It’s a rare lecture that has the potential to cause a significant spike in Amazon sales of the selected writings of Calvin. And it is a still rarer lecture that can be accurately described as ‘prophetic’ in the best Biblical sense. So the Theos Annual Lecture for 2013, by the great American novelist, ‘liberal Calvinist’ and public intellectual Marilynne Robinson, was special indeed. Her theme was religion and contemporary America, and while her arguments and examples were rooted in US history, culture and politics, they had much wider resonance.

Marilynne Robinson is the author of three highly acclaimed novels Housekeeping (1980), Gilead (2004), for which she was awarded the Pulitzer Prize and Home (2008), which received the Orange prize for fiction. She has twice been nominated for the Man Booker International Prize. She has also published several highly regarded collections of non-fiction, on topics including contemporary politics, philosophy, theology and ethics.

Her 2012 collection, When I Was a Child I Read Books, is her most recent foray into the topic of the lecture Religion and Politics in Contemporary America. The Atlantic said of it “Robinson shows a remarkable ability to breathe new life into topics that have calcified into staunchly opposed stances”.
The evening will be chaired by Mark Lawson. A broadcaster, journalist and writer, Mark Lawson is best known for presenting Front Row, the BBC Radio 4 flagship arts programme.

Theos Annual Lectures explore issues of religion in public life. Previous annual lecturers include Rowan Williams, Mark Thompson and Jonathan Sacks.

To read the full write up of this event click here.

Image by Dominick Tyler