Brian McLaren & Diana Butler Bass

Two noted authors and scholars visited CHC to explore the Church in America’s Future. Brian McLaren is an author, pastor and speaker and was recently named one of the 25 most influential evangelicals in America. Diana Butler Bass is a senior research fellow in church history at Virginia Theological Seminary and the author of several critically acclaimed books on mainline Protestantism. Heard together, their talks provided a truly unique perspective on the relationship between religion and postmodern culture.

Gary Gunderson, 10/15/06,
Improving the Quality of Life
in Your Community

Diana Eck, professor of comparative religion at Harvard University , is the foremost expert on the growth of religious pluralism in the US. She is the director of the Pluralism Project, a foundation dedicated to the study of this new religious diversity and its role in contemporary America.

Eck is also the author of the highly acclaimed book A New Religious America. Drawing on her experiences travelling the country, Eck has pieced together the most thorough guidebook of American religiosity. Culling stories from Muslims in Indiana and Buddhists in New Jersey, Eck conducted her research “hands-on” and emerged with a compelling look at our true diversity.

Betty Skinner, the subject of the book The Hidden Life, was hospitalized with depression in the 1960s, before modern therapies were available. As a result, she had to find her way to wholeness through determination and dependence on God. Now in her 80s, Skinner’s experience was documented by authors Kitty Crenshaw and Catherine Snapp in The Hidden Life.