Church historian to deliver Andrews Lecture

A noted church historian will deliver the annual Bertha May Bell Andrews Memorial Lecture at 7:30 p.m. May 5, in the Edmund S. Muskie Archives, 70 Campus Ave. The public is invited to attend free of charge.

Dorothy C. Bass, director of the Valparaiso Project on the Education and Formation of People in Faith, will discuss The Fullness of Time: Patterns of Work, Rest and Renewal in Faith and Culture.

The project, a Lilly Endowment project based at Valparaiso University in Indiana, promotes the renewal of some ancient practices of the Jewish and Christian traditions as practical means to restore individuals and communities to spiritual balance and social responsibility. Such practices include the observance of regular rest periods, the exercise of hospitality as an act of community and the habit of personal fasting complemented by the act of social feasting.

Mary C. Boys, the Skinner and McAlpin Professor of Practical Theology at Union Theological Seminary and adviser to the Valparaiso Project, will offer a response to Bass’s talk.

Copies of the book, Practicing Our Faith: A Way of Life for a Searching People, written by the Valparaiso Project participants — scholars and practitioners of faith — and edited by Bass, are on sale at the Bates College Bookstore in Chase Hall prior to the lecture.

Bass and Boys will also lead breakfast and luncheon seminar discussions of their work on Tuesday at 9:30 a.m. in Hirasawa Lounge of Chase Hall and at 11:30 a.m. in the Peakes Room of Chase Hall. Those interested in attending these public seminars should register by calling the office of the college chaplain at 786-8272.

Bass is a historian of the Christian tradition who has written many essays on religion and American culture. A graduate of Wellesley College, Union Theological Seminary in New York and Brown University, she has taught at several colleges and theological schools. She is a minister in the United Church of Christ.

Boys joined the faculty of Union Theological Seminary in 1994 after 17 years at Boston College. The author of three books and numerous articles on religion and education, she serves as an adjunct member of the faculties of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America and of Teachers College, Columbia University.

A fixture at Bates since 1975, the Andrews Lecture is a memorial to Bertha May Bell Andrews, who served on the Bates faculty from 1913 to 1917 and established the women’s physical education program at the college. The lectureship was established by her son, Dr. Carl B. Andrews of the Bates class of 1940.