BEGIN:VCALENDAR
VERSION:2.0
PRODID:icalendar-ruby
CALSCALE:GREGORIAN
X-WR-CALNAME:Bless This Mess: Moments of Surprising Cooperation in American
  Religious History
X-WR-TIMEZONE:Eastern Time (US & Canada)
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20261016T173657Z
UID:tag:localist.com\,2008:EventInstance_53869754037298
DTSTART:20261019T210000Z
DTEND:20261019T220000Z
DESCRIPTION:Author Brook Wilensky-Lanford (Ph.D.\, Religion in the Americas
 \, UNC-Chapel Hill) will offer a free public talk about her new book\, A G
 od-Shaped Nation: Five Hundred Years of Religion in America\, published in
  June from Grove Atlantic. From this epic tale\, Wilensky-Lanford will foc
 us in on three often-overlooked moments in American religious history wher
 e radically different groups cooperated for a shared end: the Virginia Bap
 tist preachers and Enlightenment Deists who together created the First Ame
 ndment in the 1780s\, the Charleston Black churches and Union soldiers who
  celebrated the First Memorial Day ceremony in 1865\, and the surprising i
 nfluence of Allan Ginsberg on the Southern Baptist Convention in 1968. Fro
 m such inflection points\, we can learn about the power of individual acti
 on and the necessity of imagining otherwise in a world often portrayed as 
 irredeemably divided. The book will be available for sale and an author si
 gning\, thanks to Blue Bicycle Books. And a reception will follow this eve
 nt.\n\n \n\nBiography\n\nBrook Wilensky-Lanford is a religion writer\, edi
 tor and teacher. She is the author of A God-Shaped Nation: Five Hundred Ye
 ars of Religion in America (June 2026) and Paradise Lust: Searching for th
 e Garden of Eden\, a 2011 New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice\; b
 oth are by Grove Press. A former managing editor of the 25-year-old litera
 ry magazine Killing the Buddha\, Brook's work has been published in The Ne
 w York Times\, The Guardian\, The New Republic and elsewhere. Currently th
 e associate director of Sacred Writes Public Scholarship\, she holds an M.
 F.A. in Nonfiction Writing from Columbia University\, and a Ph.D. in Relig
 ion in the Americas from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill\,
  where she lives.
GEO:32.784622;-79.938034
LOCATION:Robert Scott Small Building \, Room 235
SUMMARY:Bless This Mess: Moments of Surprising Cooperation in American Reli
 gious History
URL;VALUE=URI:https://calendar.charleston.edu/event/bless-this-mess-moments
 -of-surprising-cooperation-in-american-religious-history
CATEGORIES:Lectures & Presentations
END:VEVENT
END:VCALENDAR