Conversations

“Where I expected to experience a critical performance evaluation, I actually caught a vision for and evidence of God’s work in interrupting and overturning the cycle of poverty in our cities.” —Will Weir, Current Academy Fellow

Dear Friends,

Spring marks the Academy’s transition from wrestling with the question “Who is God?” to the question of application—“What difference does it make?” The core components of this season are the Fellows’ teaching time and their personal research projects. The teaching time is essential for the community to form a robust perspective on important cultural issues. Each Fellow teaches on a topic within their expertise and invites leaders in the field to speak to the group. Included here is a reflection by a current Fellow, Josh Britton, on the importance of place to our concept of home, as well as a contribution from alum Wendell Kimbrough, who is literally taking the research he pursued at the Academy to the streets. 

If you would like to learn more about how to participate in the lives of the Fellows or engage more with the speakers and presentations given here throughout the year, we’d love to hear from you. 

Sincerely,
Staff of the Trinity Forum Academy

(If you prefer, you can download a PDF version of this edition of the newsletter here.)

Academy Update

Fellows Teaching Topics: The third part of the Academy program is based around Fellows’ teaching time. This year’s topics included T. S. Eliot’s Four Quartets, the ethical considerations of litigation lawyers, examining determinism, survey of issues in American healthcare, considering the impact of short-term charity work, cosmology and the origins of the earth, basics of neuroscience, appreciating modern art, Southern literature (Walker Percy and Flannery O’Connor), gender themes in Percy’s The Moviegoer, characteristics of a healthy church, international communication, themes in Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead, and for fun, a lesson in ballroom dancing.

Class of 2009: We are currently reviewing applications for the Class of 2009 and will be conducting interviews for the final round in the next several weeks. For more information please contact the staff at .

Alumni to Provide a Future Fellowship: Last November, Board members of the Trinity Forum Academy offered a challenge to its sixty-four alumni. They would match dollar for dollar all monies raised or pledged for 2008, up $25,000. We are proud to announce that 86 percent of the alumni participated, generously, pledging over $14,000 during the Challenge. Due to the success of the Challenge, the Academy has decided to pledge these gifts towards the new Legacy Fund. The establishment of the Legacy Fund is the next step in laying a firm financial foundation for the future of the Academy.

Some of our Recent Speakers & Events: (See our full list of speakers and activities here.)

• March 6: The Friends of the Academy Annual Dinner hosted at Osprey Point. Dr. Os Guinness was the keynote speaker.
• March 16: Guest Speaker—Dr. Francis Collins, director of the Human Genome Project
• April 8: Guest Speaker—Dr. Michael Lindsay, author of Faith in the Halls of Power
• April 9: Guest Speaker—Gary Haugen, founder and President of International Justice Mission

New Book Published by Academy Executive Director Dr. David Norman: Brain, Mind and Soul in the Theological Psychology of Donald Mackay, 1922-1987. (details, Amazon link) Click here to read the forward by Dr. Malcom Jeeves, former President of The Royal Society of Edinburgh.

Reflections

Louisiana in the Distance

Josh Britton (’08)

“Here was a place that had not only given rise to jazz and jambalaya in the French Quarter but had sustained the Otts, the Joneses, and the Brittons in Livingston Parish—generations of my ancestors who had planted themselves in one place and worked hard to make it better. Aware of all this, I decided to leave.”

Loving Your Neighbor in the City

Wendell Kimbrough (’07), Ali Phillips (’08), and Will Weir (’08)

At this January conference you might have expected another fifteen-dollar guilt trip on how we’ve failed to serve the poor, but what these Fellows found was something a little different. Some new topics were part of the discussion—real estate development, racial reconciliation, and the arts—and a diverse group of people were in attendance. In light of this refreshing approach, new challenges also arise. How do we go beyond developing a fresh approach with different language and strive for a renewed heart?