 2001 Assembly Presbyterian Lay Committee to host columnist George F. Will By John H. Adams The Presbyterian Layman Volume 34, Number 2 Posted March 26, 2001
The Presbyterian Lay Committee is sponsoring Will’s address during a program that will begin at 7:30 p.m. June 8 in a 1,500-seat auditorium in the Galt House Hotel in Louisville, Ky. The 2001 General Assembly will open June 9 with a session on racial sensitivity. Will, whose syndicated column is published in more than 450 daily newspapers, is the second major speaker to be presented to the General Assembly by the Presbyterian Lay Committee. William J. Bennett, former U.S. Secretary of Education, spoke during the week of the 212th General Assembly in Long Beach, Calif. “Directors of the Presbyterian Lay Committee strongly believe that the Christian faith should have an enduring impact on the public arena,” said Parker T. Williamson, executive editor of The Presbyterian Layman. “Bill Bennett last year and now George Will are two of this nation’s most influential voices for a faith that reaches beyond a Sunday service into the mainstream of America.” Will is an Episcopalian who has written extensively in support of the Church and in opposition to decisions by the government and the courts to dilute the Christian influence in the public arena. He also has taken on religious institutions, including his own. In a 1979 column, Will lamented his denomination’s revision of its 16th-century Book of Common Prayer, and prophetically suggested: “Perhaps Christianity’s many revisers are, as a matter of fact, bringing Christianity into conformity with the spirit of the age. But I thought it was supposed to work the other way.” Will is not easily converted to theological innovation, including the idea of marriages or unions of people of the same gender. Writing about a Minnesota court case in 1980, Will said, “When first I heard about Richard Adams and his ‘spouse’ Anthony Sullivan, words failed me, and it is probably good they did.” Will is the author of Statecraft as Soulcraft, a book on political theory. The title provides a snapshot of his views about religion and the public square. “By cleansing the public square of religious expression (school prayer, creches on public property, etc.), the courts undermined a traditional source of public morality,” he wrote in a column Sept. 14, 2000. Will recently applauded the establishment of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives and the appointment of John R. DiIulio as its director. DiIulio is a Roman Catholic and a Democrat. Will, whose theology is orthodox, is an avid reader and quoter of C.S. Lewis, also an Anglican. Wearing his trademark bow tie, Will emanates a professorial air with a blend, or bite, of wit. In a commencement speech at Washington University in 1998, he gave some homespun, common-sense advice to the graduates. One point included: “Take care of your children. In particular, do not let your children make momentous decisions at too young an age. I speak from bitter experience. I grew up in Champaign, Illinois, midway between Chicago and St. Louis. And at an age too tender for life-shaping decisions, I made one. While all my friends were becoming Cardinals fans, I became a Cub fan. “My friends, happily rooting for Stan Musial, Red Schoendienst and other great Redbirds, grew up cheerfully convinced that the world was a benign place. So, of course, they became liberals. Rooting for the Cubs of the late 1940s and early 1950s, I became gloomy, pessimistic, morose, dyspeptic – in a word, conservative.” Next to government, or maybe ahead of it, Will’s passion is baseball. He considers the American League’s rule allowing designated hitters tantamount to violating one of the Ten Commandments. He has published three books on baseball, three books on political theory and five collections of his columns. Will is a graduate of Trinity College in Harvard, Conn., Oxford University and Princeton University, where he earned his Ph.D. He has taught political philosophy at Michigan State University, the University of Toronto and Harvard University. |
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