RICHMOND, Va. — A university professor who has spent his academic career exploring relationships between Western literature and Christian theology will be the guest speaker at an annual lecture series hosted by Baptist Theological Seminary at Richmond.
Ralph C. Wood, professor of theology and literature at Baylor University in Waco, Texas, will deliver the seminary’s three Solon B. Cousins Lectures. The annual event is scheduled this year for Oct. 6-7 in the chapel of Virginia Hall, on the seminary campus at 3400 Brook Rd. in Richmond.
Baylor professor Ralph Wood has spent a career exploring relations between literature and theology. |
In his lectures, entitled “Three Christian Poets for Our Unpoetic Age,” Wood will discuss George Herbert, G.K. Chesterton and Wendell Berry.
“George Herbert and the Poetry of Prayer” is set for 10 a.m. on Tuesday, Oct. 6, and “G.K. Chesterton and the Poetry of Christmas” will follow at 7 that evening. “Wendell Berry and the Poetry of Pastoral Life” will be given on Wednesday, Oct. 7, at 10 a.m.
All lectures are free and open to the public.
Throughout his life, the 17th-century Anglican priest George Herbert wrote religious verse characterized by an ingenious use of imagery widely praised by the metaphysical school of poets.
G. K. Chesterton, one of the most influential and wide-ranging English writers in the 20th century, produced not only poems, but also fiction, Christian apologetics and philosophy.
The Kentuckian Wendell Berry — who attends a Baptist church — is a prolific writer of poetry, novels, short stories and moral essays. A long-time farmer, his work often reflects a strong affinity for agrarian values.
Wood’s studies in literature and theology uniquely equip him to discuss the three poets. A professor at Baylor since 1998, he earlier taught at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, N.C. The Texas native holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees from East Texas State University (now Texas A&M University-Commerce) and a master’s degree and doctorate from the University of Chicago.
He is the author of The Comedy of Redemption: Christian Faith and Comic Vision in Four American Novelists (Flannery O’Connor, Walker Percy, John Updike and Peter De Vries); Contending for the Faith: The Church’s Engagement with Culture; The Gospel According to Tolkien: Visions of Middle-Earth; Flannery O’Connor and the Christ-Haunted South; Literature and Theology; and Preaching and Professing: Sermons by a Teacher Seeking to Proclaim the Gospel.
“My entire career has been centered on the relation of Christian theology to the chief literary texts of the West,” Wood wrote in an autobiographical sketch distributed by BTSR. “This interdisciplinary interest was prompted largely by the desire to make sense of my membership in the strange Southern tribe called Baptists.
“What does Christian faith have to do with novels and poems and plays? … Rather than trying to live down my provincial past, I have sought — albeit ever so reluctantly at first — to live up to it. Hence my desire to honor the people who not only spawned me but who also gave me the greatest of all gifts: the gospel. Thus I have spent my adult life seeking to show the implications of the Christian faith for the wider world of literature and culture.”
Additional information about the Cousins Lectures is available at (804) 355-8135 or here.