Past Events
April 8, 2026:
Christine Emba is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) where her work focuses on gender and sexuality, feminism, masculinity, youth culture and social norms. She was a staff writer at The Atlantic and an opinion columnist and editorial board member at The Washington Post. She鈥檚 also the author of Rethinking Sex: A Provocation, a book that explores what the sexual revolution got wrong and what we might do better, especially after the #MeToo movement. Earlier in her career, she was the Hilton Kramer Fellow at The New Criterion and worked as a deputy editor at the Economist Intelligence Unit, where she focused on tech and innovation. She was named one of the world's top 50 thinkers by Prospect magazine in 2022 and received the National Press Club's Nell Minow Award for Cultural Criticism in 2024. Emba grew up in Virginia and studied public and international affairs at Princeton.
March 5, 2026:
Sabrina Little is an assistant professor in the Salmon P. Chase Center for Civics, Culture and Society at Ohio State University. Little earned her Ph.D. in philosophy at Baylor University and also studied at Yale Divinity School and the College of William & Mary. Her main areas of interest are virtue ethics, moral psychology and classical philosophy. She often writes about moral emotions, character education and the ethics of exemplarity. Her first book, The Examined Run (Oxford University Press), was released in March 2024. Little also ran professionally for seven years. She holds two American distance running records, was a World Championships silver medalist and was selected to represent the United States on five national teams.
Nov. 13, 2025:
Curt Thompson, M.D. is a psychiatrist in private practice in Falls Church, Va. He is the founder of Being Known, which develops teaching programs, seminars and resource materials to help people explore the connection between interpersonal neurobiology and Christian spirituality. Thompson is the author of Anatomy of the Soul: Surprising Connections Between Neuroscience and Spiritual Practices that Can Transform Your Life and Relationships. His book demonstrates how insights from interpersonal neurobiology resonate with biblical truths about God and creation, validating the deep human need for meaningful relationships as a key to a life of hope and fulfillment. He also produced a video series called "Knowing and Being Known: The Transforming Power of Relationships."
Oct. 22, 2025:
Kristin Kobes Du Mez is a New York Times bestselling author and professor of history at Calvin University. She holds a Ph.D. from the University of Notre Dame and her research focuses on the intersection of gender, religion and politics. She has written for The New York Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Religion News Service and Christianity Today, and has been interviewed on NPR, CBS and the BBC, among other outlets. She is the author of the bestselling book Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation. And her next book is Live Laugh Love, a cultural study of white Christian womanhood.
April 16, 2025:
Felicia Wu Song is a cultural sociologist who studies the place of digital technologies in contemporary life. Having trained in history, communication studies and sociology at Yale, Northwestern University and University of Virginia, her research is oriented around the rapidly evolving digital technology industry and how the adoption of social media and digital devices fundamentally alters the landscapes of family, community and organizational life. She is the author of Restless Devices: Recovering Personhood, Presence and Place in the Digital Age (InterVarsity Press Academic, 2021).
Feb. 26, 2025:
Lerone A. Martin is the Martin Luther King, Jr. centennial professor in religious studies, and of African & African American studies at Stanford University. He also serves as the director of the Martin Luther King Jr. Research & Education Institute. Martin is an award-winning author. His most recent book, The Gospel of J. Edgar Hoover: How the FBI Aided and Abetted the Rise of White Christian Nationalism, was published in February 2023 by Princeton University Press. The book has garnered praise from numerous publications including The Nation, Foreign Affairs, The Guardian, Publisher鈥檚 Weekly and History Today.
April 18, 2024:
Han-luen Kantzer Komline is professor of church history and theology at Western Theological Seminary. Her first book, Augustine on the Will: A Theological Account, received the Lautenschlaeger Award for Theological Promise in 2020. Her scholarship focuses on the innovative resources of Christian theology, drawing on early church writings for modern times.
March 5, 2024:
Christian Wiman is a poet and professor of the practice of religion and literature at Yale Divinity School. He is the author of many works of prose and poetry, including My Bright Abyss and Every Riven Thing. He is a former editor of Poetry magazine, a former Guggenheim Fellow, and has written for the New Yorker, the New York Times Book Review and the Atlantic Monthly. His particular interests include modern poetry, the language of faith and what it means to be a Christian intellectual in a secular culture.
Nov. 2, 2023:
Lydia Dugdale is the author of The Lost Art of Dying, and is the director of the Center for Clinical Medical Ethics at Columbia University. Prior to her 2019 move to Columbia, she was associate director of the Program for Biomedical Ethics and founding co-director of the Program for Medicine, Spirituality, and Religion at Yale School of Medicine.
Oct. 2, 2023:
Elizabeth Bruenig is a staff writer at The Atlantic. She was previously an opinion writer for The New York Times and The Washington Post, where she was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Feature Writing. Bruenig holds a master of philosophy in Christian theology from the University of Cambridge.
Sept. 21, 2023:
Francis Su writes about the dignity of human beings and the wonder of mathematical teaching. He is professor of mathematics at Harvey Mudd College and a former president of the Mathematical Association of America. His book, Mathematics for Human Flourishing, won the 2021 Euler Book Prize.