Grove City College’s Lux Mea student honorary is bringing top students from highly regarded Christian liberal arts schools together to focus on distraction at the 10th Annual Intercollegiate Colloquium on the Liberal Arts.
Over three days – Oct. 11 to 13 – more than 50 honors students and professors will visit campus and take up the theme “the pursuit of love in age of distraction” through a series of discussions informed by a reading list that includes the Bible, Dante, T.S. Elliot, C.S. Lewis, Kierkegaard and Augustine of Hippo.
They will explore how Christians are to “live as pilgrims amidst a world full of temptations that may distract us from our true end,” Dr. Andrew Mitchell, professor of history and Lux Mea advisor, said. “The colloquium is designed to bring together like-minded students and faculty from Christian liberal arts colleges, to read, ponder and discuss questions that our modern world ignores or dismisses – questions of first importance in knowing and living out a humane existence,” he said.
Jason Wallace, the Stockham Chair of Western Intellectual History at Samford University in Birmingham, Ala. and the director of its freshmen Core Texts Program, will deliver the keynote address: "Utopia or Dystopia? The Restless Heart in the 21st Century” at 1 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 12 in Sticht Lecture Hall in the Hall of Arts and Letters on campus. It is free and open to the public. The keynote and a faculty roundtable at 4 p.m. Saturday will be livestreamed at www.gcc.edu/livestream.
Eight schools from three states are participating in this year’s Colloquium: Grove City College, Geneva College, Messiah College, Eastern University, Waynesburg University, Regent University, St. Vincent College and Samford University.
Past colloquiums have considered the virtues of temperance and fortitude and the beauty of friendship. The annual event reminds Christian scholars that they aren’t alone, Mitchell said.
“It is my hope that by focusing on fundamental issues of our common humanity and by learning, laughing and being together, we might strengthen one another ‘as iron sharpens iron,’ enabling students and faculty from every school to live more richly and joyfully as Christians in the 21st century,” he said. “The colloquium demonstrates to students the real purpose of a liberal arts education. It’s not about your grade-point average, and it’s not about getting a well-paying job. Rather, it’s about attaining an understanding about who we are as humans, learning how to act wisely and preparing us to live virtuous lives that glorify God and bless our neighbors.”
Grove City College is recognized as one of America’s top liberal arts colleges by U.S. News and World Report, The Princeton Review, Forbes and other leading higher education evaluators. The College provides a Christ-centered learning and living experience, values academic excellence and pioneered a Humanities Core that ensures all students have a fundamental understanding of the great ideas and events that shape civilization.