002. He is also a fellow of the Dallas Institute of Humanities and Culture, where he served as the managing director and faculty member for five years. There, he founded Studies in Leadership, a program that affords business, professional, and civic leaders the opportunity to re-vision their leadership in light of the wisdom of the classics. Russ has contributed to a number of books on classics, biblical studies, and cultural leadership, including The Terrain of Comedy, The Epic Cosmos, Classic Texts and the Nature of Authority, Invitation to the Classics, and an essay, on the Book of Job to The Tragic Abyss. His book, Flesh-and-Blood Jesus: Learning to Be Fully Human from the Son of Man, originally published in 2008, was published in a second expanded edition in 2013 by Cascade Books.
He holds a B.A. in English from the University of Evansville, an M.A. in biblical studies from Dallas Theological Seminary, an M.A. in English from the University of Dallas, and a Ph.D. in literature and psychology from the University of Dallas. He and his wife Kathy have four grown children and live in Danvers, Massachusetts.
Related Trinity Forum Readings
“The Lost Tools of Learning” by Dorothy Sayers, featuring an original introduction by Daniel Russ
“The Machine Stops” by E. M. Forester, featuring an original introduction by Daniel Russ
Selected Publications and Scholarly Work
• Flesh-and-Blood Jesus: Learning to Be Fully Human from the Son of Man (2008)
Professor of Philosophy and Gary and Henrietta Byker Chair in Applied Reformed Theology and Worldview at Calvin College
James K. A. Smith is a 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.
The author of many influential books, Dr. Smith also regularly writes for magazines and newspapers such as The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Slate, First Things, Christianity Today, Books & Culture, and The Hedgehog Review. He served as editor-in-chief of Image Journal.
He and his wife, Deanna, are elementary school sweethearts with four adult children and (so far) three children-in-law. Natives of Stratford, Ontario, they lived in Philadelphia and Los Angeles before settling in the Heritage Hill neighborhood of Grand Rapids. They are committed urban dwellers who enjoy gardening, travel, wine with friends, and curling up on the couch with their maltipoo, Kirby.
Speaker’s Bureau
September 11th, 2020 | “Habits, Home and the Human Heart” an Online Conversation with James K. A. Smith
October 7th, 2019 | “On the Road with Saint Augustine” an Evening Conversation in Washington, DC with James K. A. Smith and Elizabeth Bruenig
June 18th, 2018 | “Moving Beyond Conflict: Science and Faith in Harmony” an Evening Conversation in Washington, DC with James K. A. Smith and Francis Collins
December 4th, 2017 | “Reforming Public Theology” an Evening Conversation in Washington, DC with James K. A. Smith and Michael Wear
June 13th, 2017 | “When Adolescence Has Become a Destination” an Evening Conversation in Washington, DC with James K. A. Smith and Ben Sasse
Related Trinity Forum Readings
“Confessions” by Augustine, featuring an original introduction by James K. A. Smith
Selected Publications and Scholarly Work
• How to Inhabit Time (2022)
• On the Road with Saint Augustine: A Real World Spirituality for Restless Hearts (2019)
• All Things Hold Together in Christ (2018)
• Awaiting the King: Reforming Public Theology (2017)
• Evolution and the Fall (2017)
• You Are What You Love: The Spiritual Power of Habit (2016)
• How (Not) to Be Secular: Reading Charles Taylor (2014)
• Who’s Afraid of Relativism?: Community, Contingency, and Creaturehood (2014)
• Discipleship in the Present Tense: Reflections on Faith and Culture (2013)
• Imagining the Kingdom: How Worship Works (2013)
• After Modernity?: Secularity, Globalization, and the Re-enchantment of the World (2012)
• The Fall of Interpretation, 2nd Edition: Philosophical Foundations for a Creational Hermeneutic (2012)
• Teaching and Christian Practices: Reshaping Faith and Learning (2011)
• Letters to a Young Calvinist: An Invitation to the Reformed Tradition (2010)
• Science and the Spirit: A Pentecostal Engagement with the Sciences (2010)
• Desiring the Kingdom: Worship, Worldview, and Cultural Formation (2009)
• The Devil Reads Derrida: And Other Essays on the University, the Church, Politics, and the Arts (2009)
• Hermeneutics at the Crossroads (2006)
• Who’s Afraid of Postmodernism?: Taking Derrida, Lyotard, and Foucault to Church (2006)
• Jacques Derrida: Live Theory (2005)
• Introducing Radical Orthodoxy: Mapping a Post-secular Theology (2004)
• 101 Key Terms in Philosophy and Their Importance for Theology (2004)
• Speech and Theology: Language and the Logic of Incarnation (2002)
Writer and Editor-in-Chief of Comment Magazine
Anne Snyder is a writer and convener committed to exploring questions of class and culture, moral beauty, and a beatitudinal faith.
Snyder is the editor-in-chief of Comment Magazine and the author of The Fabric of Character: A Wise Giver’s Guide to Renewing our Social and Moral Landscape.
Prior to leading Comment, she directed The Philanthropy Roundtable’s Character Initiative, a program that seeks to help American foundations and business leaders strengthen “the middle ring” of morally formative institutions. She is also a fellow at the Center for Opportunity Urbanism, a Houston-based think tank that explores how cities can drive opportunity for the bulk of their citizens.
From 2014 to 2017, Snyder worked for Laity Lodge and the H.E. Butt Family Foundation in Texas, and before that she worked at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, World Affairs, and The New York Times. She holds a degree in journalism (M.A.) from Georgetown University and a B.A. in philosophy and international relations from Wheaton College. She serves as a trustee for Alliance University (previously Nyack College), and she is an advisor to Sea Dog Theater. She has published widely, including The Atlantic, The Washington Post, City Journal and elsewhere.
Speaker’s Bureau
October 20, 2020 | “Christianity & the Case for Democracy” an Online Conversation with Luke Bretherton, Deondra Rose, and Anne Snyder
March 27, 2020 | “The Long Loneliness” an Online Conversation with Anne Snyder
February 19, 2019 | “Alienated America: Why Some Places Thrive While Others Collapse” an Evening Conversation in Washington, DC with Anne Snyder and Tim Carney
Related Trinity Forum Readings
“The Long Loneliness” by Dorothy Day, featuring an original introduction by David and Anne Snyder Brooks
Selected Publications and Scholarly Work
Psychiatrist, author, and founder of Being Known
Curt Thompson is a psychiatrist, author, and speaker who specializes in connecting our intrinsic desire to be known with our need to tell truer stories about ourselves—showing us how to form deep relationships, discover meaning, and live integrated, creative lives.
Dr. Thompson is board certified by the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology. He graduated from Wright State University School of Medicine and completed his psychiatric residency at Temple University Hospital. His books, The Deepest Place, The Soul of Desire, Anatomy of the Soul, and The Soul of Shame, speak to the innermost desires of our hearts and souls, bringing together a dialect of interpersonal neurobiology and a Christian anthropology to uncover the key to living life fully: being known. To do that, we need genuine relationships, which can only be found when we tell the whole truth about who we are to ourselves and others.
Speaker’s Bureau
June 24th, 2022 | “Neurobiology and the Soul” an Online Conversation with Curt Thompson and Jeffrey Dudiak
November 13th, 2020 | “Hope and Healing in Hard Times” an Online Conversation with Curt Thompson
April 10th, 2020 | “Redeeming Shame: Believing a Truer Story” an Online Conversation with Curt Thompson
October 15th, 2015 | “The Soul of Shame” an Evening Conversation in Washington, DC with Curt Thompson
Selected Publications and Scholarly Work
• The Deepest Place: Suffering and the Formation of Hope (2023)
• The Soul of Desire (2021)
• The Soul of Shame (2018)
• Anatomy of the Soul (2016)
Anglican priest, campus minister, and columnist for Christianity Today
Tish Harrison Warren is a priest in the Anglican Church in North America. She is the author of Liturgy of the Ordinary: Sacred Practices in Everyday Life, Prayer in the Night: For Those Who Work, or Watch, or Weep, and Advent: The Season of Hope.
Warren wrote a weekly newsletter for The New York Times. Currently, she is a columnist for Christianity Today. Her articles and essays have appeared in Religion News Service, Christianity Today, Comment Magazine, The Point Magazine, The New York Times, and elsewhere.
For over a decade, Warren has worked in ministry settings as a campus minister with InterVarsity Graduate and Faculty Ministries, as an associate rector, and with addicts and those in poverty through various churches and nonprofit organizations. Now, she serves as the writer-in-residence at Resurrection South Austin. She is a founding member of The Pelican Project. She lives with her husband and three children in the Austin, Texas area.
Speaker’s Bureau
May 22nd, 2020 | “Liturgy of the Ordinary in the Extraordinary” an Online Conversation with Tish Harrison Warren
Related Trinity Forum Readings
“Pilgrim at Tinker Creek” by Annie Dillard, featuring an original introduction by Tish Harrison Warren
Selected Publications and Scholarly Work
• Prayer in the Night: For Those Who Work, or Watch, or Weep (2021)
• Liturgy of the Ordinary: Sacred Practices in Everyday Life (2018)
Founder, president, and CEO of the Center for Christianity and Public Life
Michael Wear is the founder, president, and CEO of the Center for Christianity and Public Life, a nonpartisan, nonprofit institution that contends for the credibility of Christian resources in public life, for the public good. For well over a decade, he has served as a trusted resource and advisor for a range of civic and religious leaders on matters of faith and public life, including as a White House and presidential campaign staffer.
His most recent book is The Spirit of Our Politics: Spiritual Formation and the Renovation of Public Life. Previously, Wear directed faith outreach for President Obama’s 2012 re-election campaign, and he served as the Deputy Director of the White House Office for Faith-Based Initiatives during President Obama’s first term. He is the author of Reclaiming Hope: Lessons Learned in the Obama White House About the Future of Faith in America. His writing has appeared in The Atlantic, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Catapult magazine, Christianity Today, and other publications.
Wear and his wife co-host a podcast called Wear We Are. He serves on the national board of Bethany Christian Services, and he holds an honorary position at the University of Birmingham’s Cadbury Center for the Public Understanding of Religion. He lives in Maryland.
Speaker’s Bureau
June 12th, 2020 “Christian Pluralism: Living Faithfully in a World of Difference” an Online Conversation with Michael Wear, John Inazu, and Trillia Newbell
February 24th, 2020 | “Christianity, Pluralism, and Public Life” an Evening Conversation in Washington, DC with Michael Wear, Amy Black, Claude Alexander, and Peg Chemberlin
May 15th, 2018 | “Civility and Courage Amidst Difference and Division” an Evening Conversation in Atlanta, GA with Michael Wear and Lecrae
April 24th, 2018 | “Civility in the Public Square: Cultivating Community Amidst Deep Divisions” an Evening Conversation in Indianapolis, IN with Michael Wear and Allison Melangton
December 4th, 2017 | “Reforming Public Theology” an Evening Conversation in Washington, DC with Michael Wear
Selected Publications and Scholarly Work
• The Spirit of Our Politics: Spiritual Formation and the Renovation of Public Life (2024)
• Compassion (&) Conviction: The AND Campaign’s Guide to Faithful Civic Engagement (2021)
• Reclaiming Hope: Lessons Learned in the Obama White House About the Future of Faith in America (2017)
Senior Fellow in Residence at the Trinity Forum; opinion writer for The New York Times and contributing editor at The Atlantic
Peter Wehner, an American essayist who serves as a Senior Fellow in Residence at the Trinity Forum, is a contributing Opinion writer for The New York Times and a contributing writer for The Atlantic, two of the most prestigious media journals in the world. He writes on politics and political ideas, on faith and culture, on foreign policy, sports and friendships.
Mr. Wehner served in three presidential administrations, including as deputy director of presidential speechwriting for President George W. Bush. Later, he served as the director of the Office of Strategic Initiatives.
Mr. Wehner, a graduate of the University of Washington, is editor or author of six books, including The Death of Politics: How to Heal Our Frayed Republic After Trump, which The New York Times called “a model of conscientious political engagements.” Married and the father of three, he lives in McLean, Virginia.
American historian and New York Times bestselling author
Ronald C. White, Jr. is the author of American Ulysses: A Life of Ulysses S. Grant and A. Lincoln: A Biography, named a bestseller at The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Los Angeles Times. The book was honored as a best book of 2009 by The Washington Post, Christian Science Monitor, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, History Book Club, and Barnes & Noble. His Lincoln biography won the coveted Christopher Award in 2009 which salutes books “that affirm the highest values of the human spirit.”
Dr. White is also the author of Lincoln’s Greatest Speech: The Second Inaugural, honored as a Notable Book of 2002 by The New York Times and as a bestseller by The Washington Post and San Francisco Chronicle, and he is author of The Eloquent President: A Portrait of Lincoln Through His Words, named a bestseller by The Los Angeles Times and a selection of the History Book Club and the Book-of-the-Month Club. In 2022, the Civil War Round Table of New York awarded White’s book Lincoln in Private the Benjamin Barondess Award.
He has lectured at the White House and been interviewed on the PBS News Hour. White is a graduate of UCLA and Princeton Theological Seminary, with a Ph.D. in religion and history from Princeton University. He has studied at Lincoln Theological College in England. He has been honored with a Doctor of Humane Letters from Whitworth University. He has taught at UCLA, Princeton Theological Seminary, Whitworth University, Colorado College, Rider University, and San Francisco Theological Seminary. He is a Fellow at the Huntington Library and a Visiting Professor of History at UCLA
He has spoken on Lincoln in England, France, Germany, Italy, Mexico, and New Zealand. He lives with his wife, Cynthia, in La Cañada, California.
Speaker’s Bureau
May 7th, 2021 | “Lincoln in Private: Leadership Behind Closed Doors” an Online Conversation with Ron White
May 8th, 2020 | “Leadership in Tumultuous Times” an Online Conversation with Ron White
October 4th, 2016 | “The Story of Ulysses S. Grant” an Evening Conversation in Washington, DC with Ron White
April 2nd, 2013 | “Lincoln’s Sermon on the Mount: The Second Inaugural Address” an Evening Conversation in Nashville, TN with Ron White
Related Trinity Forum Readings
“Abraham Lincoln: The Spiritual Growth of a Public Man” by Elton Trueblood, featuring an original introduction by Ron White
Publications and Scholarly Work
• Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain (2021)
• Lincoln in Private: What His Most Personal Reflections Tell Us About Our Greatest President (2021)
• American Ulysses: A Life of Ulysses S. Grant (2017)
• A. Lincoln: A Biography (2010)
• Lincoln’s Greatest Speech: The Second Inaugural (2006)
• The Eloquent President: A Portrait of Lincoln Through His Own Words (2006)
Recent Articles
• Why Ulysses S. Grant’s Reputation Improves As Other Presidents Lose Stature (2019)
Visiting Scholar of Liberal Arts at Pepperdine University
Jessica Hooten Wilson is the inaugural Visiting Scholar of Liberal Arts at Pepperdine University. Formerly, she was the Louise Cowan Scholar in Residence at the University of Dallas. She is the author of several books, most recently Reading for the Love of God: How to Read as a Spiritual Practice. Her first book Giving the Devil his Due: Flannery O’Connor and The Brothers Karamazov received a 2018 Christianity Today book of the year in arts and culture award. In 2019 she received the Hiett Prize for Humanities from the Dallas Institute of Humanities and Culture. She is co-editor of Learning the Good Life: From the Great Hearts and Minds that Came Before and the volume Solzhenitsyn and American Culture: The Russian Soul in the West, a collection of essays on the legacy of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. Other awards include a Fulbright Fellowship to Prague, an NEH to study Dante in Florence, a Biola University sabbatical fellowship funded by the John Templeton Foundation, and the 2017 Emerging Public Intellectual Award.
Founder and Chairman of Monon Capital
Doug Wilson is the founder and chairman of Monon Capital. The firm engages with partners around ideas and opportunities for innovation and entrepreneurship through venture investments, a thought and conversations studio, a venture lab, and a charitable fund. Prior to founding the firm, he was the senior vice president and chief administrative officer of Hillenbrand, Inc. He previously held senior executive positions at Boston Scientific Corporation, Guidant Corporation, Ronald Blue & Co., and Eli Lilly & Company.
Wilson serves as a trustee of the Sagamore Institute. He is a member of the Advisory Board of Tuskegee University, a director of the International Arts Movement, EDGE Mentoring, and Telemachus. He is also serves on the board of several for-profit businesses, among which are Valve + Meter, Lost Valley Ranch and Sun Chef Global.
Related Trinity Forum Readings
“The Oracle of the Dog” by G. K. Chesterton, featuring an original introduction by Douglas Wilson
Fellow of Green College, Oxford; Holmes Professor of Faith and Learning at Wheaton College; Distinguished Visiting Professor of Christian Ethics at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary
E. David Cook is a Fellow of Green College, Oxford, and he is the first Holmes Professor of Faith and Learning at Wheaton College. He is also a distinguished visiting professor of Christian ethics at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky.
Dr. Cook holds a B.A. from Arizona State University, a M.A. from Edinburgh University, a Ph.D. from New College, Edinburgh, a M.A. from Oxford University, and a DLitt from Gordon College, Massachusetts. He taught for six years at St. John’s College and the University of Nottingham. He has taught medical ethics, philosophy, theology, and Christian ethics at Oxford since 1979.
He serves as the founding director of the Whitefield Institute, Oxford, which funds and supports research in theology, ethics, and education. Cook is also a Fellow at the Center for Bioethics and Human Dignity. He is a member of the U.K. Xenotransplantation Authority, the Council of Europe Xenotransplantation Advisory Group, the Archbishops’ Medical Ethics Committee, The Central Oxford Research Ethics Committee, and The John Radcliffe Hospital Ethics Committee. He is a regular broadcaster on national radio and television on medical and moral issues and has written extensively in the area.
He is married, has two grown children, and one grandson. He and his wife are members of Abingdon Baptist Church in Oxford.
Selected Publications and Scholarly Work
• Blind Alley Beliefs (1996)
• Patients’ Choice (1993)
• Dilemmas of Life: Deciding What’s Right and What’s Wrong (1990)
• The Moral Maze: A Way of Exploring Christian Ethics (1983)
Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Virginia; former Senior Fellow at the Russell Kirk Center for Cultural Renewal and the Center on Law and Religion at Emory University
Vigen Guroian has been a professor of religious studies (Eastern Christianity) at the University of Virginia. He also held a position as a senior fellow of both the Russell Kirk Center for Cultural Renewal in Mecosta, Michigan and the Center on Law and Religion at Emory University.
He has been an academic consultant for several of the Trinity Forum seminar curricula.
Before joining the faculty at Virginia, he was a professor of theology and ethics at Loyola College in Baltimore, Maryland. Since 1986, Dr. Guroian has been a member of the faculty of the Ecumenical Institute of Theology at St. Mary’s Seminary and University. For the academic year 1995-96 he was named the Distinguished Lecturer in Moral and Religious Education at the Institute.
Guroian is the author of several books, as well as editor of an edition of Russell Kirk’s ghost stories, Ancestral Shadows: An Anthology of Ghostly Tales. He has also published nearly two hundred articles in books and journals on a range of subjects including marriage and family, children’s literature, ecology, liturgy and ethics, genocide, and medical ethics.
For more than a dozen years, he has taught courses and workshops on religion and morality in children’s literature at the Ecumenical Institute of Theology, at Loyola College, and at the University of Virginia. Guroian’s book, Tending the Heart of Virtue: How Classic Stories Awaken a Child’s Moral Imagination, has been the subject of numerous radio and newspaper interviews including NPR’s Talk of the Nation.
Among his books are two volumes of Christian meditations on gardening: Inheriting Paradise and The Fragrance of God. They have earned him invitations to speak and give readings from gardening groups and churches in America and Great Britain. Mars Hill Audio offers a complete recording of Inheriting Paradise read by the author. The Fragrance of God has been the subject of an interview with the author on the syndicated National Public Radio program, Speaking of Faith.
Guroian attended the University of Virginia and received his Ph.D. in theology from Drew University in 1978. He was an assistant professor of religious studies at the University of Virginia from 1978 to 1981, and he held a post there as well in the Center for Russian and East European Studies. He has also been a visiting lecturer at St. Nersess Armenian Seminary in New Rochelle, New York, where he was the Seminary’s Director of Academic Affairs from 1990 to 1992.
Guroian is a Senior Fellow of the Russell Kirk Center for Cultural Renewal, a Senior Fellow of the Center on Law and Religion at Emory University, a Richard M. Weaver Fellow, and a Salvatori Fellow of the Heritage Foundation. He is currently on the Board of Governors of the Washington Latin School in Alexandria, Virginia, on the advisory board and accreditation committee of the Orthodox Schools Association, and a permanent consultant to the Armenian Religious Education Council of the Prelacy of the Armenian Apostolic Church of America.
He has served on numerous editorial boards, including The Journal of Religious Ethics, Pro Ecclesia: A Journal of Catholic and Evangelical Theology, and Christian Bio-Ethics. He has served on the Board of Directors of the Society of Christian Ethics and on the Executive Committee of Christians Associated for Relations with Eastern Europe and has been active in both the National Council of Churches and in the World Council of Churches. Recently, he has served on several interdisciplinary consultations on subjects including law, ecumenical relations, human nature, and children, including the Project on Christian Jurisprudence: Catholic, Protestant, and Orthodox Teachings on Law, Politics, and Society at the Center for the Study of Law and Religion of Emory University.
He and his wife June live in central Virginia. They have two adult children: a son, Rafi, and a daughter, Victoria.
Related Trinity Forum Readings
“Ex Tenebris” by Russell Kirk, featuring an original introduction from Vigen Guroian
Selected Publications and Scholarly Work
• The Fragrance of God (2006)
• Rallying the Really Human Things: Moral Imagination In Politics, Literature, and Everyday Life (2005)
• Ethics After Christendom: Toward an Ecclesial Christian Ethic (2004)
• Tending the Heart of Virtue: How Classic Stories Awaken a Child’s Moral Imagination (2002)
• Incarnate Love: Essays in Orthodox Ethics (2002)
• Inheriting Paradise: Meditations on Gardening (2001)
• Life’s Living Toward Dying: A Theological and Medical-Ethical Study (1996)
Managing Partner of Harburg Consulting LLC
Fred Harburg is the managing partner of Harburg Consulting LLC. After more than two decades in the private sector he has served as an organizational architect for Fortune 100 companies including IBM, General Motors, Disney, and AT&T.
Harburg helped to create the Saturn Corporation and led Motorola University as the chief learning officer and president. His work at Motorola was profiled in the November 2002 issue of Chief Learning Officer magazine. In 2003, he became the senior vice president of Leadership and Learning at Fidelity Investments.
He holds an MBA from UCLA and earned a B.S. from the U.S. Air Force Academy. He has served as a member of the advisory board for the Center for Effective Organizations at the Marshall School of Business, University of Southern California; is a member of the editorial advisory board of Chief Learning Officer Magazine for which he writes a bimonthly column on strategy; is a member of the Executive Education Advisory Board for Kellogg Graduate School of Management, Northwestern University; and is on the board of the Institute for Global Leadership at Tufts University.
As a U.S. Air Force officer, pilot, and Air Force Academy graduate, Harburg flew a variety of jet aircraft in both domestic and international missions, some of which were in direct support of the White House.
He, his wife Susie, and their three children have been actively involved in school, church, and civic activities in the numerous communities in which they have been privileged to live, including five years in Spain and Switzerland. They currently live outside Boston, Massachusetts. They are active outdoor enthusiasts and deeply enjoy fine arts and music.
Television journalist and producer of 60 Minutes Sports
Rome Hartman is a television journalist who has spent more than three decades telling stories on network TV. He is currently a producer for the program “60 Minutes Sports,” which airs monthly on Showtime. It is a spinoff of the venerable CBS News Sunday evening magazine program.
From 2011 to 2013, Hartman was an Executive Producer for NBC News. He joined the network to create a new primetime news magazine program, “Rock Center with Brian Williams.” The program, the first network newsmagazine to be launched in decades, debuted in October 2011 and ran for two seasons on NBC. One of its very first broadcasts earned an Emmy award, for Bob Costas’ groundbreaking interview with Jerry Sandusky.
Prior to joining NBC News in the Summer of 2011, Hartman launched and served as Executive Producer of the Emmy, Peabody and duPont Award-winning BBC World News America. In addition to producing that nightly newscast, Hartman advised the BBC on strategy and supervised the U.S. edition of BBC.com/news.
Hartman’s four-year stint at the BBC followed a 24-year career with CBS News, where from November 2005 through March 2007, he was Executive Producer of The CBS Evening News and supervised the launch of The CBS Evening News with Katie Couric.
Prior to that role, Hartman was a prolific producer of more than 100 reports for the flagship CBS magazine program 60 Minutes. Hartman also served as the senior producer responsible for 60 Minutes II from January to early September 2005.
Before his 60 Minutes tenure, Hartman was the senior producer for the CBS Evening News in Washington, D.C. (1989-91) and CBS News’ White House producer (1986-89). He first joined CBS News in 1983 as a field producer in the Atlanta bureau.
In addition to three prestigious Peabodys and a duPont Award for BBC World New America, Hartman has been honored with eight Emmy Awards, an Overseas Press Club Award, a Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award, a Gerald Loeb Award from the UCLA Anderson School of Business, and Duke University’s Futrell Award for outstanding achievement in journalism.
Hartman was born in West Palm Beach, Florida. He graduated from Duke University in 1977 with a degree in political science, and serves on the Board of Visitors at Duke’s Sanford School of Public Policy. He lives in Bethesda, Maryland with his wife Amy.
President of Pointy Shoe Productions, a documentary and long-form production company
Jody Hassett Sanchez is president of Pointy Shoe Productions (PSP), a documentary and long-form production company that explores issues of faith and culture.
She is the producer of SOLD: Fighting the New Global Slave Trade, a documentary filmed in India, Pakistan, and West Africa about people of faith on the front lines of the fight against 21st century slavery—a multi-billion dollar business.
PSP also produced Tongues of Fire, a film about the rapid spread of Pentecostalism around the world as well as a documentary about missionaries from Africa determined to “reconvert” Europe.
Before becoming a filmmaker, Ms. Sanchez spent 17 years in network television, most recently at ABC. She covered religion, culture, and education for ABC’s World News Tonight with Peter Jennings, as well as filing stories for Nightline.
Prior to ABC News, she traveled the globe with CNN for almost 12 years. As the State Department producer covering Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, Sanchez reported from Mongolia one week and a refugee camp in Macedonia the next.
Sanchez was a senior producer of CNN’s series on the legacy of the Cold War and was an arts reporter for CNN International. Her honors include an Edward R. Murrow Award, a National Emmy Award, USC Getty Annenburg Fellowship for Journalism in the Arts, and Journalistes en Europe Fellowship.
A graduate of Smith College and a native Cape Codder, she lives in the Washington, D.C. area with her husband, George Sanchez.
President and founder of the International Center for Religion and Diplomacy; former Executive Vice President of the Center for Strategic and International Studies
Douglas M. Johnston, Ph.D., was president and founder of the International Center for Religion and Diplomacy (ICRD). He has served in various positions as a White House appointee and lectured at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.
He is known for developing a new synergy for peacemaking based on the joint contributions of religion and politics, as articulated in his book, Religion: The Missing Dimension of Statecraft. Dr. Johnston’s hands-on experience in reconciliation and peacemaking reflects his deep interest in religion and conflict resolution stemming from his 20-year involvement with the National Prayer Breakfast and his service on the board of the Washington Theological Consortium.
Johnston is a distinguished graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy, and he holds a degree in public administration and a Ph.D. in political science from Harvard University. He has a broad range of executive experience in government, academia and the military, starting with 10 years in the submarine service, where, at the age of 27, he was the youngest officer in the U.S. Navy to qualify for command of a nuclear submarine.
Most recently, Johnston served as the executive vice president and chief operating officer of the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). Among his other duties, he chaired the CSIS programs on maritime studies and on preventive diplomacy.
Among his assignments in government, Johnston was a planning officer in the President’s Office of Emergency Preparedness, the director of policy planning and management in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, and the deputy assistant secretary of the Navy (Manpower). In academia, he taught international affairs and security at Harvard University. He was the founding director of the Kennedy School’s Executive Program in National and International Security.
Johnston has edited and authored several books, including Foreign Policy into the 21st Century: The U.S. Leadership Challenge and Faith-based Diplomacy: Trumping Realpolitik.
Selected Publications and Scholarly Work
• The Historical Foundations of World Order: The Tower and the Arena (2008)
Jonathan Edwards Professor of American Religious History at Yale University
Harry Stout is the Jonathan Edwards Professor of American Religious History at Yale University, where he has appointments in history, religious studies, and American studies and at the Divinity School. He was also previously co-director of the Center for Religion and American Life at Yale.
Dr. Stout is the author of several books, including: Upon the Altar of the Nation, A Jonathan Edwards Reader, and Dictionary of Christianity in America. He has also co-edited Religion in American Life, a 17-volume study of the impact of religion on American history for adolescent readers and public schools (with Jon Butler). He is the general editor of both The Works of Jonathan Edwards for Yale University Press and the Religion in America series for Oxford University Press. He has written articles for the Journal of Social History, Journal of American Studies, Journal of American History, Theological Education, Computers and the Humanities, and Christian Scholar’s Review. He is a contributor to the Concise Encyclopedia of Preaching, Biographical Dictionary of Christian Missions, and the Reader’s Encyclopedia of the American West. In 2003, Stout was awarded the Robert Cherry Award for Great Teaching.
His courses include reading and research seminars in American religious and cultural History, Jonathan Edwards, and the American Civil War. His graduate courses include seminars on American revivalism and Jonathan Edwards.
Stout earned his B.A. from Calvin College and did graduate work at Princeton Theological Seminary before earning his master’s and doctoral degrees at Kent State University.
Selected Publications
President of Excelsis; former President of Reformed Theological Seminary
Luder G. Whitlock, Jr. served as the executive director of the Trinity Forum from 2003 to early 2008. He currently serves as the president of Excelsis, an Orlando-based nonprofit. Earlier in his career, he was for many years president of Reformed Theological Seminary.
During his earliest years of ministry in Florida and Tennessee pastorates, Dr. Whitlock traveled widely as a speaker and preacher, was engaged in camp and conference leadership, and accepted multiple responsibilities within his denomination.
Whitlock joined the faculty of Reformed Theological Seminary (RTS) in 1975 and, at the age of 37, was appointed president, a position he held for 23 years. At the time of his retirement, he had the longest tenure of any active seminary president in the United States. Under his leadership, RTS grew from a small regional school to one of the most innovative as well as one of the 10 largest seminaries in North America, with multiple campuses in the U.S., as well as gateway extension programs in Asia, South America, and Europe.
For many years, Whitlock served on the executive committee of the Fellowship of Evangelical Seminary Presidents, including eight years as chairman. For eight years, he also served on the executive committee of the Association of Theological Schools (ATS) in the U.S. and Canada, including a two-year term as president. He was one of only five evangelicals to do so in the history of ATS. His service to higher education also took him to the boards of the National Commission on Higher Education, the Graduate Institute of Applied Linguistics, the International Theological Seminary, the International Leadership University, the International Graduate School of Theology, Covenant College, and Westminster Theological Seminary. In addition, Whitlock serves on the advisory boards of organizations such as InTrust and the International Institute for Christian Studies.
His years of ministry have been marked by an effort to bring mutual understanding and cooperation within the worldwide evangelical community, which led him to serve on the boards of the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE), the World Evangelical Fellowship (North America region), Mission America, the Lausanne Committee for World Evangelization, and Greater Europe Mission. He has also participated in several interfaith discussions seeking mutual understanding. He was a leader in establishing the Church Planting Center, which now serves several denominations. He was also co-founder and co-president of the International Reformed Fellowship then later assumed a major role in the establishment of the World Reformed Fellowship, also serving as convener for the initial global gathering. He participated in founding the Foundation for Reformation, now Excelsis. He also helped establish the Greater Orlando Leadership Foundation, a highly successful model for training emerging leaders in a city.
His interest in research about the church and its future led him to become a member of the Barna Institute board and his pro-life commitments resulted in a board term with CareNet, the largest pregnancy resource center in the U.S. He has made his experience and insights available to many similar organizations through participation on advisory boards and assisting informally in other ways.
Whitlock is well known for his role as executive director of The New Geneva Study Bible and a major revision, published as The Spirit of the Reformation Study Bible. He is the author of The Spiritual Quest, and he has contributed to more than 10 other volumes and over 15 different periodicals. He served on the editorial council of Eternity magazine and the advisory board for the English Standard Version of the Bible. He also serves on the editorial advisory board of Leadership.
Whitlock is a graduate of the University of Florida, Westminster Theological Seminary, and Vanderbilt University. He and his wife, Mary Lou, have three grown children and 11 grandchildren.
Selected Publications and Scholarly Work
Author, theologian, and social critic
Os Guinness is an author and social critic. Great-great grandson of Arthur Guinness, the Dublin brewer, he was born in China in World War II, where his parents were medical missionaries. A witness to the climax of the Chinese revolution in 1949, he was expelled with many other foreigners in 1951 and returned to Europe where he was educated in England. He completed his undergraduate degree at the University of London and his DPhil in the social sciences at Oriel College, Oxford.
Guinness has written or edited more than 25 books, including The American Hour, Time for Truth, The Call, Invitation to the Classics, Long Journey Home, Unspeakable, and A Case for Civility, and A Free People’s Suicide. His latest book is The Global Public Square.
Previously, he was a freelance reporter with the BBC. Since coming to the United States in 1984, Guinness has been a guest scholar at the Woodrow Wilson Center for International Studies and a Guest Scholar and Visiting Fellow at the Brookings Institution. From 1986 to 1989, he served as the executive director of the Williamsburg Charter Foundation, a bicentennial celebration of the First Amendment. In this position, he helped to draft the Williamsburg Charter and co-authored the public school curriculum, Living With Our Deepest Differences. He was a a frequent speaker and seminar leader at political and business conferences in both the United States and Europe.
As a European visitor to this country and a great admirer, but detached observer of American culture today, he stands in the long tradition of outside voices who have contributed so much to America’s ongoing discussion about the state of the union. He lives with his wife Jenny in McLean, Virginia.
Speaker’s Bureau
May 15th, 2020 | “Calling & Community in a Post-Pandemic World” an Online Conversation with Os Guinness and Pete Peterson
November 1st, 2018 | “Last Call for Liberty” an Evening Conversation in Washington, DC with Os Guinness
October 30th, 2017 | “Celebrating the 500th Anniversary of the Reformation: The Forgotten Key to American Freedom” an Evening Conversation in Washington, DC with Os Guinness and Joseph Loconte
February 4th, 2014 | “The Global Public Square: Religious Freedom and the Making of a World Safe for Diversity” an Evening Conversation in Washington, DC with Os Guinness
September 5th, 2013 | “Can Freedom Last Forever” an Evening Conversation in Washington, DC with Os Guinness
April 3rd, 2013 | “A Free People’s Suicide: Sustainable Freedom and the American Future” an Evening Conversation in Washington, DC with Os Guinness
Founding Chairman of the Trinity Forum; Chairman and CEO of Avenir Group and President and Vice Chairman of the Bendix Corporation
The Honorable Alonzo L. McDonald enjoyed a distinguished career in business, government, and academia. He was chairman and CEO of Avenir Group, Inc., a private development bank and investor group that he founded in 1983. McDonald was the founding chairman of the Trinity Forum, and he served as a Senior Fellow and trustee emeritus.
McDonald was the president and vice chairman of the Bendix Corporation from 1981 to 1983. Earlier, he spent 17 years with McKinsey and Company, Inc., serving as a partner in London and New York, manager of their offices in Zurich and Paris, and CEO of the firm worldwide. In 1977, he was named Deputy Special Trade Representative and ambassador in charge of the U.S. Delegation to the GATT in Geneva. In 1979, he was named assistant to the President of the United States and White House Staff Director of the Carter Administration.
McDonald joined the faculty of the Harvard Business School in 1981, and from 1983 until 1987, he served as a senior counselor to the Dean, developing and co-moderating their quarterly Senior Executive Seminar for chief executive officers.
He received an A.B. degree from Emory University and a M.B.A. with Distinction from Harvard University. He is survived by his wife Suzanne and their four grown children.
Journalist and author, formerly with Time Magazine
David Aikman, an award-winning print and broadcast journalist and author, is a specialist on Russia, China, East Asia, the Middle East, and religious freedom issues worldwide. During a lengthy career as a foreign correspondent, he reported for Time from five continents and more than 50 countries.
He was a professor of history at Patrick Henry College from 2005 to 2015. In 2018, Aikman was hired as the editor-in-chief of Godspeed Magazine. He is presently writer-in-residence and professor of history at Patrick Henry College. He is the founding chairman and a board member of Gegrapha, a global fellowship of journalists, and was a Senior Fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, D.C. He has written columns for Christianity Today and Provocations, in addition to extensive freelance writing for such publications as The American Spectator and The Weekly Standard. He is a regular commentator and host on the Voice of America and has been a commentator on NBC, ABC, CNN, Fox News, and the BBC.
Dr. Aikman has written and edited numerous books, including Gorbachev: An Intimate Biography, Massacre in Beijing: China’s Struggle for Democracy, When the Almond Tree Blossoms, Hope: The Heart’s Great Quest, and Jesus in Beijing: How Christianity is Transforming China and Changing the Global Balance of Power. His collection of mini-biographies of prominent figures, Great Souls: Six Who Changed the Century has also been released as a documentary by PBS. He has written two novels and interviewed a number of major world figures, including Mother Teresa, Manuel Noriega, Boris Yeltsin, Pham Van Dong, and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn.
Raised and educated in England, he earned his B.A. at Worcester College, Oxford, and his M.A. and Ph.D. at the University of Washington at Seattle. He speaks a number of languages, including Russian, Chinese, French, and German. A naturalized U.S. citizen, David lives in Virginia and has two grown daughters.
Related Trinity Forum Readings
“On Being Human” by Woodrow Wilson, featuring an original introduction by David Aikman
Selected Publications
Chair of the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom
The late Michael Cromartie was nominated by President George W. Bush to the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom in 2004, and served as its chair in 2005 and vice-chair in 2006. He was also a scholar at the Ethics and Public Policy Center (EPPC). He appeared on television and radio programs including NPR’s All Things Considered and the ABC and CNN evening news. He was quoted in The Washington Post, The New York Times, The New Republic, U.S. News & World Report, and others. He published reviews and articles in First Things, Books & Culture, Crisis, The Washington Times, and Christianity Today, among others. He edited 10 books on topics including natural law, religion and politics, and foreign policy. He was also a co-host of a nationally broadcast weekly radio show called “Faith and Freedom.”
Before joining EPPC, he worked as a special assistant to Charles W. Colson at Prison Fellowship Ministries. A graduate of Covenant College, he holds an M.A. in justice from The American University.
He is survived by his wife, Jenny, and their three children.
Selected Publications
Laura Spelman Rockefeller Professor of Social and Political Ethics at the University of Chicago
The late Jean Bethke Elshtain was the Laura Spelman Rockefeller Professor of Social and Political Ethics at the University of Chicago.
Dr. Elshtain was a political philosopher whose task was to show the connections between our political and our ethical convictions. At Chicago, she taught in the Divinity School, as well as the Department of Political Science, and she addressed the Committee on International Relations on topics including just war, human identity, and political ethics.
In 2006, she was appointed by President George W. Bush to the Council of the National Endowment for the Humanities. She also delivered the Gifford Lectures at the University of Edinburgh, joining such previous Gifford Lecturers as William James, Hannah Arendt, Karl Barth, and Reinhold Niebuhr.
She wrote or edited 20 books, including a textbook on just war theory. She also wrote widely for journals of civic opinion, and lectures, both in the United States and abroad, on whether democracy will prove sufficiently robust and resilient to survive. She is the author of more than 500 essays in scholarly and popular journals and is a contributing editor for The New Republic. Of her several hundred guest lectures at universities in the United States and abroad, over three dozen have been endowed lectureships.
She was appointed to her position at the University of Chicago in 1995. Past positions included faculty posts at the University of Massachusetts/Amherst and at Vanderbilt University (where she was the first woman to hold an endowed professorship in the history of that institution). She had also been a visiting professor at Oberlin College, Yale University, and Harvard University. She was the recipient of nine honorary degrees and was elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1996.
Elshtain was a fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, a scholar-in-residence at the Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Conference and Study Center, Como, Italy, and she was a Guggenheim Fellow. She also served on the Board of Trustees at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, and she served on boards of the National Humanities Center, the Kenan Institute for Ethics at Duke, and the National Endowment for Democracy. She received the 2002 Frank J. Goodnow Award, the American Political Science Association’s highest award for distinguished service to the profession. In 2003–2004, she held the Maguire Chair in American History and Ethics at the Library of Congress.
Elshtain also served as co-chair of the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life and chair of the Council on Families in America. She has previously served as chair of the Council on Civil Society and a member of the National Commission for Civic Renewal and the Penn Commission on American Culture and Society.
Elshtain was born and raised in northern Colorado. A graduate of Colorado State University, she went on to earn a master’s degree in history from the University of Colorado as a Woodrow Wilson Fellow before turning to the study of politics. She received her Ph.D. from Brandeis University in Politics in 1973. She was married and a mother to four children: Sheri, Heidi, Jenny, and Eric—and the grandmother of three: JoAnn Paulette Welch and Christopher Matthew Welch, and Robert Paul Bethke.
Selected Publications
Former Lord Chancellor of the United Kingdom and Lord High Commissioner for the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland
The Rt Hon. Lord Mackay of Clashfern KT PC was appointed as Her Majesty’s Lord High Commissioner for the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland. From 1988 to 1997, he was Lord Chancellor of the United Kingdom, the highest office in the judiciary of the U.K. He has also served as Chancellor of Heriot-Watt University.
Lord Mackay was born James Peter Hymers Mackay in Edinburgh on July 2, 1927. He was educated at George Heriott’s School and at Edinburgh University, where he graduated M.A. with honors in mathematics and natural philosophy.
In 1948, he began lecturing in mathematics at the University of St. Andrews. He became a scholar of Trinity College, Cambridge, and took his BA in 1952. In 1955, he was admitted to the Scottish Bar, became a Queen’s Counsel in 1965, and was elected the Dean of the Faculty of Advocates, the head of the Scottish Bar, in 1976.
In 1979, Lord Mackay joined the U.K. Government as Lord Advocate and served in that office until he was appointed a Judge of the Supreme Courts of Scotland in 1984. In 1985, he was appointed a Lord of Appeal in Ordinary, one of the judicial members of the House of Lords.
Lord Mackay is a Queen’s Privy Councillor and is a Knight of the Thistle—the highest civil honor that the Queen is able to bestow in Scotland.
Philosopher, editor, writer and composer; founder of the Conservative Philosophy Group; co-founder of the Town and Country Forum
The late Roger Scruton was a philosopher, editor, writer, and composer, known for his spirited defence of Western culture.
Professor Scruton did undergraduate and doctoral studies at Jesus College, Cambridge and taught philosophy and aesthetics at Christ’s College, Cambridge, Birkbeck College, University of London, and Boston University. He also held visiting posts at the Universities of Princeton, Stanford, Louvain, Guelph (Ontario), Witwatersrand (South Africa), Waterloo (Ontario), Oslo, and Bordeaux. He was also a visiting professor in philosophy at the University of Buckingham and research professor at the Institute for the Psychological Sciences in Arlington, Virginia.
Scruton also founded the Conservative Philosophy Group, which helped to change the climate of opinion in Britain during the 1970s and 1980s. He was also the co-founder of the Town and Country Forum, devoted to encouraging cross-party discussions over the divide between urban and rural people. He was also an active and decorated supporter of democratic and anti-communist movements in Lebanon and Eastern Europe (particularly the Underground University in the Czech Republic and Slovakia).
He published more than 30 books, both fiction and non-fiction. His non-fiction covers topics including philosophy and aesthetics, political and cultural commentary, criticism, and country life. Among them are The Meaning of Conservatism, An Intelligent Person’s Guide to Philosophy, An Intelligent Person’s Guide to Modern Culture, and News from Somewhere.
From 1982–2000, he was editor of the Salisbury Review. He wrote columns for The Times, the Financial Times, and a wine column for the New Statesman. He was founder and director of Claridge Press from 1982–2004, when it became part of the Continuum Publishing Group. He also presented two full television documentaries.
He composed two operas, Violet and The Minister.
Selected Publications
• An Intelligent Person’s Guide to Modern Culture (2000)
• An Intelligent Person’s Guide to Philosophy (1999)
• Beauty (2009)
• Culture Counts: Faith and Feeling in a World Besieged (2007)
• Gentle Regrets: Thoughts from a Life (2005)
• I Drink, Therefore I Am: A Philosopher’s Guide to Wine (2010)
• News from Somewhere: On Settling (2006)
• The Aesthetic Understanding: Essays in the Philosophy of Art and Culture (1983)
• The Meaning of Conservatism (1980)
• The Palgrave Macmillan Dictionary of Political Thought (2007)
• The Roger Scruton Reader (2009)
• The West and the Rest: Globalization and the Terrorist Threat (2002)
Professor of Philosophy at the University of Southern California
The late Dallas Willard was a professor in the School of Philosophy at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles.
He began his career at USC in 1965, where he was the director of the School of Philosophy from 1982 to 1985. He also taught at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he received his Ph.D. in 1964, and held visiting appointments at UCLA and the University of Colorado.
His philosophical publications are mainly in the areas of epistemology, the philosophy of mind and of logic, and on the philosophy of Edmund Husserl, including extensive translations of Husserl’s early writings from German into English. His Logic and the Objectivity of Knowledge, a study of Husserl’s early philosophy and of how knowledge of reality is possible, appeared in 1984.
Willard also lectured and published in religion. The Divine Conspiracy: Rediscovering Our Hidden Life in God—voted Christianity Today’s Book of the Year for 1998—is the second in a three-part series, including Hearing From God: Developing a Conversational Relationship with God and The Spirit of the Discipline. His Knowing Christ Today was released in May 2009, and The Disappearance of Moral Knowledge, his final book, was released in 2018.
In 1956, Willard was ordained a minister in the Southern Baptist Convention.
