Grove City welcomes Christian thought leader Os Guinness

Grove City College welcomes noted author and social critic Os Guinness to deliver the College’s annual MacKenzie Lecture at 7 p.m. Friday, Sept. 9 in Ketler Auditorium of the Pew Fine Arts Center on campus.

The event is free and open to the public.

Guinness is the great-great-great grandson of Arthur Guinness, the famed Dublin brewer. He has made his mark on the world as a writer, moving from the world of journalism to Christian thought leadership. He has had a lifelong passion to make sense of our extraordinary modern world and to stand between the worlds of scholarship and ordinary life, helping each to understand the other – particularly when advanced modern life touches on the profound issues of faith.

“Os Guinness is a prophet. Hear him," Eric Metaxas, New York Times bestselling author of “Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy,” said. "I read everything Os Guinness writes because he always challenges my thinking and enlarges my perspective,” Rick Warren, pastor of Saddleback Church and author of “The Purpose Driven Life,” said.

Born to medical missionary parents in China during World War II, Guinness was expelled with many other foreigners after the Chinese revolution. Educated in England, he was a freelance reporter with the BBC before moving to the U.S. in 1984.

From 1986 to 1989, Guinness served as 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 later “The Global Charter of Conscience,” which celebrated the idea of religious freedom and posited that hostility to religion was just as dangerous as religious hostility toward the irreligious or other religions.

He has spoken widely to political leaders and business conferences on many issues, including religious freedom, across the world. He founded the Trinity Forum and served as senior fellow there, as well as serving as a guest scholar at the Woodrow Wilson Center for International Studies and a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution. He also co-authored the public school curriculum “Living With Our Deepest Differences.” He is currently a senior fellow at the Oxford Centre for Christian Apologetics in Oxford.

He has written or edited more than thirty books, including “The Call,” “Time for Truth,” “Long Journey Home,” “A Free People’s Suicide” and “Fool’s Talk – The Recovery of Christian Persuasion.” His latest book is “Impossible People: Christian Courage and the Struggle for the Soul of Civilization.”

He lives with his wife Jenny in the Washington, D.C., area.

The MacKenzie Lecture is named for the College’s fifth president Dr. Charles S. MacKenzie, who led the College from 1971 to 1991. He spearheaded the historic legal battle with the federal government over Grove City College’s independence from bureaucratic oversight that established the College as a bastion of academic freedom. Funded through alumni giving, the lecture is focused on the integration of faith and learning.