I’m happy to announce that on March 18th I’ll be giving something like my first book talk on Charles Lindbergh: A Religious Biography of America’s Most Infamous Pilot. Hosted by Colonial Church in Edina, Minnesota, my talk is entitled, “The Case of Charles Lindbergh: History, Biography, and the Image of God.”
It’ll be part of a series on Faith and the Humanities, coordinated by my friend Christian Collins Winn, who serves as teaching minister and theologian in residence at Colonial. Previous speakers include Bethel colleagues like sociologist Samuel Zalanga and art historian Wayne Roosa, with the most recent installment, on Duke Ellington, coming from Art Haecker of St. Olaf College:
Here’s the description for my contribution to the series:
The task of historians, wrote Anne Morrow Lindbergh, is “to sort out and unmask the images of another epoch.” Few images have been harder to make out than that of her husband, Charles, whose life was marked as much by secrecy as a celebrity, whose fame as a pioneering pilot came to be overshadowed by the infamy of his racist, anti-Semitic, and eugenicist views.
Join us on March 18th alongside historian Chris Gehrz as we reflect on the challenges he faced in researching and writing a spiritual biography of Charles Lindbergh — and explain how the experience deepened his own belief in a Christian doctrine that Lindbergh rejected: that humans are made in the Image of God.
Now, I should make clear that the talk is hosted by Colonial, but in the way that churches host most anything under COVID: instead of driving to a building west of Minneapolis, we’ll all be gathering via Zoom. Which is not my preferred way of speaking to church audiences, but does mean that we can open it up to any and all readers who want an early preview of a book that won’t come out until August!
Click through to the Colonial link for full details, including the Zoom code, and we’ll see you the 18th!
The Pietist Schoolman 