Annual Religion Lecture to Focus on 'Lord of the Rings'

Noted J.R.R. Tolkien scholar Ralph Wood, University Professor of Theology and Literature at Baylor University, will deliver the department of religion's annual lecture at 3:30 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 22, in Miller Chapel. Wood's lecture, "Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings: A Book for Our Time of Terror," is free and open to the public.

Wood received his master's degree and doctorate from the University of Chicago. From 1971 to 1997 he taught at Wake Forest University, where he held The John Allen Easley Professorship in Religion. Before joining the Baylor faculty in 1998, he was Distinguished Professor of Religion at Samford University.

Widely regarded as an expert on authors C.S. Lewis, P.D. James, Flannery O'Connor and Tolkien, 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), first published in 1988 and still in print. His most recent books are Contending for the Faith: The Church's Engagement with Culture, The Gospel According to Tolkien: Visions of the Kingdom in Middle-earth and Flannery O'Connor and the Christ-Haunted South.

He also serves as an editor-at-large for the Christian Century, and on the editorial board of the Flannery O'Connor Review.

For more information about the lecture, call the religion department at (254) 710-3735.