Public invited to 9:30 a.m. program at Oxford Conference Center
OXFORD, Miss. – Krista Tippett, creator and host of the Peabody and
Webby award-winning radio program “Speaking of Faith, is scheduled to
address University of Mississippi students Friday, Aug. 22.
Drawing on her conversations with theologians and scientists, artists
and activists, Tippett plans to speak about the meaning of faith in the
contemporary world and her sense of how the up-and-coming generation
can shape and deepen our culture’s encounter with religious and
spiritual insights in the many aspects of human endeavor.
Tippett’s 9:30 a.m. discussion at the Oxford Conference Center, 102 Ed
Perry Blvd., is part of the Sally McDonnell Barksdale Honors College
freshman ventures program, but the public in invited to attend at no
charge.
“We are very fortunate to have Krista Tippett with us for our Freshmen
Honors retreat,” said Honors College Dean Doug Sullivan-Gonzalez. “She
has worked hard to understand the fundamental questions about life and
how we answer those questions through faith. She admirably approaches
these very real and personal questions with a genuine inquisitiveness,
and she tenderly queries the answers that many faiths have proposed.”
Tippett draws out the intersection of theology and human experience, of grand religious ideas and real life. A weekly national program since July 2001, “Speaking of Faith” has featured such titles as “Einstein and the Mind of God,” “The Spirituality of Parenting” and “Diplomacy and Religion in the 21st Century.”
The program is heard on more than 200 public radio stations across the U.S. and transmitted globally via podcasting and the Internet. She is also the author of “Speaking of Faith – Why Religion Matters, and How to Talk About It” (Penguin, 2008).
“Krista Tippett is a class act,” Sullivan-Gonzalez said. “She teaches us in action how to entertain assertions about fundamental truths in an academic world that holds most affirmations to be relative.”
Additionally, Tippett writes “Krista’s Journal,” a weekly online column posted each Thursday, which provides inside perspective and commentary on issues discussed in each radio broadcast. Her column reveals how her radio conversations spur her to look at the world, and understand the news, differently.
In a recent blog, Tippit wrote: “Recently a listener observed that many of the topics ‘Speaking of Faith’ is taking on now are not spiritual, per se, but simply about ideas and practices that are ‘wise, realistic, and physically necessary.’ I think this reflects our evolving sense of what it means to be a program about ‘religion, meaning, ethics and ideas’ in the early part of this century. Week after week my interviews deepen my conviction that what is ‘wise, realistic, and physically necessary’ must inform and anchor every spiritual idea worth its salt.”
Tippett grew up in Oklahoma, attended Brown University and lived in Germany for most of the 1980s. She was The New York Times stringer in divided Berlin and reported and wrote for Newsweek, The International Herald Tribune, the BBC, and Die Zeit. Later she served as a special political assistant and chief Berlin aide to the U.S. Ambassador to West Germany. In 1994, she received a Master of Divinity degree from Yale.