Grove City College will premiere the fourth installment of its “The Life of the Mind: Great Lectures from the Grove” series at noon Wednesday, August 3, with Dr. Jeffrey Bilbro, associate professor of English, presenting “Reading the Times."
The course takes its title from Bilbro’s most recent work “Reading the Times: A Literary and Theological Inquiry into the News,” which lays out the case that people are not merely informed but also formed by their news diet and considers how Christians might practice healthy ways of attending to contemporary events.
Bilbro, aims to offer a Christian understanding of what the news is, what its purpose ought to be, and how to wisely attend to the events of our world. He offers a historical, theological, and literary perspective on the subject to help viewers understand better what the news is for and how to read it well.
“As Christians, our citizenship in heaven and God’s call to love our neighbor have far-reaching implications for how we should attend to contemporary affairs,” Bilbro said.
“What do we need to know to love our neighbors well? Or, to frame the question differently, to what do we need to attend to in order to live faithfully in this place and in this time? The course wrestles with these questions with the goal that we might navigate our contemporary media landscape wisely and redemptively,” he said.
The lectures will be released on the College’s YouTube channel at noon each Wednesday for six consecutive weeks, beginning August 3. Subscribe to gcc.edu/youtube to receive an alert when a new lecture is uploaded.
In addition to the 2022 Christianity Today Book Award-winning “Reading the Times,” Bilbro’s books include “Loving God’s Wildness: The Christian Roots of Ecological Ethics in American Literature,” “Wendell Berry and Higher Education: Cultivating Virtues of Place” with Jack Baker, and “Telling the Stories Right: Wendell Berry’s Imagination of Port William,” edited with Baker. He is also an editor at Front Porch Republic and a contributor to The Liberating Arts. For more, visit jeffbilbro.com.
The “Great Lectures from the Grove” series gives viewers an opportunity to learn from the same high-caliber faculty who teach on campus. It is a great way to experience Grove City College’s commitment to academic excellence and learn from some of the leading Christian scholars of the day. The lectures are intended to transfer knowledge, develop wisdom, and encourage students and others to use what they have learned in service to the common good in their lives and careers.
Previous Great Lectures series include:
- “Thinking About Marriage (As a Christian Sociologist).” Dr. David J. Ayers, professor of sociology, explores theories, research, concepts, and data on marriage through a lens of Biblical teaching, history and cultural analyses to provide a unique look at the fate of this indispensable institution.
- “Everyday Economic Errors.” Dr. Caleb S. Fuller ’13, assistant professor of economics, introduces basic economic reasoning by using popular economic errors as a foil and drawing inspiration from Henry Hazlitt’s “Economics in One Lesson” and Frederic Bastiat’s “Economic Sophisms.”
- “Makers of the Modern Revolution.” Dr. Carl Trueman, a noted Christian thought leader and Professor of Biblical & Religious Studies, dives into historical civil movements and popular theorists such as Rousseau, Marx, Wilde, Nietzsche and others who have shaped the way the world today thinks.