Auburn, Oxford Scholars To Give Annual McGee Lectures

September 22, 2009

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The Baylor University Department of Religion will host the annual McGee Lecture Series, featuring scholars Wayne Flynt and Paul Fiddes, on Sept. 24 and Oct. 7 in Miller Chapel in the Tidwell Bible Building.

Wayne Flynt

Wayne Flynt, Professor Emeritus and Distinguished Professor at Auburn University, will begin the series with "The South's Battle Over God," at 3:30 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 24, in Miller Chapel of the Tidwell Bible Building.

Flynt's research focuses on Southern culture, Alabama politics, Southern religion, education reform and poverty. Flynt has published 11 books, including Pulitzer Prize-nominated Poor but Proud: Alabama's Poor Whites. Flynt co-authored Alabama: A History of a Deep South State, which also was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. Flynt's more recent book, Alabama in the Twentieth Century, won the Anne B. and James B. McMillan Prize in 2004. Flynt is now editor in chief of the new Online Encyclopedia of Alabama.

Flynt has won numerous awards and received the University of Alabama's Hugo Black and Clarence Cason awards, the Virginia Hamilton Award, the Child Advocacy Award of the Alabama Chapter, Friend of the Children Award, Distinguished Graduate Faculty Lecturer at Auburn University and the Alabama Humanities Foundation Award.

Flynt received an honorary doctorate from Samford University, and was inducted into the Alabama Academy of Distinguished Authors and the University of Alabama's Communications Hall of Fame.

Paul Fiddes

Paul Fiddes, Professor of Systematic Theology at the University of Oxford and Fellow of Regent's Park College in Oxford, will lecture at 3:30 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 7, in Miller Chapel of the Tidwell Bible Building.

Fiddes also is an ordained minister and serves as the chair of the doctrine commission of the Baptist World Alliance. Fiddes is the current co-chair of the international conversations between the Roman Catholic Church and the Baptist World Alliance, as well as an ecumenical representative on the Synod of the Church of England.
Fiddes is the author of more than 75 articles and nine books, including The Creative Suffering of God, Past Event and Present Salvation: The Christian Idea of Atonement, Freedom and Limit: A Dialogue between Literature and Christian Doctrine, The Promised End, Eschatology in Theology and Literature, Participating in God: A Pastoral Doctrine of the Trinity and Tracks and Traces: Baptist Identity in Church and Theology.
McGee Endowed Lecture Series

The Daniel B. McGee Endowed Lectures in Religious Studies series was established in 2001 by the former U.S. Ambassador to Sweden, Lyndon Olson of Waco, and his wife. McGee received his B.A. in English Literature at Furman University, a B.D. and Th.M. at Southeastern Seminary and his Ph.D. in Theological Ethics with a minor in political science from Duke University. Although he originally intended to become a minister, as an undergraduate McGee committed to the discipline of teaching after relating to his professors and their work.

In 1966, McGee arrived at Baylor, where he pioneered the Ethics program, teaching both graduate and undergraduate courses, and taught for 40 years until his retirement in 2006.

by Colton Wright, student newswriter, (254) 710-6805