Author and social critic Os Guinness will present an address Thursday through the Hageman Faith Series of Hope College.
He will present “The Global Public Square – Religious Freedom and the Making of a World Safe for Diversity” on at 4 p.m. in Winants Auditorium of Graves Hall at Hope. The public is invited to both talks. Admission is free.
Guinness has written or edited more than 30 books, including “The American Hour,” “Time for Truth,” “The Call,” “Invitation to the Classics,” “Long Journey Home,” “Unspeakable” and “A Free People’s Suicide – Sustainable Freedom and the American Future.” His latest book, sharing the title of his March 6 address on campus, is “The Global Public Square -- Religious Freedom and the Making of a World Safe for Diversity,” published by InterVarsity Press in August 2013.
Great-great grandson of Arthur Guinness, the Dublin brewer, he was born in China in World War Two, where his parents were medical missionaries. A witness to the climax of the Chinese revolution in 1949, he was expelled with many other foreigners in 1951 and returned to Europe, where he was educated in England. He completed his undergraduate degree at the University of London and his D.Phil. in the social sciences from Oriel College, Oxford.
Previously, he was a freelance reporter with the BBC. Since coming to the United States in 1984, he has been a Guest Scholar at the Woodrow Wilson Center for International Studies and a Guest Scholar and Visiting Fellow at the Brookings Institution. From 1986 to 1989, he 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 co-authored the public school curriculum “Living With Our Deepest Differences.” From 1991 to 2004 he was a senior fellow at the Trinity Forum, and a frequent speaker and seminar leader at political and business conferences in both the United States and Europe. He is currently a senior fellow at the Oxford Centre for Christian Apologetics.
The annual Hageman Faith Series was established to encourage a vibrant Christian faith among the students, faculty and staff of Hope College. The lecture series is endowed to invite recognized Christian speakers to Hope’s campus who will inspire and encourage a living and personal faith in Jesus Christ. Selected by the college’s Campus Ministries team, which is overseen by the dean of the chapel, speakers are chosen on the basis of having an articulate, winsome and challenging message that is relevant to college-aged students seeking to grow in their life with Christ.
On Wednesday (March 5) he presented “Renaissance – The Power of the Gospel However Dark the Times” at Pillar Church in Holland.
Graves Hall is located at 263 College Ave., between 10th and 12th streets.