About our guest lecturers and their selected topics...

Phyllis Tickle, founding editor of the Religion Department of Publisher's Weekly, is widely known as an authority on religion in America and is a much sought after lecturer on the subject. She is author of over two dozen books most notably the Divine Hours series, manuals for the practice of fixed-hour prayer.

She began her career as a college teacher and served as Academic Dean at the Memphis College of Art before entering into writing and publishing professionally. Among her many accolades is the 1996 Mays Award in which she was specifically recognized for gaining mainstream media coverage of religious writing.

Tickle is a member of the Episcopal Church and serves as a Lay Eucharistic Minister, Lay Reader, vestry member and teacher on occasion. She is the mother of seven children and, with her physician-husband, makes her home on a small farm in rural West Tennessee.

Tickle has chosen to speak to the MTS community and our guests about two subjects for which she is obviously passionate, one for over forty years, one more recently.

The late-morning lecture will be based on the work she is currently doing for a book with the working title The Great Emergence (tentatively scheduled for fall 2008 release from Baker Books, a division of Baker Publishing Group). Tickle has noted that there is a 500 year cycle in western history in which upheaval is followed by settling, codification, then another upheaval, the latest being the Reformation. The current upheaval, she says, is happening in a unique age that allows us to be more aware and intentional.

The mid-afternoon lecture, Prayer: Its Ways and Means will offer us insights into a practice she has personally observed for over forty years. According to Tickle, fixed-hour prayer is one of the ancient practices of the Christian faith and one which we share with the other Abrahamic faith traditions. Tapping into the yearning that modern-day Christians feel for the comfort and joy found in such practices, she has provided the Church with a series of books on the subject. This lecture will further explore the "ways and means" of prayer.

Dr. James H. Cone, called the "Father of Black Theology," has accepted an invitation to deliver the 2008 Black History Month lecture. Dr. Cone is the Charles A. Briggs Distinguished Professor of Systematic Theology at Union Theological Seminary in the City of New York. He is an ordained minister in the African Methodist Episcopal Church.

He is best known for his ground-breaking works, Black Theology & Black Power (1969) and A Black Theology of Liberation (1970). The 30 th anniversaries of these publications were marked with events at the University of Chicago, Garrett-Evangelical Seminary, and at the Catholic Theological Society of America. Risks of Faith: The Emergence of a Black Theology of Liberation, 1968-1998 , was published by MA Beacon Press in 1999.

He is also author of the highly acclaimed Martin & Malcolm & America: A Dream or a Nightmare, which is used as a text for courses taught at MTS. A full list of Dr. Cone's publications can be found at http://www.utsnyc.edu/NETCOMMUNITY/Page.aspx?&pid=509&srcid=353.

Dr. Cone is an active scholar and church leader who speaks and lectures to audiences throughout the world. His work for racial justice and liberation within and among churches is highly touted throughout religious and academic circles.

He has deep roots in the mid-south, growing up in Little Rock, Arkansas, where he began his higher education at Philander Smith College. He has several connections to both academic and church leadership in the Memphis area. Those who know him know to expect an engaging discussion about the prophetic role of the Church in today's society.

Dr. Cone will present one lecture (free and open to the public) at 7:30 pm on Wednesday,
February 6, 2008, and will have lunch the following day with the MTS community. St. John's United Methodist Church, 1207 Peabody Avenue in Memphis, will serve as the venue for the evening lecture.

Dr. Poe serves as Charles Colson Professor of Faith and Culture at Union University in Jackson, Tennessee. He has previously held teaching and administrative posts at Bethel Theological Seminary in St. Paul, Minnesota and on two occasions at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. Before teaching, Dr. Poe served on the staff of the Kentucky Baptist Convention, as pastor of the Simpsonville Baptist Church, and as a prison chaplain at the Kentucky State Reformatory. He earned both the MDiv and the PhD degrees at Southern Seminary.

Hal's wife Mary Anne teaches and serves as chair of the Social Work Department at Union University. They have two daughters, Rebecca (20) and Mary Ellen (17).

Dr. Poe has published over 100 articles and reviews and has written or contributed to over twenty-five books, including The Inklings of Oxford (Zondervan, 2008), The Edgar Allan Poe Companion (Barnes & Noble, 2008), What God Knows (Baylor, 2005), See No Evil: The Existence of Sin in an Age of Relativism (Kregel, 2004), Christianity in the Academy: Teaching at the Intersection of Faith and Learning (Baker Academic, 2004), Christian Witness in a Postmodern World (Abingdon, 2001), The Gospel and Its Meaning (Zondervan, 1996), The Fruit of Christ’s Presence (Broadman, 1990), and three books on science and religion with Jimmy H. Davis: Chance or Dance (Templeton, 2008), Designer Universe (Broadman & Holman, 2002) and Science and Faith (Broadman & Holman, 2000). He is co-editor with his daughter Rebecca of a book of recollections by the former students of Lewis, C. S. Lewis Remembered (Zondervan, 2006).

Dr. Poe serves on several boards, including the Edgar Allan Poe Foundation and Museum of Richmond, VA (past President), the Christian Scholar’s Review, and Global Horizons international educational mission. Formerly he served with the Jackson Symphony of Jackson, TN (President), The Academy for Evangelism in Theological Education (President), and the C. S. Lewis Foundation, with which he also worked as program director for the triennial C. S. Lewis Summer Institute.

The two lectures in this series will deal with different aspects of Lewis's apologetics. The 3:30 pm topic is "The Apologetic Approach of C. S. Lewis." This lecture will explore how Lewis utilized several different approaches to apologetics that including works of imagination, scholarly work, formal philosophical argument, and testimony of personal experience.

The second lecture to be held at 7:30 pm is entitled "The Formal Philosophical Arguments of C. S. Lewis" and will build on the previous lecture by exploring how Lewis uses formal philosophical argument in three of his most influential apologetic works: The Problem of Pain, Mere Christianity, and Miracles.

Both lectures are free and open to the public.