Religion Author to Speak at Broken Arrow, Tahlequah

Religion Author to Speak at Broken Arrow, Tahlequah

TAHLEQUAH Religion journalist and author Mark I. Pinsky will speak in Broken Arrow and Tahlequah as part of the Northeastern State University Centennial Lecture Series in January.

Pinsky, the author of the best-selling book The Gospel According to The Simpsons, will deliver a lecture on Wednesday, Jan. 21 at 7 p.m. in the Building A Ballroom on the NSU Broken Arrow campus and a second lecture on Thursday, Jan. 22 at 2 p.m. in the NET Building Auditorium on the Tahlequah campus.

The lectures are presented by the NSU Centennial Lectureship Committee as part of the NSU Centennial Countdown and are free and open to the public.

The NSU RiverHawk Shoppe in the University Center in Tahlequah will host a special reading with Pinsky on Jan. 22 at 10 a.m. Those in attendance will have the opportunity to meet with Pinsky and have him autograph copies of his books.

During the special two-day event, the Northeastern Activity Board will be hosting The Simpsons Viewing Marathon in the UC basement. Selected episodes from the long-running series will be played on Jan. 21 from 9:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Jan. 22 from 9:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m.

Pinsky is a former religion writer for the Orlando Sentinel and Los Angeles Times. He is a contributor to USA Today, the Wall Street Journal, as well as the Harvard Divinity Bulletin, and was recently cited in the New Yorker magazine. Last summer, he was a Templeton-Cambridge Fellow in Science and Religion at the University of Cambridge in Britain.

In addition to his Simpsons Gospel, which has 150,000 copies in print, Pinsky has also written The Gospel According to Disney: Faith, Hope, and Pixie Dust, and A Jew Among the Evangelicals: A Guide for the Perplexed.

Pinsky has appeared on CNN, ABC-TV and the BBC, discussing religion and popular culture, as well as the role of American evangelicals in politics. In October, he wrote columns about evangelicals unease with vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin for the Chicago Sun-Times and Religion News Service.

Pinsky is the second speaker in the Centennial Lectureship Series. Elizabeth Eckford, of the Little Rock Nine, was the first speaker; Larry Coker, former college football coach, will be the third and final speaker. Coker will speak on the Broken Arrow campus in April.

Pinskys website can be found at www.markpinsky.com.

For more information on the NSU Centennial Countdown, visit www.nsuok.edu/centennial.

12/17/2008

Published: 2008-12-17 00:00:00