Opening convocation for the Easter semester at the University of the South will be at noon Friday, Jan. 16, in All Saints’ Chapel. Honorary degrees will be presented, and new members will be inducted into the Order of Gownsmen. Eric Metaxas, author and television host, will give the convocation address and will receive an honorary degree. Honorary degrees will also be presented during the convocation to Janice Holder, the Rt. Rev. Whayne Hougland, Michael Leslie and the Rt. Rev. Nicholas Thomas Wright. Convocation will be streamed live online for those who are unable to attend.
Metaxas and Wright will each give a talk during the days leading up to convocation.
Metaxas is a leading evangelical thinker, an award-winning author, a speaker, and a television and radio host. He is best known for two biographies, “Amazing Grace: William Wilberforce and the Heroic Campaign to End Slavery” and “Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy.” He has also written humor, children’s books and scripts for “VeggieTales.” Metaxas is the founder and host of the New York City-based event series, “Socrates in the City: Conversations on the Unexamined Life.” Metaxas was recently named as a senior fellow and lecturer at large for the King’s College in New York City.
Metaxas will give a public talk at 4 p.m., Thursday, Jan. 15, in Gailor Auditorium, followed by a book signing and reception in the Gailor lobby.
Janice M. Holder retired last August from the Tennessee Supreme Court after 24 years on the bench. Holder was the third woman to serve on the state’s high court and was the first woman to serve as chief justice (2008–10). Following law school, she served as senior law clerk to the chief judge of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania, worked as an attorney in private practice and was elected circuit court judge in 1990. She was appointed to a vacancy on the Tennessee Supreme Court in 1996, and then won election and re-election. Holder made attorney well-being a priority at the state and national level and was an advocate for access to justice initiatives. Among numerous other awards, she was presented the 2014 William M. Leech Jr. Public Service Award by the Tennessee Bar Association.
The Rt. Rev. Whayne M. Hougland Jr., T’98, is the ninth bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Western Michigan. A Kentucky native from a Roman Catholic family, Hougland came to Western Michigan after serving as rector of St. Luke’s Episcopal Church in Salisbury, N.C., and as canon evangelist at Christ Church Cathedral in Lexington, Ky. During his eight years there, St. Luke’s became known locally as the “Church That Feeds People,” feeding hundreds of children through its BackPack Buddies program. He was active in the Diocese of North Carolina, serving on several teams there and as a clergy mentor for postulants and newly ordained priests. When Hougland was called to Holy Orders following a corporate career, he graduated from the Master of Divinity program at Sewanee’s School of Theology and was ordained a priest in 1998.
Michael Leslie is a professor of English and dean of the British Studies at Oxford program for Rhodes College in Memphis. Before joining Rhodes in 1994, he served as senior lecturer in English literature at Sheffield University. He was educated at Leicester and Edinburgh universities, held research fellowships at London and Sheffield universities, and taught at Bedford College, University of London. He writes on Renaissance literature and on the relationships between literature and landscape and the visual and verbal arts in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. His teaching and research interests tend to combine literature with the visual arts, the history of designed landscapes, and the history of science. He has published books about Edmund Spenser’s “The Faerie Queene”; on culture and cultivation in Early Modern England; and Samuel Hartlib and Universal Reformation.
The Rt. Rev. Nicholas Thomas Wright is professor of New Testament and early Christianity at the School of Divinity, the University of St. Andrews, Scotland. He also has served as the bishop of Durham, England, since 2003.
Widely regarded as one of the world’s foremost New Testament scholars, Wright has written more than 50 books, both academic and mainstream, including books of apologetics, such as the best-selling “Simply Christian.” Time magazine has called him “one of the most formidable figures in the world of Christian thought.” Wright received degrees in philosophy and ancient history at University of Oxford: Exeter College and in theology at University of Oxford: Wycliffe College, and earned an M.A. in 1975. He taught New Testament at McGill University for several years, returning to the United Kingdom in 1986 as lecturer in New Testament at the University of Oxford and chaplain at Worcester College. He became canon theologian of Westminster Abbey in 2000.
Wright will give a talk at 7 p.m. Wednesday, Jan. 14, in Convocation Hall. He will have a book signing at 3 p.m. Friday, Jan. 16, at the University Book and Supply Store.
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