The Seventh Age

My alma mater, Calvin College, hosts every January during the "interim" term, a lunchtime lecture series that is the best in the nation. I heard such great speakers (if not always great thinkers) like David Broder, Clarence Page, Andrew Greeley, Cornel West, James Fallows, C. Everett Koop, and numerous brilliant others whose names are now clunking around in my mind with all the useless entertainment trivia Gen-X'ers are doomed to carry around with us till our graves.

This year it's another all-star cast with string theorist Brian Greene, Eastern Orthodox writer Frederica Mathewes-Green, Boston College's own religiously tone-deaf secular sociologist of religion Alan Wolfe, and many others. Thursday January 20th features Peter Steinfels speaking on "One Fourth of the Nation: Catholicism and Politics in 2005." Undoubtedly, Steinfels will do his "People Adrift" shtick, an odd business in which he notes the disunity and theological heterodoxy of the Church in America and then asks us all to approve women priests, gay marriage, etc. Considering his former post as New York Times religion writer, one might think Steinfels might have noticed that moves like these did nothing for the orthodoxy or unity of the Episcopal Church. But who knows? If you're in Western Michigan in January, head over to the Calvin Campus and see what's up.