Speakers

Featured Speaker

Wendell Berry  is a novelist, essayist, poet, academic and farmer. His often provocative and always thoughtful work has earned him a tremendous following, as well as a prestigious Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship. He has a bachelors and masters degree from the University of Kentucky and has held teaching positions at New York University’s University College and at his alma mater. Berry has written some 30 books of poetry, 31 non-fiction volumes, and 16 novels and short story collections. His latest works include Andy Catlett: Early Travels, Blessed Are the Peacemakers: Christ's Teachings of Love, Compassion, and Forgiveness, and Given.

Franklin S. Hickman Lecturer

Wes Jackson is the founder and president of The Land Institute, a Kansas-based non-profit research and educational organization. Under his leadership, the Institute has gained national and international recognition for its work in developing a particular kind of sustainable farming known as natural systems agriculture. Before his work at the Institute, Jackson was a professor of biology at Kansas Wesleyan University and later established the environmental studies program at California State University in Sacramento. He is the author of Rooted in the Land: Essays on Community and Place (co-edited with William Vitek), Becoming Native to This Place, Altars of Unhewn Stone, Meeting the Expectations of the Land (edited with Wendell Berry and Bruce Colman), and New Roots for Agriculture.

James A. Gray Lecturer

Norman Wirzba is professor and chair of the philosophy department at Georgetown College in Georgetown, Ky., and an adjunct professor of Christianity and culture at the Baptist Seminary of Kentucky. As a professor, his research interests range from 19^th- and 20^th- century continental philosophy to agrarian studies to environmental ethics. As one of the best known “ecological theologians,” he has written extensively about his understanding of the implications of the biblical narrative for contemporary American life. He is the author of The Paradise of God: Renewing Religion in an Ecological Age, Living the Sabbath: Discovering the Rhythms of Rest and Delight, and he has served as the editor of both The Essential Agrarian Reader and The Art of the Commonplace: Wendell Berry’s Agrarian Essays.

Preachers

Carol Bechtel is professor of Old Testament at Western Theological Seminary in Holland, Mich. Prior to coming to Western Seminary, she taught at the Presbyterian School of Christian Education in Richmond, Va., served as a teaching fellow at Yale Divinity School and as the interim pastor of Turn of River Presbyterian Church in Stamford, Conn. She preaches and teaches widely and is a General Synod professor of theology in the Reformed Church in America. She has written several books, including Esther: A Commentary for Teaching and Preaching in the Interpretation series, and two devotional collections, Glimpses of Glory and Life After Grace. Her most recent publication is a curriculum entitled Job and the Life of Faith: Wisdom for Today's World.

Ellen Davis, professor of Bible and practical theology at Duke Divinity School, is interested in the theological interpretation of the Old Testament, with a particular concern for Christian preaching. Her current work also focuses on developing an exegetically based response to the ecological crisis. A lay Episcopalian, she is well-known for her writings, including Wondrous Depth: Old Testament Preaching, Getting Involved with God: Rediscovering the Old Testament and Imagination Shaped: Old Testament Preaching in the Anglican Tradition. Her previous teaching appointments were at Union Theological Seminary (New York City), Yale Divinity School, and the Virginia Theological Seminary.