The Great Lives Collection

This Trinity Forum Reading Collection includes:

Painting as a Pastime | In the face of political and professional disappointment, Winston Churchill found mental refreshment in painting. His reflections on the subject have inspired leaders over the decades..

Abraham Lincoln: The Spiritual Growth of a Public Man | This Trinity Forum Reading examines Lincoln's spiritual journey in the midst of extraordinary hardship, opposition, and loss.

Jesus, a Layman's Primer | Trinity Forum Co-Founder Al McDonald gives a layman’s perspective on the life of Jesus based on his own serious investigations, answering questions posed to him by friends and associates over the years regarding his faith.

Shantung Compound | This excerpt from Langdon Gilkey's memoir illustrates how his experiences in a Japanese internment camp during World War II taught him the intractability of human nature, the fragility of civilization, the importance of leadership, and the necessity of faith.

The Oak and the Calf | Excerpts from the great Russian thinker Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's autobiography provide lessons not only on the tragedy of oppression but also on the human spirit and matters of the soul. 

Who Stands Fast? | Bonhoeffer's internal struggle to discern the right action in Nazi-controlled Germany, prompts us to consider such themes as wisdom and folly, success and failure, trust and hope, the deceptive allure of power, and the relationship between the sovereignty of God and our responsibility to act.

Augustine's Confession | Selections from Augustine’s Confession with an insightful foreword by James K.A. Smith, author of On the Road with St. Augustine.

Wrestling with God | Two letters and a short allegorical tale by Weil, chronicling her unlikely path to belief, her compassion for the world's afflicted, and the joy she finds in God's incredible and indiscriminate love.