Ralph C. Wood Curriculum Vitae

Title and address: Emeritus Professor of Theology and Literature
Baylor University
Waco, Texas 76798

Home address: 770 Broome Road
Apt. 223
Knoxville, Tennessee 37909

Telephone: (254) 339-3718
Website: http://www.baylor.edu/ralph_wood
E-mail: Ralph_Wood@baylor.edu

Family: Married (1963) to Suzanne Coppedge, B.S., M.S., East Texas State College (now Texas A&M University-Commerce)
Kenneth Andrew Wood (born 1971, died 2018)
Harriet Elizabeth Wood Bowden (born 1973)

I. EDUCATION

Diploma, Linden-Kildare High School, Linden, Texas, 1959 (valedictorian)

B. A., East Texas State College, 1963 (with academic distinction).

M. A., East Texas State University (now Texas A&M University-Commerce), 1965.  Thesis: “The Scandal of Redemption: Religious Meaning in the Novels of Flannery O’Connor” (Paul W. Barrus, director).

A. M., University of Chicago, 1968.

Ph. D., University of Chicago, 1975.  Dissertation: “Joyce Cary’s Vitalism: A Theological Critique of the First Trilogy” (Nathan A. Scott, Jr., director; Martin E. Marty and Wayne C. Booth, readers).

II. ACADEMIC HONORS, AWARDS, OFFICES

Phi Eta Sigma, Alpha Chi, and Sigma Tau Delta honorary fraternities.

Graduate teaching fellowship, Texas A & M University-Commerce, 1963-1965.

 Full tuition fellowship, University of Chicago, 1965 71.

 Secretary and tutor, Theology and Literature field, University of Chicago, 1969 70.

 Ph. D. examinations passed with special merit, 1971.

Reid-Doyle Junior Faculty Prize for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching, Wake Forest University, 1979.

R. J. Reynolds Research Leaves, Wake Forest University, for study at the Istituto Lorenzo de’ Medici, Florence, Italy, (1977); and at King’s College, University of London (1988).

Chairman of the Arts, Literature and Religion section of the Southeast American Academy of Religion, 1978 80.

National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship for College Teachers, 1982 83.  Topic: “The Comedy of Redemption: Literary Vision and Theological Doctrine in Six Modern Writers.”

Chief author of a successful proposal to the Henry Luce Foundation for a three-year program entitled “Religion and the Social Crisis,” 1981-1984.

Editorial Advisory Board, The Flannery O’Connor Review, 1982-present.

Editor, Dissertation Series, National Association of Baptist Professors of Religion, 1984-1987.

 Vice-President, Southeastern Association of Baptist Professors of Religion, 1985-86.  President, 1986-87.

Book Review Editor, Perspectives in Religious Studies, 1988-2003.

Editor-at-Large, The Christian Century, 1988-present.

Manuscript Reviewer, Christianity and Literature, 1989-present.

Manuscript Referee for Princeton, Pennsylvania State, Illinois, Missouri, Notre Dame, Ohio State. Yale and Oxford university presses, as well as for Eerdmans, Abingdon, and Rowman & Littlefield commercial publishers.

Jon Reinhardt Award for Distinguished Teaching among Senior Faculty, Wake Forest University, 1991.

National Peer Reviewer for the Religion Department, Samford University, Birmingham, Alabama, 1993.

Winner of the Associated Church Press 1993 Award of Merit for Critical Reviews. “Words Under the Rocks” [an essay on the film version of Norman Maclean’s A River Runs Through It], Christian Century 110, 2 (January 20, 1993): 44-6.  

One of 12 scholars invited to participate in the American Literature and Religion Project sponsored by the Pew Charitable Trusts and the Erasmus Institute of Notre Dame, 2001-2005.

Distinguished Alumnus of Texas A & M University-Commerce, October 2002.

Second Place, 2005 Catholic Press Association Award for Biography. Flannery O’Connor and the Christ-Haunted South. Grand Rapids, Eerdmans, 2004.

Board of Directors of the Flannery O’Connor–Andalusia Foundation, 2006-2018.

Mary Ann Remick Senior Visiting Fellow, the Center for Ethics and Culture, University of Notre Dame, 2007-2008. 

Editorial Board for VII: An Anglo-American Literary Review (devoted to the work of George MacDonald, G. K. Chesterton, C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien, Charles Williams, Dorothy Sayers and Owen Barfield.

Associated Church Press 2010 Award of Excellence for Best Critical Review. “Russia’s Gospel Writer,” a review-essay on Predrag Cicovacki’s Dostoevsky and the Affirmation of Life and Rowan Williams’ Dostoevsky: Language, Faith, and Fiction, Touchstone 22, 6 (July-August, 2009): 28-33.

Seventh occupant of the Reverend Robert J. Randall Distinguished Chair of Christian Culture, Providence College, Providence, Rhode Island, 2010-2011.

Winner of the Lionel Basney Award for the Outstanding Essay published in Christianity and Literature for 2011: “Flannery O’Connor, Benedict XVI, and the Divine Eros,” Christianity and Literature, 60, 1 (Autumn 2010): 35-66.

Russell Kirk Paideia Prize for Lifetime Achievement, CIRCE (Center for Independent Research on Classical Education), 2018.

Lifetime Achievement Award for Teaching, Conference on Christianity and Literature, 2020.

III. ADMINISTRATIVE EXPERIENCE

Organizer of Wake Forest University Faculty Retreat on the theme, “Christian Faith and University Education,” Montreat, NC, 1974.

Director of Wake Forest University Overseas Study Program, Venice, Italy, 1976; also in London, England, 1987.

Director of Wake Forest University lecture series entitled Twentieth Century Challenges to Faith, funded by the North Carolina Humanities Committee and the Mary Reynolds Babcock Foundation, 1978.

Organizer of a conference on “Religious Authority: Protestant, Catholic, and Orthodox,” Wake Forest University, 1995.

Member and chair of various departmental and university committees at Wake Forest: Institutional Planning, Admissions, Student Life, Athletics, Mission and Purpose, Planning Report for the Year 2000, Teacher Education, Academic Planning, Graduate Studies in Religion, Curriculum Revision. At Baylor: Search committees for the Dean of Chapel and Minister to the University Community (1999); the Director of International Education (2000); the director of the Armstrong-Browning Library (2003); as well as appointments in World Religions and Christian Ethics in 2005 and 2007, respectively.

IV. RECORD OF EMPLOYMENT

Lecturer in English, North Park College (Chicago), 1966-67
Instructor in Religion, Wake Forest University, 1971-75
Assistant Professor of Religion, ibid., 1975-79
 Associate Professor of Religion, ibid., 1979-87
Professor of Religion, ibid., 1987-90

J. Allen Easley Professor of Religion, ibid., 1990-97
Distinguished Professor of Religion, Samford University, 1997-98
Randall Chair of Christian Culture, Providence College, 2010-2011
University Professor of Theology and Literature, Baylor University, 1998-2021
Emeritus Professor of Theology and Literature, Baylor University, 2021-present

V. REFERENCES

 Dr. Mark A. Noll
Research Professor of History

Regent College
Vancouver, British Columbia
Canada V6T 2E4

Dr. David Lyle Jeffrey
Distinguished Professor or Literature and the Humanities Emeritus

Baylor University
Waco, Texas 76798

Dr. Stanley Hauerwas
Gilbert T. Rowe Professor of Theological Ethics Emeritus
The Divinity School
Duke University
Durham, North Carolina 27708

VI. COURSES TAUGHT

A. Undergraduate:

1. Biblical Perspectives
2. Christian Faith and Literary Imagination
3. Theology and Modern Literature
4. The Problem of Evil from Job to The Brothers Karamazov
5. Christian Literary Classics
6. Civil Religion in America
7. The Origins of Existentialism
8. The Christian Heritage
9. History of Christianity in England (taught in London)
10. The Oxford Christians
11. Christian Spiritual Classics
12. The Medieval Intellectual Tradition
13. Dostoevsky and the Russian Icon Tradition
14. The Life and Thought of Walker Percy and Flannery O’Connor (Providence College, 2010)

B. Graduate (at Baylor unless otherwise specified)

1. Seminar in Theology and Literature: Karl Barth and Flannery O’Connor
2. Seminar in Theology and Literature: Reinhold Niebuhr and W. H. Auden
3. The Southern Mystique
4. Neo-Liberal Theology and Its Alternatives
5. The Gospel and the Imagination
6. The 20th Century Catholic Renascence
7. Critical Method in the Theological Study of Literature
8. Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov
9. Dante’s Divine Comedy
10. The Gospel According to Tolkien (Regent College Summer Seminar, Vancouver, British Columbia, 2003)
11. G. K. Chesterton: Christian Wit and Moralist for our Time (Regent College Summer Seminar, Vancouver, British Columbia, 2006)
12. The Life and Thought of John Henry Newman
13. Flannery O’Connor, the Gospel and the Imagination (Regent College Summer Seminar, Vancouver, British Columbia, 2012)
14. J.R.R. Tolkien: Writer for Our Time of Terror (Regent College Summer Seminar, Vancouver, British Columbia, 2013)

VII. DOCTORAL DISSERTATIONS DIRECTED

Richard Alan Young, “The Nature of Truth in Gregory of Nyssa: An Ancient Response to a Contemporary Problem” (2001)

Galen Johnson, “Prisoner of Conscience: John Bunyan on Subjectivism, Individualism, and Christian Faith” (2002)

Tracey Stout, “A Fellowship of Baptism: The Relevance of Karl Barth’s Doctrine of Baptism for His Ecclesiology” (2003). Published in the Princeton Theological Monograph Series (Eugene, Oregon: Pickwick, 2010)

Mark Wells, “A Theological Assessment of Robert Greenleaf’s Idea of Servant Leadership” (2004)

Matthew Kerlin, “The Possibility of Theodicy: C.S. Lewis and the Role of Imaginative Texts in the Justification of Human Suffering” (2004)

Russell Hobbs, “Toward a Protestant Theology of Celibacy: Protestant Thought in Dialogue with John Paul II’s Theology of the Body” (2005)

Andrew Armond, “The Anglo-Catholic Quality of Christina Rossetti’s The Face of the Deep” (2006)

Helen Lasseter, “Fate, Providence, and Free Will: Clashing Perspectives of World Order in J.R.R. Tolkien’s Middle-earth” (2006)

Jason Patrick, “A Theology of Suffering Love: Fictional Embodiments of Divine Compassion in the Novels of George Eliot” (2006)

Don Shipley, “Chesterton and His Interlocutors: Dialogical Style and Ethical Debate on Eugenics” (2007)

Scott Rasnic, “Walker Percy and the Catholic Sacraments” (2007)

Jessica Hooten, “Who Is Like God? Divine versus Demonic Authority in the Works of Fyodor Dostoevsky and Flannery O’Connor” (2009)

Heather Martin, “Jack Clemo’s Vocation to Evangelical Poetry and Erotic Marriage: An Examination of his Poems of Personal Tribute and Critique” (2010)

Rachel Payne, “The Witness of the Saints: Literary Method and Theological Matter in the Hagiographical Novels of Evelyn Waugh, Frederick Buechner, and Walter Wangerin, Jr.” (2012)

Daniel Train, “Reading as an Imitatio Christi: Flannery O’Connor and the Hermeneutics of Cruciform Beauty.” (2013)

Nathan Kilpatrick: “Personalism and Popular Genres: American Catholic Fiction after Vatican II.” (2014)

Reid Makowsky, “Evelyn Waugh and La Nouvelle Théologie. (2014)

Cameron Moore, “Imagining the Present: Perception, Form, and Beauty in the Novels of G. K. Chesterton.” (2014)

Jordan Carson, “American Religion and Its Discontents” (2018)

Rachel Toombs, “Blessed Wounding: The Theological Import of Paratactic Style in Flannery O’Connor’s Fiction and Hebrew Narrative” (2018)

VIII. ENDOWED LECTURESHIPS

The Inaugural Paul W. Barrus Lecture, East Texas State University, Commerce, TX, April 1983

The Swicegood Lecture, First Baptist Church, Salisbury, NC, April 1991

The Inaugural Patrick Gilchrist Lectures, Trinity Presbyterian Church, Charlotte, NC, April 1992

The 12th Annual Paul W. Barrus Lecture, Texas A&M University-Commerce, March 1994

The 32nd Annual Jean Fortner Ward Lecture, Greensboro College, Greensboro, NC, March 1995

The Harry Vaughan Smith Lectures, Mercer University, Macon, GA, April 1995

The Charles O. Stephens Memorial Lecture on Christians in the Arts, Vestavia Hills Baptist Church, Birmingham, AL, March 1998

The Warren Carr Lectures on Preaching, First Baptist Church of Elkin, North Carolina, and the Pilot Mountain Baptist Association, Winston-Salem, North Carolina, June 1998

The E. C. Westervelt Lectures, Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary, Austin, Texas, February 2000

The Carleton-Willson Families Lecture, McMurry University; Abilene, Texas, March 2000

The Phi Alpha Theta Lecture, Navarro College, Corsicana, TX, March 2000

The Mead-Swing Lecture, Oberlin College, Oberlin, Ohio, October 2001

The Paul W. Barrus Lecture, Texas A&M University-Commerce, October 2002

The Daunt Lecture in Church and Society, Texas Military Institute, San Antonio, Texas, March 2003

The Chancellor’s Distinguished Lectureship, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, LA, February 2004

The Twitty Memorial Lectureship, Covenant Presbyterian Church, Charlotte, NC, February 2004

The Frances Mims Lecture, Anderson College, Anderson, SC, February 2004

The Inaugural Presidential Lecture, Houston Graduate School of Theology, Houston, TX, March 2004

The Annual Lecture Symposium, Campbell University, Buies Creek, NC, March 2004

The Annual Sapp Lectures, Highland Park Baptist Church, Austin, TX, May 2004

The Church and Culture Series, Valley Covenant Church and the Church of the Servant King, Eugene, OR, October 2004

The Second Annual Civitas Lecture, Cornerstone University, Grand Rapids, MI, February 2005

The Inaugural J.J. Quinn, S.J., Memorial Lecture in Catholic Intellectual Tradition, University of Scranton, Scranton, PA, April 2005

The Eighth Annual Faith Foundations Lectures, First Presbyterian Church, Brookings, SD, October 2005

The Quentin MacLaurin Lecture Series, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, November, 2006

The Annual Discipleship Lecture Series, Christ Presbyterian Church, Marietta, Georgia, March, 2007

The Second Annual Joseph M. Schwartz Lecture, Marquette University, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, April 2007

The Inaugural Lectures for the Institute of Third Millennium Faith, Wesley Biblical Seminary, Jackson, Mississippi, November 2007

The Solon B. Cousins Lectures, Baptist Theological Seminary at Richmond; Richmond, Virginia, October 2009

The Second Annual Walker Percy Lecture, Redeemer Presbyterian Church, New Orleans, Louisiana, February 2010

The Annual AC Weston Lecture, “Clothing Our Moral Nakedness: Education in
Christian Virtues,” Augustine College, Ottawa, Canada. March 26, 2010.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XqlMEA9EWM

The Bean Foundation Distinguished Lecture Series, St. Anselm College, Manchester, New Hampshire, October 2010.

The “Faith Seeking Understanding” Lectures, Gordon College, Wenham, Massachusetts, February 2011.

The John Woolman Lectures, Malone University, Canton, Ohio, March 2011.

The Staley Lecture, Shorter University, May 2011.

The Stuart E. Murray Lecture, Crandall University, Monckton, New Brunswick, October 2011.

The Frances Mims Lecture, Anderson University, Anderson, South Carolina, April 2012.

The Thomas F. Staley Distinguished Christian Scholar Lectures, Lees-McRae College, Banner Elk, North Carolina, October 2012.

The Kalos Foundation Annual Lecture, Tyler, Texas, December 2012.

The Edgar B. Hollis Distinguished Lecture, Carnegie Library, Newnan, Georgia, April 2013; April 2014.

The Flannery O’Connor Lecture Series, Aquinas Center of Theology at Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia, September 2013.

The Danford Thomas Lecture, Georgetown College, Georgetown, Kentucky, February 2014.

IX. PUBLISHED WORK

A. BOOKS

Associate editor, The Glad Irony of the Gospel: Sermons Preached at Wake Forest Baptist Church, by Warren Carr.  Winston-Salem, North Carolina: Delmar, 1985.

Editor, Civil Religion and Transcendent Experience: Studies in Theology and History, Psychology and Mysticism (Vol. III in the Luce Lectures at Wake Forest University on “Religion and the Social Crisis”). Macon, Georgia: Mercer University Press, 1988.

The Comedy of Redemption: Christian Faith and Comic Vision in Four American Novelists (Flannery O’Connor, Walker Percy, John Updike and Peter De Vries).  Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 1988. Still available.

Contending for the Faith: Essays in the Church’s Engagement with Culture. Waco, Texas: Baylor University Press, 2003. Still available.

The Gospel According to Tolkien: Visions of the Kingdom in Middle-earth. Louisville, Kentucky: Westminster John Knox Press, 2003.  Translated into Korean by Seung-Jin Lee (Seoul, South Korea: Christian Literature Crusade, 2004). Issued as an unabridged audio book, read by Nadia May (San Marcos, CA: Hovel Audio, 2005). Translated into Japanese by Kazuo Takeno (Tokyo: Board of Publications, United Christian Church of Japan, 2006). More than 30,000 copies sold.

Flannery O’Connor and the Christ-Haunted South (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2004). Still available.

Literature and Theology [Horizons in Theology Series] (Nashville, Tennessee: Abingdon, 2008). Still available.

Preaching and Professing: Sermons by a Teacher Seeking to Proclaim the Gospel (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans, 2009). Still available.

Chesterton: The Nightmare Goodness of God (Waco, Texas: Baylor University Press, 2011). Still available.

Tolkien Among the Moderns, ed. Ralph C. Wood (Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 2015. Still available.

Flannery O’Connor and the Church Made Visible: A Revolutionary Witness for the Sake of the Gospel (Waco, Texas: Baylor University Press, 2024).

B. CHAPTERS IN BOOKS

“From Fashionable Tolerance to Unfashionable Redemption: A Reading of Flannery O’Connor’s First and Last Stories,” in Flannery O’Connor: Modern Critical Views, ed. Harold Bloom (New York: Chelsea House, 1986), pp. 55-64.

“The Crowded Public Square: A Critique of Richard Neuhaus on Civil Religion,” in Civil Religion and Transcendent Experience: Studies in Theology and History, Psychology and Mysticism (Vol. III in the Luce Lectures at Wake Forest University on “Religion and the Social Crisis”), ed. Ralph C. Wood and John E. Collins (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 1988): 85-99.

“The Alienated Self and the Absent Community in the Work of Walker Percy,” in Morphologies of Faith: Essays in Religion and Culture in Honor Nathan A. Scott, Jr., ed. Anthony C. Yu (Atlanta, GA: Scholars Press, 1990): 359-76.

“Faith as the Victory that Overcomes the World” and “Blessed Is the Church,” two sermons printed in Abingdon Preacher’s Annual 1994, ed. John K. Bergland (Nashville, TN: Abingdon, 1993): 143-50, 153-59.

“Flannery O’Connor’s Strange Alliance with Southern Fundamentalists,” in Flannery O’Connor and the Christian Mystery, ed. John J. Murphy. (Provo, UT: Brigham Young University Center for the Study of Christian Values in Literature, 1997): 75-98.

“By Grace Alone Through Faith Alone,” The Library of Distinctive Sermons, Vol. 7, ed. Gary W. Klingsporn (Sisters, OR: Multnomah, 1997): 167-76, with commentary by Gary A. Furr, 177-82.

“The Beautiful, the Ugly, and the Holy in Worship,” in Baptist Reflections on Christianity and the Arts: A Tribute to William L. Hendricks (Lewiston ME: Edwin Mellen, 1997): 53-69.  Excerpted in The Anglican Digest, 40, 5 (Michaelmas, 1998): 12-13.

“Rabbit Angstrom: John Updike’s Ambiguous Pilgrim,” in Rabbit Tales: Poetry and Politics in John Updike’s Rabbit Novels, ed. Lawrence R. Broer (Tuscaloosa and London: University of Alabama, 1998): 129-49.

“Theodicy, Autonomy, and Community: The Nature of Personhood in The Brothers Karamazov,” in On Being a Person: A Multidisciplinary Approach to Personality Theories, ed. Todd H. Speidell (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2002): 88-105.

“Outward Faith, Inward Piety: The Dependence of Spirituality on Worship and Doctrine,” in For All the Saints: Evangelical Theology and Christian Spirituality, ed. Timothy George and Alister McGrath (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 2003): 91-108.

“Supporting the Mission: The Obligation of Faculty and Administration Alike,” in Donald D. Schmeltekopf and Dianna M. Vitanza, eds., The Baptist and Christian Character of Baylor (Waco, TX: Baylor University, 2003): 139-52.

“The Call of the Crucified,” in Exploring and Proclaiming the Apostles’ Creed, ed. Roger Van Harn (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2004): 111-16.

“Walker Percy: Lancelot,” Encyclopedia of Catholic Literature, ed. Mary R. Reichardt, Vol. II (Westport, CN: Greenwood, 2004): 540-51.

“Dostoevsky on Evil as a Perversion of Personhood,” in Dostoevsky’s Polyphonic Talent, ed. Joe Barnhart (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 2005): 1-24.

“J.R.R. Tolkien: Postmodern Visionary of Hope,” in The Gift of Story: Narrating Hope in a Postmodern World, eds. Emily Griesinger and Mark Eaton (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2006): 333-55.

“The Scandalous Baptism of Harry Ashfield: Flannery O’Connor’s ‘The River,’” in Inside the Church of Flannery O’Connor, eds. Joanne Halleran McMullen and Jon Parish Peede (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 2007): 189-204.

“Tolkien’s Augustinian Understanding of Good and Evil: Why The Lord of the Rings Is Not Manichean,” in Tree of Tales: Tolkien, Literature, and Theology, eds. Trevor Hart and Ivan Khovacs (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2007): 65-102, 117-19.

“The Necessity of Christian Radicalism in the Study of Literature: A Reading of Emily Dickinson, William Faulkner, and Flannery O’Connor,” in Theology in the Service of the Church, a festschrift for Fisher Humphreys, eds. Timothy George and Eric F. Mason (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 2008): 199-227. Also printed in The Word in the English Classroom: Best Practices of Faith Integration, eds. Jamie Dessart and Brad Gambill (Abilene, TX: Abilene University Press, 2009): 183-208.

“Personal and Communal Hope in Flannery O’Connor and J.R.R. Tolkien,” in Cynicism and Hope: Reclaiming Discipleship in a Postdemocratic Society, ed. Meg E. Cox (Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2008): 87-99.

“How the Church Became Invisible: A Christian Reading of American Literary Tradition” (with Stanley Hauerwas), in Invisible Conversations: Religion in the Literature of America, ed. Roger Lundin (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2009): 159-86, 210-16.

“Theological Perspectives on Philippians 3:17-4:1, 1 Corinthians 10:1-13, 2 Corinthians 5:16-21,” in Feasting on the Word: Preaching the Revised Common Lectionary, Year C, Vol. 2, eds. David Bartlett and Barbara Brown Taylor (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2009): 62, 64, 66, 86, 88, 90, 110, 112, 114.

“Climbing into the Starry Field and Shouting Hallelujah: O’Connor’s Vision of the World to Come,” in Flannery O’Connor, ed. and intro. Harold Bloom (New York : Bloom’s Literary Criticism, 2009).

“The Perennial Appeal of Christian Humanism: The Case of G. K. Chesterton,” in For Faith and Friendship, eds. Fisher Humphreys, T. J. Mashburn, and Richard F. Wilson (Covington, LA: Insight, 2010): 119-42.

“‘God May Strike You Thisaway’: Flannery O’Connor and Simone Weil on Affliction and Joy,” in Flannery O’Connor in the Age of Terrorism: Essays on Violence and Grace, eds. Avis Hewitt and Robert Donahoo (Knoxville, TN: University of Tennessee Press, 2010): 41-58.

“Fyodor Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov: Resisting Pernicious Tolerance by Living the Iconic Life,” in Thriving in Babylon: Essays in Honor of Chip Conyers, ed. David B. Capes and G. Daryl Charles (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2010): 240-62.

“J. R. R. Tolkien: His Sorrowful Vision of Joy,” in C. S. Lewis and his Friends, ed. David Hein and Edward Henderson (London: SPCK, 2011): 116-34. Available on-line at http://www.abc.net.au/religion/articles/2014/08/15/4067907.htm

“Confronting the World’s Weirdness: J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Children of Húrin,” in The Ring and the Cross: Christianity and The Lord of the Rings, ed. Paul E. Kerry (Madison, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press; Plymouth, UK: Rowman and Littlefield, 2011): 145-51.

“Flannery O’Connor, Benedict XVI, and the Divine Eros,” in Ragione, Fiction e Fede: Convegno internationale su Flannery O’Connor, a cura di Enrique Fuster e John Wauck. (Rome, Italy: Poeta & Christianesimo, 2011): 113-45. 

“Life after Life after Death: A Sermon on the Final Phrase of the Nicene Creed,” in Evangelicals and Nicene Faith: Reclaiming the Apostolic Witness, ed. Timothy George (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2011): 196-201.

“Undeceiving the Deceiver: The Demonic in Flannery O’Connor’s The Violent Bear It Away,” in Finding a Common Thread: Understanding Great Texts from Homer to Flannery O’Connor, ed. Robert C. Roberts, Scott Moore, and Donald D. Schmeltekopf (South Bend, IN: St. Augustine’s Press, 2013): 305-22. Also available at: http://www.abc.net.au/religion/articles/2014/08/15/4067907.htm; also partially available at: http://dish.andrewsullivan.com/2014/08/31/the-devil-and-flannery-oconnor/

“Christianity and Literature,” in The Oxford Handbook of Religion and the Arts, ed. Frank Burch Brown (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2014): 279-93.

“The Nouvelle Humanism of Henri de Lubac and G.K. Chesterton,” in Transformations in Biblical Literary Traditions: Incarnation, Narrative, and Ethics, Essays in Honor of David Lyle Jeffrey, ed. D. H. Williams and Phillip J. Donnelly (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2014): 159-89.

“The Pains of Hell and the Surprises of Purgatory: Walker Percy’s Love in the Ruins,” in Heaven, Hell, … and Purgatory?, ed. Michael Root and James J. Buckley (Eugene, OR: Cascade, 2015): 47-64.

“C. S. Lewis and Theosis: Why Christians Are Meant to Become Icons of God,” in C. S. Lewis and the Inklings: Reflections on Faith, Imagination, and Modern Technology, ed. Salwa Khoddam, Mark R. Hall and Jason Fisher (Newcastle-upon-Tyne, UK: Cambridge Scholars, 2015): 46-60.

“Introduction” and “Tolkien and Postmodernism,” in Tolkien Among the Moderns, ed. Ralph C. Wood (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame, 2015): 1-5, 247-67.

“Søren Kierkegaard, Walker Percy’s Love in the Ruins, and Transparency Before God,” in Kierkegaard and Christian Faith, ed. Paul Martens and C. Stephen Evans (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2016): 95-116.

“Divine Action and Human Response: Four Theological and Visual Interpretations of Paul’s Conversion in Acts 9,” The Book of Acts, ed. Charles Raith (Catholic University Press of America, 2019): 135-52.

“G. K. Chesterton: Apologist of the Literary Imagination,” in The History of Apologetics A Biographical and Methodological Introduction, eds. Benjamin K. Forrest, Joshua D. Chatraw, Alister McGrath. (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Academic, 2020): 560-83.

“The Distinctively Orthodox Character of Solzhenitsyn’s Literary Imagination,” in Solzhenitsyn in American Culture: The Russian Soul in the West, eds. David P. Deavel and Jessica Hooten Wilson. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2020: 94-119. Interview on this essay: Literary Treasures | A Conversation on Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn with Ralph Wood (youtube.com)

“Walker Percy as Literary Apologist for Christianity,” in Handbook of Literary Apologetics: The Imagination’s Journey to God (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2024): 

C. ESSAYS AND OTHER PUBLICATIONS

“Solzhenitsyn as Latter-Day Prophet,” Christian Century, 93 (May 19, 1976): 480-83.

“The Heterodoxy of Flannery O’Connor’s Book Reviews,” Flannery O’Connor Bulletin, 5 (Autumn 1976): 3-29.

“Stoic and Christian in the Modern South” (on William Alexander Percy and Walker Percy), Wake Forest University Magazine, 25 (Spring 1978): 6-9.

“‘Innocents Abroad’ No More: Reflections of an American Returned from Italy,” Christian Century, 95 (July 5-12, 1978): 673-78.

“From Fashionable Tolerance to Unfashionable Redemption: A Reading of Flannery O’Connor’s First and Last Stories,” Flannery O’Connor Bulletin, 7 (1978): 10 25.

“Talent Increased and Returned to God: The Spiritual Legacy of Flannery O’Connor’s Letters”, Anglican Theological Review, 102 (April 1980): 153 67.

“Walker Percy as Satirist: Christian and Humanist Still in Conflict,” Christian Century, 97 (November 19, 1980): 1122-27. Available on-line at http://www.religion-online.org/showarticle.asp?title=1763

“Carlyle Marney: A Dissent,” Perspectives in Religious Studies, 8 (Fall 1981): 252-58.

“Faith and Politics in Tension: The Question of Civil Religion in America” (with Jon M. Reinhardt), Wake Forest University Magazine, 28 (November 1981): 6-10.

“John Updike’s ‘Rabbit’ Saga: A Celebration of Human Ambiguity and Acceptance,” Christian Century, 99 (January 20, 1982): 50-54.

“The Modest and Charitable Humanism of John Cheever,” Christian Century, 99 (November 17, 1982): 1163-66.

“Comic Vision as a Means of Theological Insight,” Explorations, 2 (November 1983): 13-24.

“Evil as Sexual Sorcery” [a review-essay on The Witches of Eastwick, by John Updike], Christian Century, 101 (July 1825, 1984): 715 17.

“The Catholic Faith of Flannery O’Connor’s Protestant Characters: A Critique and Vindication,” Flannery O’Connor Bulletin, 13 (1984): 15-25.

“Unmasking the Prince of Appearances” [a review-essay on Masks of Satan, by Christopher Nugent], Baptist Peacemaker, V, 1 (January 1985): 10, 12.

“Marooned in Mercy: De Vries’s Connubial Comedy,” Christian Century, 102 (May 15, 1985): 491-94.

“An Instinct for Orthodoxy and an Appetite for Truth,” (on G. K. Chesterton) Books and Religion, 13 (November-December 1985): 6, 11.

“We Baptists and Our Schools: The Case for an Extrinsic Relation,” (printed together with four critical responses) Southern Baptist Educator, 51, 2 (October 1986): 3-9.

“Contemporary Narrative Theologies: Telling, Hearing, and Heeding God’s Story,” Books and Religion, 15, 2 (February 1987): 5, 10, 13, 15.  A follow-up exchange with Terrence W. Tilley on Story Theology, Books and Religion, 15, 3-4 (March-April 1987): 29.

“[Walker Percy’s] The Thanatos Syndrome: Exciting, Horrifying, Disappointing,” Christian Century 104, 28 (October 7, 1987): 857-58.

“Christ on Parnassus: P. T. Forsyth Among the Liberals,” Journal of Literature and Theology, 2, 1 (March 1988): 83-95.

“The Craftsmanship of Faith: Moelwyn Merchant’s Poetry and Fiction,” Poetry Nation Review, 14, 6 (May-June 1988): 49-53.

“American Fundamentalism and the Need for a Christian-Humanist Dialogue,” The Ethical Record, 93, 6 (September 1988): 14-21.

“British Churches Encounter the Challenge of Pluralism,” Christian Century, 105, 30 (October 19, 1988): 923-26.

A review-essay on the Library of America Collected Works of Flannery O’Connor, Flannery O’Connor Bulletin, 17 (1988): 92-97.

“God’s Terrifying Mercy,” Christian Century, 106, 5 (February 15, 1989): 164-65.

“Karl Barth, John Updike, and the Cheerful God,” Books and Religion, (Winter 1989): 5, 26, 29-31.

“The Business of the Church,” Christian Century, 106, 7 (March 1, 1989): 221-22.

“John Updike’s Song of Himself” (on Self-Consciousness: Memoirs), Christian Century, 106, 17 (May 17, 1989): 526-28.

“The Long-Run Efficacy of Love: Four Books on Flannery O’Connor,” Flannery O’Connor Bulletin, 18 (1989): 99-105.

“Professing Theology: In Praise of Teachers” (a tribute to Paul Wells Barrus), Christian Century, 107, 5 (February 7-14, 1990): 152-55.  Reprinted in the Commerce (Texas) Journal, July 22, 1992.

“The Concept of Genre,” Mercer Dictionary of the Bible (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 1990), pp. 323-24.

“Walker Percy’s Undespairing Search,” Christian Century 107, 19 (June 13-20, 1990): 588, 590-91.

“Lasting Truth Amidst Fleeting Circumstance: An Exemplary History of an East Texas Town,” East Texas Historical Journal, XXVIII, 2 (Fall 1990): 52-58.

“Rediscovering the Radical Christian Consensus: The Theology of Thomas Oden,” Perspectives in Religious Studies, 17, 3 (Fall 1990): 253-60.

“Literature as a Moral and Spiritual Awakening,” in The Paul Wells Barrus Lectures, 1983-1989.  Commerce, TX: East Texas State University Press, 1990.  Pp. 17-28.

“Rabbit Runs Down” [a review-essay on John Updike’s Rabbit at Rest], Christian Century 107, 34 (November 21-28, 1990): 1099-1101.

“C. S. Lewis and His Skeptics,” Books and Religion (Spring 1991): 8-9, 25.

“The Man Who Thought About Thanatos” [a review essay on Walker Percy’s Signposts in a Strange Land], Christian Century 108, 29 (October 16, 1991): 936-9.

“On the Long Road Back to Christianity” [a review-essay on All My Road Before Me: The Diary of C. S. Lewis 1922-1927], Christian Century, 108, 34 (November 20-27, 1991): 1096-1101.  Partially reprinted, together with a letter from the author, in The [C.S.] Lewis Legacy 53 (Summer 1992): 2, 19.

“Flannery O’Connor, H. L. Mencken, and the Southern Agrarians: A Dispute over Religion more than Region,” Flannery O’Connor Bulletin (1991): 1-21.

“Gumption and Grace in the Novels of Kaye Gibbons,” Christian Century 109, 27 (September 23-30, 1992): 842-6.

“Baptism in a Coffin,” Christian Century 109, 30 (October 21, 1992): 925-6.  Reprinted in Leadership

“Words Under the Rocks” [an essay on the film version of Norman Maclean’s A River Runs Through It], Christian Century 110, 2 (January 20, 1993): 44-6.  Winner of the Associated Church Press 1993 Award of Merit for Critical Reviews.

“Traveling the One Road: The Lord of the Rings as a ‘Pre-Christian’ Classic,” Christian Century 110, 6 (February 24, 1993): 208-11.

“The Lesson and the Arts,” two literary commentaries on the lectionary texts for Propers 10 and 11, Lectionary Homiletics, IV, 8: July 1993, pp. 12, 21-22.

“Flannery O’Connor, Martin Heidegger, and Modern Nihilism: A Reading of ‘Good Country People,’” Flannery O’Connor Bulletin 21 (1993): 100-18.

“To the Unknown God: Peter Berger’s Theology of Transcendence,” Perspectives in Religious Studies, 20, 2 (Summer 1993): 175-86.  Revised version published as “Peter Berger’s Theology of Transcendence,” dialog, 33 (Summer 1994): 207-13; together with a response by Berger, 213-14. 

“Novelist as Moralist: Walker Percy’s Faith and Fiction” [a review-essay on Pilgrim in the Ruins: A Life of Walker Percy, by Jay Tolson], Christian Century, 110, 27 (October 6, 1993): 937-40.  Excerpted in the Wake Forest Magazine, 42, 1 (September 1994): 29.

“Remembering Peter De Vries,” Christian Century, 110, 29 (October 23, 1990): 1006-7.  Excerpts reprinted by Martin E. Marty in Context (December 15, 1993): 6.

An Interview with Ken Myers about the life and work of Peter De Vries, Mars Hill Audio Journal, Powhatan, VA, September/October, 1993.

“The Tears of Things” (a review of Richard Attenborough’s film version of William Nicholson’s Shadowlands), Christian Century, 111, 6 (February 23, 1994): 200-202.

“Rapidly Rises the Morning Tide: An Essay on P. D. James’ The Children of Men,” Theology Today, 51, 2 (July 1994): 277-88.

“The Heart of a Lonely Hunter,” (on Flannery O’Connor’s racial attitudes) Wake Forest Magazine, 42, 1 (September 1994): 24-28.

“Literary Laughter: Three Comic Writers Who Invigorate Faith,” (on Flannery O’Connor, Walker Percy, and Peter De Vries), Inklings 1, 3 (Fall 1994): 15, 21.

“Flannery O’Connor’s Racial Morals and Manners,” Christian Century, 111, 33 (November 16, 1994): 1076-81.

“‘Where Is the Voice Coming From?’  Flannery O’Connor on Race,” Flannery O’Connor Bulletin, 22 (1993-94): 90-118.  A letter in response from Sally Fitzgerald, together with a reply from the author, Flannery O’Connor Bulletin, 23 (1994-95): 175-83.

“What Ever Happened to Baptist Calvinism?  A Response to Molly Marshall and Clark Pinnock on the Nature of Salvation in Jesus Christ and in the World’s Religions,” Review and Expositor, 91, 4 (Fall 1994): 593-608.

“Flannery O’Connor and Her Post-Modern Critics” [a review-essay on Jon Lance Bacon’s Flannery O’Connor and Cold War Culture, Ruthann Knechel Johansen’s The Narrative Secret of Flannery O’Connor: The Trickster as Interpreter, and Anthony Di Renzo’s American Gargoyles: Flannery O’Connor and the Medieval Grotesque], Religion and Literature, 26, 3 (Autumn 1994): 81-88.

“An Interview with Nathan A. Scott, Jr.,” Christianity and Literature, 43, 2 (Winter 1994): 213-26.

Five “Living by the Word” meditations on the Lectionary Texts for July-September 1995:

“The God Who Matters,” Christian Century, 112, 22 (July 19-26, 1995): 707.
“Performing the Faith,” Christian Century, 112, 23 (August 2-9, 1995): 737.
“True Contentment,” Christian Century, 112, 24 (August 16-23, 1995): 771.
“First in Sin, First in Service,” Christian Century, 112, 25 (Aug. 30-Sep. 6, 1995): 811
“A Passion for Lesser Things,” Christian Century, 112, 26 (September 13-20, 1995): 843

“Detecting Our Guilt” (an essay-review of P. D. James’s Original Sin), Books and Culture, 1, 1 (September-October 1995): 21.

“The Baptized Imagination: C. S. Lewis’s Fictional Apologetics,” Christian Century, 112, 25 (August 30-September 6, 1995): 812-15.

“Blunted Omega Points, Wingless Chickens, and Displaced Critics” [a review-essay on Margaret Early Whitt’s Understanding Flannery O’Connor; Ted R. Spivey’s Flannery O’Connor: The Woman, the Thinker, the Visionary; and Michael Kreyling’s New Essays on Wise Blood], Flannery O’Connor Bulletin, 23 (1994-95): 195-206.

“In Defense of the Ivory Tower,” The Philomathesian, II, 1 (Fall 1995): 5-13.

“Breathable Air,” Crisis 13, 11 (December 1995): 57.

“Into the Void: Updike’s Sloth and America’s Religion” [a review-essay on In the Beauty of the Lilies, by John Updike], Christian Century, 113, 14 (April 24, 1996): 452-57.  Four letters of response, together with the author’s reply, ibid., 113, 22 (July 17-24, 1996): 730-32.

“Russell Kirk, Knight of Cheerful Conservatism” [a review-essay on The Sword of Imagination: Memoirs of a Half-Century of Literary Conflict, by Russell Kirk), Christian Century, 113, 30 (October 23, 1996): 1015-21. Richard John Neuhaus offered a critical response in First Things, 72 (April 1997): 62. 

“The Fallacy of ‘Getting Something out of Worship,’” Christian Ministry 28, 2 (March-April, 1997): 16-18.

“Grits and Grace: Flannery O’Connor’s Strange Alliance with Southern Fundamentalists,” Mars Hill Review 13 (Winter/Spring 1999): 41-52.

“Edifying Discourses,” (a brief commendation, to pastors and church leaders, of five important books written in the last 20 years), Christian Century, 114, 20 (July 2-9, 1997): 616-17.

“James Wm. McClendon Jr.’s Doctrine: An Appreciation,” Perspectives in Religious Studies, 24, 2 (Summer 1997): 195-99.  Reprinted in Nexus Libri (Fall/Winter 1997-98: 1-3).

“People Are Funny,” [a review-essay on Redeeming Laughter: The Comic Dimension of Human Experience, by Peter Berger], Christian Century, 114, 30 (October 29, 1997): 975-76.

“The Holy Ugly: The Grotesque in the Literature of Charles Dickens and Flannery O’Connor,” Inklings, 3, 4 (Winter, 1997-98): 11-13.

“True Opposites” [a review-essay on The Correspondence of Shelby Foote and Walker Percy, by Jay Tolson], Christian Century, 114, 32: (November 12, 1997): 1048-50.

“‘Obedience to the Unenforceable’: Mystery, Manners, and Masks in ‘Judgment Day,’ Flannery O’Connor Bulletin, 25 (1996-97): 153-74.

“Why I Came to Samford,” A Festschrift in Honor of the Retirement of Dr. W. T. (Dub) Edwards, privately printed, May 1998, Samford University, Birmingham, Alabama.

“In Defense of Disbelief,” First Things, 86 (October 1998): 28-33.  Excerpted in the Chronicle of Higher Education, XLV, 8 (October 16, 1998): B10; twice in Context, ed. Martin E. Marty (January 15, 1999): 5, and (May 15, 1999): 2-3; the Dallas Morning News, March 27, 1999: 2G; and the Christian Century 117, 1 (January 5-12, 2000: 6).

“Foreword” to Hickory Hill: Family Stories of Race, Religion, and Romance in an East Texas Town, by Fred McKenzie (Avinger, Texas: M-M Press, 1999): viii.

“Rest Not in Peace: James Burtchaell on the Death and Rebirth of Christian Colleges,” Christian Century 116, 3 (February 3, 1999): 55-60. Answered in letters to the editor, Vol. 116, 8 (March 10, 1999): 293; and Vol. 116, 12: (April 14, 1999): 429.  Excerpted in the Baylor News, 8, 10 (December 1998): 5.

“We don’t go head-first into faith; we go heart-first,” Waco Tribune-Herald, April 17, 1999, p. 11A.

“Attending to the other” [a review-essay on Elegy for Iris (Murdoch), by John Bayley], Christian Century 116, 16 (May 19-26, 1999): 580-85.

“Presumed Guilty” (an essay-review on P. D. James’s A Certain Justice), Mars Hill Review 13 (Winter/Spring 1999): 138-41.

“The Grandeur of God and the Love of Literature,” Christian Ethics Today, 5, 6 (December 1999): 26-29.  Also published in the Commerce (Texas) Journal, December 12, 19, 26, 1999 and January 2, 2000, page 5A each occasion.

“Flannery O’Connor on the Beautiful, the Ugly, and the Holy,” The Round Table (of the South Central College English Association) N.S., 12: (Fall 1999): 1-5.

“The Scandal of Our Redemption,” Princeton Theological Review 6, 4 (Autumn 1999): 25-29.

“Dostoevsky on Evil as a Perversion of Personhood: A Reading of Ivan Karamazov and the Grand Inquisitor,” Perspectives in Religious Studies 26, 3 (Fall 1999): 331-48.

“A Woman Who Waited for the Lord God,” Christian Ethics Today (February 2000): 16-18.

How Shall They Hear Without a Preacher? (“Be Ye Hearers of the Word and Not Doers Only,” “The Sermon as the Center of Baptist Worship,” and “The Uses of the Imagination in Preaching the Gospel”): The Warren Carr Lectures on Preaching, Christian Ethics Today 6, 2: (April 2000): 4-17.

“G. K. Chesterton and the Many Roads Leading to Jerusalem” [a review-essay on The Size of Chesterton’s Catholicism, by David Fagerberg], Pro Ecclesia IX, 2 (Spring 2000): 236-40.

“‘Lost in Wonder, Love, and Praise’: The Witness of the Wesleys for Christian Life Today,” Christian Ethics Today 6, 3: (May-June 2000): 4-9.

“Lest the World’s Amnesia Be Complete: A Reading of Walter Miller’s A Canticle for Leibowitz,” Perspectives in Religious Studies 27, 1 (Spring 2000): 83-97.  Revised and reprinted in Religion and Literature 33, 1 (Spring 2001): 23-41.

“Deep Mysteries: The World of P. D. James” [a review-essay on A Time for Remembering, by P. D. James] Christian Century 117, 26 (September 27-October 4, 2000): 960-62.

“Picturing Protestantism,” [a review-essay on Protestants and Pictures: Religion, Visual Culture, and the Age of American Mass Production, by David Morgan], First Things 107 (November 2000): 45-48. 

“A Time for Gathering and a Time for Scattering,” Christian Ethics Today 6, 6 (December 2000): 15-17; together with a circular letter concerning fundamentalism, pp. 3, 17.

“The Peculiar Heroism of Frodo Baggins of Bag End,” an interview on the work of J.R.R. Tolkien, Mars Hill Audio Journal 49 (March-April 2001).

“The Providential and Scientific Seizures of Giant Despair,” the International John Bunyan Society Recorder 7 (Spring 2001): 5-7.

“Eugene Genovese and the Biblical Tragedy of the South,” Perspectives in Religious Studies, 28, 1 (Spring 2001): 99-113.

“God’s Repentance-Enabling Forgiveness,” Christian Reflection (Autumn 2001): 64-70

“Lest the World’s Amnesia Be Complete: A Reading of Walter Miller’s A Canticle for Leibowitz,” Religion and Literature, 33, 1 (Spring 2001): 23-41.

“Christian Spirituality: Inward Piety or Outward Practice?” Christian Ethics Today, 7, 5 (October 2001): 3-6.

“C. S. Lewis and the Ordering of Our Loves” [a review-essay on six recent books devoted to Lewis], Christianity and Literature, 51, 1 (Autumn 2001): 109-17.

“Frodo Lives” [a review-essay on J.R.R. Tolkien: Author of the Century, by Tom Shippey], Christian Century, 118, 32 (November 21-28, 2001): 24-29.

“Discerning God in the Arts” [a review-essay on Frank Burch Brown’s Good Taste, Bad Taste, Christian Taste: Aesthetics in Religious Life; Jeremy Begbie’s Voicing Creation’s Praise: Towards a Theology of the Arts; and William A. Dyrness’s Visual Faith: Art, Theology, and Worship in Dialogue], Image: A Journal of Religion and the Arts 32 (Fall 2001): 118-22.

“Evangelicalism, With and Without Reformation” [a review-essay on American Evangelical Christianity: An Introduction, by Mark A. Noll), First Things, 116 (October 2001): 43-46; with a response by James Nuechterlein, pp. 8-9; and a further exchange in 119 (January 2002): 8-9.

“Christianity and Bakhtin” [a review-essay on Christianity in Bakhtin: God and the Exiled Author, by Ruth Coates], Modern Theology 18, 1 (January 2002): 119-24. 

“Teaching Because It Really Matters,” Christian Century 119, 4 (February 13-20, 2002): 20-21.

“Teaching and Living and Dying ‘As If Nothing Had Happened’: The Example of J. R. R. Tolkien,” Christianity and Literature 51, 2 (Winter 2002): 320-25.

An interview about the work of P. D. James, Mars Hill Audio Journal 54: (January-February 2002).

“The Gates of Hell Shall Not Prevail,” Christian Reflection (Spring 2002): 31-34.

An interview about the evangelism of Billy Graham for the Australia Broadcasting Company’s Radio National series, April 14, 2002.

“Opening the Mind to the Solidity of Christian Learning” (retitled “Secular  university blahs: an epidemic,” Waco Tribune-Herald (May 18, 2002), p. 17A.

“Flannery O’Connor’s Preachers and Mikhail Bakhtin’s Dialogical Understanding of Truth,” Flannery O’Connor Review 1 (2001-2002): 56-73.

“The Criticism of Gabriel Josipovici: Trusting Words while Suspecting the Word,” Faith and Reason XXVII, 1 (Spring 2002): 75-85.

“For Heart and Mind” [on George Herbert’s “Love (III)”] Christian Century 119, 14 (July 3-10, 2002): 9.

“The Comedy of Redemption: Humor in the Bible,” an interview with Marla Pearson, The Door Magazine 183 (September/October 2002): 2-10.

“Still Doing Theology,” Christian Century 119, 19 (September 11-24, 2002): 10-11.

“On Not Speaking of Man in a Loud Voice: Flannery O’Connor’s Grotesque Preachers of the Gospel,” The Cresset LXVI 2 (November 2002): 11-18.

“Ivan Karamazov’s Mistake,” First Things 128 (December 2002): 29-36.

“P.D. James and the Mystery of Iniquity” [an interview with Baroness James of Holland Park] Modern Age 44, 4 (Fall 2002): 350-358.

“Tolkien’s Orthodoxy: A Response to Berit Kjos,” posted December 27, 2002 on the Leadership University’s website (http://dev.leaderu.com/humanities/wood-response.html). This essay is a rejoinder to Kjos’s argument (in “Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings: Truth, Myth or Both?”) that Tolkien is essentially a pagan and heretical writer.

“A Case for P. D. James as a Christian Novelist,” Theology Today 59, 4 (January 2003): 583-95.

“Hungry Eye: The Two Towers and the Seductiveness of Spectacle,” Books and Culture 9, 2: (March/April 2003): 16-17.

“Good and Evil in Middle-earth,” Christian History XII, 2, Issue78 (May 2003): 28-31.

“Baylor’s faculty is committed to teaching,” Waco Tribune-Herald (June 27, 2003): 15A.

Baylor University still Baptist – and much more,” Houston Chronicle (July 12, 2003): 21A.

“Conflict and Convergence on Fundamental Matters in C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien,” Renascence LV, 4, Summer 2003): 315-338.

“Frodo’s Faith: Middle-earth truths,” Christian Century 120, 18 (September 6, 2003): 20-25. Reprinted as “Frodo’s Forgiveness,” Christian Reflection (Spring 2004): 30-37

“What Tolkien Knew—and Believed,” an interview in Pages (September-October, 2003): 38.

“Baylor Reaps the Enlightenment Whirlwind,” Christianity Today Website (http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct), posted October 10, 2003.

“The Place of the Virtues in The Lord of the Rings,” Mars Hill Audio Journal 64 (September-October 2003). Also included in Maker of Middle-earth, (Charlottesville, VA: Mars Hill Audio, 2003), with further interviews by Tom Shippey and Joseph Pearce.

“The Lure of the Obvious in Peter Jackson’s The Return of the King,” Christianity Today Website (http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct), posted December 17, 2003.

“Murder, She Wrote,” [a review-essay on The Murder Room, by P. D. James] Books and Culture (March-April 2004): 13.

“The Triumph of Spectacle” [on the Peter Jackson film versions of The Lord of the Rings] Christian Reflection 11 (Spring 2004): 83-87.

“Reading and Following the Lives of the Saints: The Case of Walter Wangerin’s Saint Julian,” The Cresset LXVII, 4 (Easter 2004): 32-34.

“The Accomplishments and Failures of Peter Jackson’s Tolkien Movies,” Mars Hill Audio Journal 66 (January-February 2004).

“A Man Alive in the Midst of Death,” [a tribute to A. J. (“Chip”) Conyers] Books and Culture 10, 6 (November-December 2004): 6.

“The Naked Public Square Now: A Symposium,” First Things 147 (November 2004): 18-20.

“Following the Hobbit Trail: Ralph Wood, Expert on J. R. R. Tolkien,” [an interview] Reformed Quarterly (Winter 2004): 12-13.

“‘Hillbilly Thomist’: Flannery O’Connor and the Truth of Things,” Mars Hill Audio Journal 73 (March-April 2005); extended version on Mars Hill Audio Conversations 22 (2005).

“Baylor’s Battle,” Dallas Morning News (July 3, 2005): 5P.

“America’s Best Short-Story Writer: Flannery O’Connor” [interview], Sacerdos (July-August, 2005): 44-47.

“A Closer Look” [interview], Cheers! The Flannery O’Connor Society Newsletter 12, 1 (Spring/Summer 2005): 4-6.

“Following the Many Roads of Recent Tolkien Scholarship” [a review-essay on six related books about Tolkien], Christianity and Literature 54, 4 (Summer 2005): 587-608.

“Flannery O’Connor’s Witness to the Gospel of Life,” Modern Age 47, 4 (Fall 2005): 321-29.

“The God of Narnia: Good and Terrible,” Christian Century 122, 26 (December 27, 2005): 8-9.

“How the Church Became Invisible: A Christian Reading of American Literary Tradition,” (with Stanley Hauerwas) Religion and Literature 38, 1 (Spring 2006): 61-93.

Forty-minute, free download interview on the relation of Christianity and Literature, http://www.christianaudio.com/product_info.php?products_id=452

“Murder, God, and P.D. James” [a review-essay on The Lighthouse, by P. D. James], First Things 167 (November 2006): 38-41.

“The Failure of Aesthetic and Moral Intelligence in Recent Criticism of Flannery O’Connor,” Faith and Reason 31:4 (2006): 541-564).

“‘God May Strike You Thisaway’: Flannery O’Connor and Simone Weil on Affliction and Joy,” Renascence LIX, 3 (Spring 2007): 181-95.

“Mysteries and Morals: The Historical Fiction of C.J. Sansom,” Christian Century 124, 9 (May 1, 2007): 26-35.

“An Alternative Vision for the Christian University,” Perspectives in Religious Studies 34, 4 (Winter 2007): 387-403.

“The Absolutely True Metanarrative or a Partially True Micronarrative?: The Place of Roman Catholicism in Southern Literature,” Religion and the Arts 11, (2007): 503-508.

“The Catholic Fantastic of Chesterton and Tolkien,” at the online version of First Things (http://www.firstthings.com/onthesquare/?m=200801) originally posted January 2, 2008.

“The Liberal Chesterton,” Christian Century 125, 9 (May 6, 2008): 28-35.

“Sacramental Suffering: The Friendship of Flannery O’Connor and Elizabeth Hester,” Modern Theology 24:3 (July 2008): 387-411.

“Orthodoxy at a Hundred” (on the centenary of Chesterton’s most famous work), First Things 187 (November 2008): 39-43. (https://www.firstthings.com/article/2008/11/orthodoxy-at-a-hundred/) Also reprinted in the Chesterton Review XXXIV, 3 & 4 (Fall/Winter 2008): 667-675.

Invited response to W. F. Meredith’s “The Reification of Evil and the Failure of Theodicy:  The Devil in Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov,” The Religion & Culture Web Forum, The Martin Marty Center for the Advanced Study of Religion (December 2008): http://divinity.uchicago.edu/martycenter/publications/webforum/

“Such a Catholic” [a review-essay on Flannery: A Life of Flannery O’Connor, by Brad Gooch], National Review LXI, 4 (March 9, 2009): 38, 40-42.

“Reading Flannery,” National Review On-Line March 25, 2009 (http://article.nationalreview.com/?q= OGVhMjQyODI1ZmYw MGVjOD QzZTNjNWYyNTg0NWI4ZTQ=)

“Why ‘The Dixie Limited’ Is Indeed Limited: Moral Transformation in Faulkner and O’Connor,” The Stories of Flannery and Faulkner: A Conference and Celebration, Georgia College and State University, Milledgeville, Georgia, April 5, 2008

“Tolkien Our Post-Modern Contemporary,” The Ring Goes Ever On, Proceedings of the Tolkien 2005 Conference: 50 Years of The Lord of the Rings, Aston University, Birmingham, UK, 11-15 August 2005, ed Sarah Wells. Vol 1, CD ROM (ISBN 0-905520-27-0) published by The Tolkien Society, Coventry, England, 2008.

“God verwondt ons, om ons bij Hem te brengen” (“God wounds us in order to bring us to himself,” an interview with Tjerk de Reus, Katholiek Nieuwsblad (’s-Hertogenbosch, the Netherlands), May 22, 2009: 15.

“The Vices and Virtues of G. K. Chesterton’s Politics,” First Principles (July 6, 2009):http://www.firstprinciplesjournal.com/articles.aspx?article=1283&theme=home&loc=b
“Russia’s Gospel Writer,” a review-essay on Predrag Cicovacki’s Dostoevsky and the Affirmation of Life and Rowan Williams’ Dostoevsky: Language, Faith, and Fiction, Touchstone 22, 6 (July-August, 2009): 28-33. Associated Church Press Award of Excellence for Best Critical Review 2010.
“Hazel Motes as a Flesh-Mortifying Saint in Flannery O’Connor’s Wise Blood, Flannery O’Connor Review 7 (2009): 87-93.

“‘The Twain Shall Become One’: The Consolidation of the Linden and Kildare Schools, 1959-2009,” Cass County Sun (Linden, Texas) October 7, 2009, pp. 5-6.

“The Triumph of the Eye,” Women and the Church, Christian Reflection (2009): 37-46.

“Hospitality as the Gift Greater than Tolerance: G. K. Chesterton’s The Ball and the Cross,” Logos 12:4 (Fall 2009): 258-85.

Interview on Flannery O’Connor, Religion and Ethics Newsweekly, aired on the Public Broadcasting System during the week of November 22, 2009: http://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/episodes/november-20-2009/flannery-oconnor/5043/ The extended interview: http://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/episodes/november-20-2009/ralph-wood-extended-interview/5047/

“Personal and Communal Hope: Flannery O’Connor and J. R. R. Tolkien,” Cynicism & Hope: Reclaiming Discipleship in a Post-Democratic Society, ed. Meg E. Cox, Cascade, 2009.

“The Mystery of Evil According to P. D. James,” Christian Century 127:29 (May 4, 2010): 10-11.

“The Argument from Joy: The Current State of Scholarship on G.K. Chesterton as Thinker and Theologian,” VII: An Anglo-American Literary Review 27 (2010): 85-92.

“Flannery O’Connor, Benedict XVI, and the Divine Eros,” Christianity and Literature 60:1 (Autumn 2010): 35-66. Winner of the Lionel Basney Award for the best essay published in Christianity and Literature for 2011.

Invited response to Jessica N. DeCou’s “‘Too Dogmatic for Words’? Karl Barth’s Comic Theology in Dialogue with the Comedy of Craig Ferguson.” The Religion & Culture Web Forum, The Martin Marty Center for the Advanced Study of Religion, University of Chicago (February 2011).
http://divinity.uchicago.edu/martycenter/publications/webforum/022011/Wood%20response%20to%20DeCou.pdf

“O’Connor, Mary Flannery,” New Catholic Encyclopedia Supplement 2011. Ed. Robert L. Fastiggi. Vol. 2. (Detroit, MI: Gale, 2011): 618-621.

“My Water, His Wine,” Touchstone: A Journal of Mere Christianity 24:4 (July-August, 2011): 26-31. Also available on-line:http://www.touchstonemag.com/archives/article.php?id=24-04-026-f

“J.R. R. Tolkien: His Sorrowful Vision of Joy,” C. S. Lewis and his Friends, ed. David Hein and Edward Henderson (London: SPCK, 2011): 116-34.

“Blessed and Dangerous: A Review-Essay on Recent Books Concerning John Henry Newman,” Christian Century 129:15 (July 25, 2012): 28-31.

“The Sacramental Vision of G. K. Chesterton,” an interview with Ken Myers, Mars Hill Audio Journal 112 (July-August 2012).

“Church and Tradition,” Growth and Renewal 6:2 (Fall 2012): 5.

“An Interview with Ralph Wood,” Gilbert Magazine 16:1-2 (September/October 2012):  10-12.

“The Lady with the Torn Hair Who Looks on Gladiators in Grapple: G. K. Chesterton’s Marian Poems,” Christianity and Literature 62, 1 (Autumn 2012): 29-55.

“Chesterton and Hitchens: The Need for Worthy Opponents,” Books and Culture 19:1 January-February 2013): 11-15. Also available on-line: http://www.booksandculture.com/articles/2013/janfeb/chesterton-vs-hitchens.html

“The Unweary Making of Many Books about Flannery O’Connor” an essay-review on Susan Srigley, ed., Dark Faith: New Essays on Flannery O’Connor’s The Violent Bear It Away; Charles E. May, ed., Critical Insights: Flannery O’Connor; and Jonathan Rogers, The Terrible Speed of Mercy: A Spiritual Autobiography of Flannery O’Connor. Flannery O’Connor Bulletin, 2013: 

“Inexhaustible Lewis,” an essay-review on nine recent books devoted to C. S. Lewis. Christian Century 130, 24: (November 27, 2013): 28-31.

“Art and Soul,” an essay-review on Flannery O’Connor, A Prayer Journal. First Things 240 (February 2014): 53-54. https://www.firstthings.com/article/2014/02/art-and-soul

“Becoming Icons of God: Divinization in the Writings of C. S. Lewis,” Australia Broadcasting Company, Religion and Ethics, February, 14, 2014: http://www.abc.net.au/religion/articles/2014/02/19/3948008.htm

“’Sad, but not Unhappy’: Tolkien’s Sorrowful Vision of Joy,” Australia Broadcasting Company, Religion and Ethics, June 2, 2014:

http://www.abc.net.au/religion/articles/2014/06/02/4017211.htm

Sacred and Satanic Violence: The Place of the Demonic in the Fiction of Flannery O’Connor,” Australia Broadcasting Company, Religion and Ethics, 20 August 2014: http://www.abc.net.au/religion/articles/2014/08/15/4067907.htm

“The Last Man and the First Man: P.D. James’s Detection of the Divine Mysteries.” First Things weblog, December 10, 2014 (http://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2014/12/the-last-man-and-the-first-man)

“Living in the Ruins: Walker Percy, Kierkegaard and the Healing Self,” Australia Broadcasting Company, Religion and Ethics, 15 February 2015: http://www.abc.net.au/religion/articles/2015/02/19/4183610.htm

“Why tolerance and voluntaryism are bad ideas: Stanley Hauerwas’s summons to Baptists and other ‘enlightened, Christians,” Review and Expositor 112 (2015): 71–80.

“Flannery O’Connor: Stamped but Not Cancelled,” First Things, June 16, 2015. https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2015/06/flannery-oconnor-stamped-but-not-cancelled

“Bread of the Earth and Bread of Heaven: G. K. Chesterton’s Christian Economics,” Christian History 113 (2015): 14-17. Available on-line at: https://www.christianhistoryinstitute.org/magazine/article/bread-of-the-earth-and-bread-of-heaven/

“The Prophetic Preacher: In Memoriam: Father Thomas Hopko,” Touchstone: A Journal of Mere Christianity 28:4 (July/August 2015):30-33.

“Inklings of Good News” (a review-essay on Philip Zaleski and Carol Zaleski, The Fellowship: The Literary Lives of the Inklings: J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Owen Barfield, Charles Williams. Christian Century 132, 18 (September 2, 2015): 32-36.

“States of Despair: Walker Percy and the Malaise of the Modern Self,” Australia Broadcasting Company, Religion and Ethics, 10 February 2016: http://www.abc.net.au/religion/articles/2016/02/10/4403855.htm

“Learning to Think Twice about the Sacraments,” Synaxis 3, 1 (2016): 42-44.

“’Sad, but not Unhappy’: Tolkien’s Sorrowful Vision of Joy,” Australia Broadcasting Company, Religion and Ethics, October 6, 2016: http://www.abc.net.au/religion/articles/2014/06/02/4017211.htm.

“Billy, we hardly knew ye: A tribute to William A. Sessions (1918-2016),” Flannery O’Connor Review, 15 (2017): 103-11.

“Flannery O’Connor’s Augustinian Politics,” Interpretation: A Journal of Political Philosophy 44, 2 (Winter 2018): 277-93. Available on line: https://tinyurl.com/y86ho4x8

“The Love of God and the Love of Literature,” Crux 54, 1 (Spring 2018): 19-28.
“The Percy Prophecy: Funny, Frightening,” American Conservative 17, 3 (May/June 2018): 68-73. Also available on line: https://tinyurl.com/yba5xorm.
“The self among the ruins: Walker Percy’s diagnosis of the human condition,” Australian Broadcasting Company, Religion and Ethics series. Posted Mon 11 Nov 2019, 6:52pm. (https://www.abc.net.au/religion/walker-percy-diagnosis-of-the-human-condition)

“A World Grown Strange: A Summons to Teachers of Literature,” Christianity and Literature 70, 3 (September 2021): 224-30.

“What Do I Have That I Did Not Receive? Reflections on the Unmerited Gifts I’ve Received from Others,” Touchstone: A Journal of Mere Christianity, 35, 2 (March/April, 2022): 36-40. This article was adapted from remarks upon receiving the Lifetime Achievement Award of the Conference on Christianity and Literature for 2020.

“P. D. James’s Detection of the Deepest Mysteries,” Public Discourse, June 14, 2022 (https://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2022/06/82826/)

“Instruments of Grace: Flannery O’Connor & the Pantocrator,” Touchstone: A Journal of Mere Christianity 36, 5 (2023), 34–39. (https://www.touchstonemag.com/archives/article.php)

“Czeslaw Milosz: Necessary Poet for Our Time of Terror,” Christianity and Literature 72, 4 (December 2023): 642-52.

“Charles Péguy: Eternity in Love with the Productions of Time,” Interpretation: A Journal of Political Philosophy, 50, 1 (Fall 2023): 149-68.

“G. K. Chesterton’s Darkly Comedic Apologetics,” Logos, 27, 1 (Winter 2024): 57-81.

“Why Flannery O’Connor Had Doubts about ‘Why Do the Heathen Rage?’” Mississippi Quarterly, 76, 4 (Autumn 2024): 

“An Evangelical Warning to Evangelical Christian Nationalists”: a review-essay on Another Gospel, by Joel Looper (Christianity Today on-line, September 2024).

D. BOOK REVIEWS, NOTES, LETTERS

At the Risk of Idolatry, by Warren T. Carr.  Perspectives in Religious Studies, 1 (Spring 1974): 85-87.

Three American Moralists: Mailer, Bellow, Trilling, by Nathan A. Scott, Jr.  Christian Century, 91 (April 17, 1974): 432.

Flannery O’Connor, by Preston M. Browning, Jr.  Christian Century, 92 (April 9, 1975): 360.

The Message in the Bottle, by Walker Percy.  Christian Cen¬tury, 92 (December 3, 1975): 1117-18.

The Story-Shaped World: Fiction and Metaphysics, by Brian Wicker.  Journal of Religion, 57 (April 1977): 205-6.

Lancelot, by Walker Percy.  Christian Century, 94 (July 6-13, 1977): 634-36.

A Severe Mercy, by Sheldon Vanauken.  Christian Century, 95 (January 4-11, 1978): 20.

The Longing for a Form: Essays on the Fiction of C. S. Lewis.  Christian Century, 95 (January 18, 1978): 59.

The Reflection of Theology in Literature: A Case Study in Theology and Culture, by William Mallard.  Christian Century, 95 (March 1, 1978): 218-19.

Sartre and the Sacred, by Thomas M. King.  Journal of Religion, 58 (Summer 1978): 325-27.

A Life of George Herbert, by Amy M. Charles.  Religious Studies Review, 4 (October 1978): 307.

The Added Dimension: The Art and Mind of Flannery O’Connor, ed. Melvin J. Friedman and Lewis A. Lawson.  Religious Studies Review, 5 (January 1979): 79.

The Taste for the Other: The Social and Ethical Thought of C. S. Lewis, by Gilbert Meilaender.  Christian Century, 96 (February 21, 1979): 191-92.

The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O’Connor, ed. Sally Fitzgerald.  Religious Studies Review, 5 (July 1979): 235.

The Inklings: C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien, Charles Williams and Their Friends, by Humphrey Carpenter.  Christian Century, 96 (August 15-22, 1979): 804.

The Myth of the Picaro: Continuity and Transformation of the Picaresque Novel 1554 1954, by Alexander Blackburn.  Religious Studies Review, 5 (October 1979): 313-14.

Sleepless Nights, by Elizabeth Hardwick.  Christian Century, 97 (February 6-13, 1980): 172, 174.

“Problems” and Other Stories, by John Updike.  Cross Currents, 30 (Spring 1980): 71-74.

Karl Barth: His Life from Letters and Autobiographical Texts, by Eberhard Busch.  Perspectives in Religious Studies, 7 (Spring 1980): 75-78.

Our Life in God’s Light: Essays by Hugh T. Kerr, ed. John M. Mulder.  Perspectives in Religious Studies, 7 (Summer 1980): 171-73.

Orwell: The Transformation, by Peter Stansky and William Abrahams.  Christian Century, 97 (September 24, 1980): 886-89.

Correspondence of F. Scott Fitzgerald, ed. Matthew J. Bruccoli and Margaret M. Duggan.  Christian Century, 97 (October 15, 1980): 982-3, 985.

Gide and Hemingway: Rebels Against God, by Ben Stoltzfus.  Religious Studies Review, 6 (October 1980): 319.

The Second Coming, by Walker Percy.  Cross Currents, 30 (Summer 1980): 206-10.

Flannery O’Connor’s South, by Robert Coles.  Christian Century, 98 (January 7-14, 1981): 25.

Flannery O’Connor’s Dark Comedies: The Limits of Inference, by Carol Shloss.  Religious Studies Review, 7 (October 1981): 345.

Flannery O’Connor: Her Life, Library and Book Reviews, by Lorine M. Getz.  Religious Studies Review, 7 (October 1981): 345.

The Art of Walker Percy: Stratagems for Being, ed. Panthea Reid Broughton.  Religious Studies Review, 8 (January 1982): 70.

John Updike and the Three Great Secret Things: Sex Religion and Art, by George W. Hunt.  Religious Studies Review, 8 (January 1982): 70 71.

W. H. Auden: A Biography, by Humphrey Carpenter.  Christian Century, 99 (March 31, 1982): 381-83.

Justification: The Doctrine of Karl Barth and a Catholic Reflection, new ed., by Hans Küng.  Perspectives in Religious Studies, 9 (Fall 1982): 292-94.

The Comic Vision and the Christian Faith: A Celebration of Life and Laughter, by Conrad Hyers.  Perspectives in Religious Studies, 10 (Spring 1983): 84-87.

The Language of Grace, by Peter S. Hawkins.  Journal of Religion, 51 (December 1983): 717.

“The Presence of Grace” and Other Book Reviews by Flannery O’Connor, ed. Carter W. Martin.  Flannery O’Connor Bulletin, 12 (1983): 117 -21.

Home Before Dark, by Susan Cheever.  Christian Century, 101, (Feb¬ruary 6-13, 1985): 153-54.

Locke, Wesley, and the Method of English Romanticism, by Richard E. Brantley.  Wake Forest University Magazine, (February 1985): 20.

Suffering: A Test Case of Theological Method, by Arthur C. McGill.  Perspectives in Religious Studies, 12 (Summer 1985): 171-72.

Facing Nature, by John Updike.  Christian Century, 103, (February 19, 1986): 180-81.

Signs of the Kingdom: A Ragaz Reader, ed. and trans. by Paul Bock.  Perspectives in Religious Studies, 13, (Spring 1986): 88-91.

Lionel Trilling and the Fate of Cultural Criticism, by Mark Krupnick.  Christian Century, 103, (July 2-9, 1986): 624-25.

Walker Percy and the Old Modern Age: Reflections on Language, Argument, and the Telling of Stories, by Patricia Lewis Poteat.  Journal of the American Academy of Religion, 54, (Summer 1986): 358-59.

C. S. Lewis and the Church of Rome: A Study in Proto-Ecumenism, by Christopher Derrick.  Christianity and Literature, 34, (Summer 1986): 56-58.

Peckham’s Marbles, by Peter De Vries.  Christian Century, 103, (December 24-31, 1986): 1182.

Flannery O’Connor and the Language of Apocalypse, by Edward Kessler.  Flannery O’Connor Bulletin, 15 (1986): 88-91.

How Karl Barth Changed My Mind, ed. by Donald K. McKim.  Christian Century, 104, (February 4-11, 1987): 136-37.

Election and Predestination, by Paul K. Jewett.  Perspectives in Religious Studies, 14 (Spring 1987): 86-88.

Sex and Sunsets, by Tim Sandlin.   Winston-Salem Journal, May 31, 1987.

Flannery O’Connor: Images of Grace, by Harold Fickett and Douglas R. Gilbert. Flannery O’Connor Bulletin, 16 (1987): 90-94.

A letter on Brian Moore’s review of the Flannery O’Connor volume in the Library of America series, New York Times Book Review (October 2, 1988): 40.

The Affirming Flame: Religion, Language, Literature, by David Patterson.  Literature and Theology, 3, 2 (July 1989): 263-64.

Hostage Bound, Hostage Free, by Ben and Carol Weir with Dennis Benson; Diversity in Faith -- Unity in Christ, by Shirley C. Guthrie; The Reformed Imperative, by John H. Leith.  Perspectives in Religious Studies, 16, 2 (Summer 1989): 172-76.

The Art and Vision of Flannery O’Connor, by Robert Brinkmeyer.  Religious Studies Review, 17, 1 (January 1991): 59.

Narrative Remembering, by Barbara DeConcini. Critical Review of Books in Religion, 5 (1992): 69-71.

“Words under the rocks,” review of A River Runs Through It, by Norman Maclean. Christian Century, (January 20, 1993):

A Theology on Its Way? Essays on Karl Barth, by Richard H. Roberts.  Modern Theology, 9, 2 (April 1993): 230-32.

Spirit and Beauty: An Introduction to Theological Aesthetics, by Patrick Sherry.  Critical Review of Books in Religion, 6 (1993): 532-33.

Shakespeare’s Christian Dimension: An Anthology of Commentary, ed. by Roy W. Battenhouse.  Pro Ecclesia V, 2 (1996): 236-8.

Peter De Vries and Surrealism, by Dan Campion.  Christian Century 113, 26 (September 11-18, 1996): 871-73.

Walker Percy: The Last Catholic Novelist, by Kieran Quinlan.  Crisis, 14, 9 (October 1996): 46.

Faust the Theologian, by Jaroslav Pelikan.  Theology Today, 53, 4 (Jan. 1997): 521-22.

On Being the Church in the United States: Contemporary Theological Critiques of Liberalism, by Barry Penn Hollar.  Journal of Church and State, 39, 2 (Spring 1997): 363-5.

Christ the Form Beauty: A Study in Theology and Literature, by Francesca Aran Murphy.  Modern Theology, 13, 3 (July 1997): 412-14.

The Letters of Dorothy L. Sayers, 1899-1936: The Making of a Detective Novelist, chosen and edited by Barbara Reynolds, with a preface by P. D. James.  Books and Culture, 3, 4 (July-August 1997): 31.

The Cloister Walk, by Kathleen Norris.  Image, 17 (Fall 1997): 118-20.

Bearing the Witness of the Spirit: Lesslie Newbigin’s Theology of Cultural Plurality, by George R. Hunsberger.  Modern Theology, 15, 4 (October 1999): 504-09.

Inventing Southern Literature, by Michael Kreyling.  Christianity and Literature, 49, 1 (Autumn 1999): 153-56.

A Question of Time: J. R. R. Tolkien’s Road to Faërie, by Verlyn Flieger.  VII: An Anglo-American Literary Review, 16 (1999): 115-17.

Flannery O’Connor: Hermit Novelist, by Richard Giannone.  Flannery  O’Connor Bulletin, 26-27 (1998-2000): 182-85.

The Bible as It Was, by James L. Kugel.  Texas Review, XXII, 3&4 (Fall-Winter 2000): 136-38.

Licks of Love, by John Updike.  Christian Century, 118, 23 (August 15-22, 2001): 29-31.

Common Prayer: The Language of Public Devotion in Early Modern England, by Ramie Targoff.  Christian Century, 119, 13 (June 19-26, 2002): 40-41.

Flannery O’Connor: A Life, by Jean W. Cash. Journal of Southern History, 70, 4 (February 2004): 189-90.

Peculiar Crossroads: Flannery O’Connor, Walker Percy, and Catholic Vision in Postwar Southern Fiction, by Farrell O’Gorman. Mississippi Quarterly,  LVII, 4 (Fall 2004): 661-65.

The Incarnational Art of Flannery O’Connor, by Christina Bieber Lake. Flannery O’Connor Review, 4 (2006): 143-46.

Hillbilly Thomist: Flannery O’Connor, St. Thomas and the Limits of Art, by Marion Montgomery. Flannery O’Connor Review, 6 (2008): 163-166.

Chesterton and the Romance of Orthodoxy: The Making of GKC, 1974-1908, by William Oddie. Christian Century, 126, 14 (July 14, 2009): 41-42.

Pen of Iron: American Prose and the King James Bible, by Robert Alter. Journal of Church and State (2011) 53, 1: 141-143.

G. K. Chesterton: A Biography, by Ian Ker. VII: An Anglo-American Literary Review 29 (2012): 103-5.

Between Truth and Fiction: A Reader in Literature and Christian Theology, ed. David Jasper and Allen Smith. Scottish Bulletin of Evangelical Theology 30, 2 (Autumn 2012): 245-47.

The Lion’s World: A Journey into the Heart of Narnia, by Rowan Williams. Christian Century 130, 9 (May 1, 2013): 47-8.

The Terrible Speed of Mercy: A Spiritual Biography of Flannery O’Connor, by Jonathan Rogers. Touchstone 26, 3 (May-June 2013): 50-51.

How Dante Can Save Your Life, by Rod Dreher. Christianity Today 59, 5 (June 2015): 68-9.

Wildcat, a biopic about Flannery Connor, directed by Ethan Hawke. Flannery O’Connor Review 22 (2024): 132-34.

E. SCHOLARLY LECTURES AND POPULAR TALKS

“The Joyful Freedom of Gulley Jimson: An Interpretation of Joyce Cary’s The Horse’s Mouth,” American Academy of Religion, Atlanta, GA, October 1971.

“The Twentieth Century Renascence of Christian Letters,” Wake Forest Ministerial Alumni, Winston Salem, NC, March 1972.

“R. S. Thomas: Poet of Anguished Meditation,” American Academy of Religion, Chicago, IL, October 1973.

Invited Response to Giles Gunn’s “The Place of the Literary Critic in Religious Studies,” Southeast American Academy of Religion, Atlanta, GA, March 1975.

“Walker Percy as Christian Satirist” (with Jean Kellogg), American Academy of Religion, Chicago, IL, October 1975.

“Jimmy Carter’s Social and Religious Background; or, How a Redneck Got to the White House,” Circolo Italo-Britannico, Venice, Italy, November, 1976.

“On the Breaking of New Ground in Flannery O’Connor’s ‘Judgement Day,’“ Southeast American Academy of Religion, Columbia, SC, March 1978.

“A Critique of Chaim Potok’s My Name is Asher Lev,” Reynolda House Faculty Symposium, Winston Salem, NC, May 1978.

“The Great Glad News of Original Sin,” School of Pastoral Care, North Carolina Baptist Hospital, Winston Salem, NC, May 1978.

“The Paradox of Grace and Free Will in Dante’s Paradiso,” American Academy of Religion, New Orleans, LA, November 1978.

“Flannery O’Connor as Catholic Prophet in the Protestant South,” Virginia Intermont College, Bristol, VA, February 1979.

“Karl Barth and Peter De Vries: Theologian and Novelist in Comic Witness to the Gospel,” American Academy of Religion, New York City, NY, November 1979.

“Satire and Humor: The Comic Ways of God to Man,” Furman University Convocation Series, Greenville, SC, September 1979; and Rockefeller Memorial Chapel, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, October 1979.

“The Bible as the Word of God in the Words of Men,” Reynolds Homestead Learning Center, Crites, VA, April 1980.

“Karl Barth and the Comedy of Redemption: How the Major Theologian of the Twentieth Century Speaks to the Arts,” Reynolda House Evening Lecture Series, Winston-Salem, NC, May 1980.

“The Gospel as the Norm of Scripture,” Wake Forest Conference on Biblical Inerrancy, Winston-Salem, NC, October 1980.

“A Barthian Alternative for Relating Theology and Literature,” Southeast American Academy of Religion, Atlanta, GA, March 1981.

“From Tillich through Anglo Catholicism to Barth: Three Ways of Teaching Religion through Literature,” Symposium on Teaching about Religion in Public Education, Rice University, Houston, TX, March 1981.

“The South as a Redemptive Place,” Reynolda House Evening Lecture Series, Winston Salem, NC, May 1981.

“Scripture as the Witness to God’s Revelation: A Way Beyond both an Inerrant and an Academicized Bible,” North Carolina Baptist Professors of Religion and Philosophy, Meredith College, Raleigh, NC, October 1981.

“Walker Percy’s Love in the Ruins”, Reynolda House Series on Southern Literature, Winston-Salem, NC, March 1982.

“Karl Barth’s Conception of Evil: A Fatal Circularity in His Theology?” Southeast American Academy of Religion, Gainesville, FL, March 1982.

“The Place of Humanism in the Life of Baptist Colleges and Universities,” Annual Meeting of North Carolina Baptist College Deans, Winston Salem, NC, March 1982.

“The Comedy of Redemption: Christian Faith and Comic Vision in Contemporary Literature,” four lectures at the Wake Forest University Pastor’s Conference, Winston Salem, NC, July 1982.

“The Artist as Prophet: Tragic Limits and Comic Possibilities,” Southeast Conference of Campus Ministers, Atlanta, GA, March 1983.

“Comic Vision as a Means of Theological Insight,” Southeast American Academy of Religion, Atlanta, GA, March 1983.

“Literature as a Moral and Spiritual Awakening,” the inaugural Paul W. Barrus Lecture, Texas A&M University-Commerce, TX, April 1983.

“Flannery O’Connor as Southerner and Catholic: A Protestant Critique,” North Carolina Teachers of Religion, Raleigh, NC, September 1983.

“The Catholic Tradition: The Way from Man to God,” and “The Protestant Tradition: The Way from God to Man,” St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Winston-Salem, NC, September 1983.

“We Baptists and Our Schools: The Case for an Extrinsic Relation between the Church and the University,” Southeastern Regional Meeting of the Association of Baptist Professors of Religion, Williamsburg, VA, March 1984.

“Lenten Sobriety and Easter Gaiety,” five Lenten lectures, Myers Park Baptist Church, Charlotte, NC, March April, 1984.

“The Catholic Faith of Flannery O’Connor’s Protestant Characters: A Critique and Vindication,” Third Flannery O’Connor Symposium, Milledgeville, GA, April 1984.  Panel discussion with Sally Fitzgerald, J. O. Tate, and Frederick Asals printed in the Flannery O’Connor Bulletin, 13 (1984): 59-72.

“Walker Percy’s The Moviegoer,” Reynolda House Noon Book Discussion, Winston-Salem, NC, November 1984.

“Walker Percy’s Satire,” North Carolina Association of English Teachers, Winston-Salem, NC, November 1984.

“The Physician as Castaway,” Graylyn Conference for Medical Doctors (on Love in the Ruins), Winston-Salem, NC, December 1984.

“Dostoevsky, Marx, and Solzhenitsyn on Human Nature and Destiny,” Tocqueville Forum on American Foreign Policy, Wake Forest University, Winston-Salem, NC, February 1985.

“Karl Barth as a Theologian of the Comic Gospel,” Southeast American Academy of Religion, Athens, GA, March 1985.

“Karl Barth’s Theology of Culture,” William Porcher DuBose Symposium, School of Theology, University of the South, Sewanee, TN, October 1985.

Four lectures on the Book of Hebrews, Providence Baptist Church, Charlotte, NC, February 1986.

“Peter De Vries as Comedian of Backslidden Unbelief,” Wingate College Faculty Forum, Wingate, NC, February 1986.

“Recovering the Radical Gospel of Grace” and “Proclamation Inside, Parables Outside the Church,” Baptist Key Leadership Conference, Ridgecrest, NC, May 1986.

“P. T. Forsyth as an Evangelical Liberal,” Third National Conference on Literature and Religion, University of Durham, Hatfield College, Durham, England, September 1987.

“The Crowded Public Square: A Critique of Richard Neuhaus on Civil Religion,” Presidential Address for the Southeastern Association of Baptist Professors of Religion, Atlanta, GA, March 1987.  Also given at the Wake Forest University Philosophy Forum, April 1987.

“Towards an Evangelical Theology of Culture: The Witness of Karl Barth,” Hatfield College Theology Forum, University of Durham, England, February 1988.

“The Qualified Calvinism of Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress,” International Conference on Bunyan and Puritanism, University of Durham, England, March 1988.

“The Uncoercive Power of God: Karl Barth’s Theological Answer to Nihilistic Evil,” King’s College Graduate Seminar in Christian Doctrine, University of London, England, March 1988.

“American Fundamentalism and the Necessity of a Christian-Humanist Dialogue,” South Place Ethical Society, London, England, April 1988.

“Taking Our Beliefs Seriously,” four lectures on Christian doctrine (Creation, Justification, Sanctification, Glorification) at First Baptist Church, Winston-Salem, NC, February 1989; Christ United Methodist Church, Greensboro, NC, April 1989; Quail Hollow Presbyterian Church, Charlotte, NC, June 1989; College Place Methodist Church, Greensboro, NC, June 1991; First Presbyterian Church, Winston-Salem, NC, February & March, 1994; Greystone Baptist Church, Raleigh, NC, July 1996.

“R. S. Thomas and George Herbert on the Passion of Christ,” a Lenten lecture, Robert E. Lee Memorial Episcopal Church, Lexington, VA; and First Baptist Church, Winston-Salem, NC, March 1989; Ash Wednesday Service, First Presbyterian Church, Winston-Salem, NC, February 1994.

“‘Thank God that my social science major didn’t take’: Flannery O’Connor’s Critique of Sociological and Psychological Reductionism,” Interdisciplinary Seminar, Gardner-Webb College, Boiling Springs, NC, March 1989.

“Jesus as the Maker-Messiah: An Introduction to the Work of Moelwyn Merchant,” Southeastern Conference on Christianity and Literature, Savannah, GA, April 1989.

“Comic Vision and Christian Faith in Contemporary American Fiction,” Reynolda House Evening Lecture Series, Winston-Salem, NC, May 1989; University of South Carolina Religious Studies Colloquium, Columbia, SC, January 1990.

“The Alienated Self and the Absent Community in the Work of Walker Percy,” International Conference on the Faith, Fiction, and Philosophy of Walker Percy, Sandjberg, Denmark, August 1989.

“Celebrating Christ’s Presence in the Church,” four lectures at the Grace Baptist Church, Durham, NC, September 1989.

“What Has the Genius to Do with the Apostle?” Wingate College Life Issues Series, Wingate, NC, October 1989.

“John Updike’s Uses and Misuses of Karl Barth,” American Academy of Religion, Anaheim, CA, November 1989.

“Walker Percy’s Spleen,” University of South Carolina Religious Studies Colloquium, Columbia, SC, January 1990; Wake Forest University Humanities Club, February 1990.

Five lectures on II Corinthians, First Baptist Church, Winston-Salem, NC, January 1990.

“Recovering Character during the Time of Thanatos,” Conference on Educating for Character at the Center for Constructive Alternatives, Hillsdale College, Hillsdale, MI, March 1990.

“Flannery O’Connor’s ‘Revelation,’” Friends of the Mt. Airy Public Library, Mt. Airy, NC, May 1990.

“Tolkien on the Struggle Against the Demonic: The Permanent Power of Dispossession,” Conference in Celebration of the Permanent Things, Seattle Pacific University, Seattle, WA, June 1990.

“Reclaiming the Teaching Office of the Church in Its Schools,” Centennial Symposium on the Future of Church-Related Colleges, Hardin-Simmons University, Abilene, TX, October 1990.

“A Call to Recover the Liberal Tradition of Radical Self-Critique,” an installation lecture for the John Allen Easley Professorship of Religion, Wake Forest University, Winston-Salem, NC, January 1991.

“Flannery O’Connor and H. L. Mencken: Prophet and Serpent in the American South,” Loyola College in Maryland, Baltimore, MD, February 1991.

“Flannery O’Connor’s Hulga Hopewell; or, the Nihilist Annihilated,” Raleigh Area Theological Society (RATS), Meredith College, Raleigh, NC, March 1991.

“On the Uses of Imaginative Literature in the Service of Christian Faith,” the Swicegood Lecture, First Baptist Church, Salisbury, NC, April 1991.

“Will Christian Faith Disappear in Our Lifetime?”, the New Theology Lecture Series, Centenary Methodist Church, Winston-Salem, NC, June 1991.

“A Summons to the Church to Become God’s Agency for the World’s Salvation,” four lectures at the Annual Pastor’s School, Wake Forest University, Winston-Salem, NC, July 1991.

Four lectures on Christian discipleship, Quail Hollow Presbyterian Church, Charlotte, NC, July 1991.

“The Wrath of Walker Percy,” Southwest Conference on Christianity and Literature, Texas Tech University, Lubbock, TX, September 1991.

“C. S. Lewis and Flannery O’Connor,” four lectures at Christ Methodist Church, Greensboro, NC, October 1991.

“Flannery O’Connor on the Challenge of Contemporary Nihilism: An Interdisciplinary Reading of ‘Good Country People’,” University of St. Thomas Lectureship in Interdisciplinary Studies, St. Paul, MN, November 1991.

“Walker Percy as a Social Critic of the South,” Southern Humanities Council Annual Conference, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC, February 1992.

“Thinking, Doubting, and Following Christ,” a sermon preached at Rockefeller Memorial Chapel in celebration of the University of Chicago Centennial, Chicago, IL, April 1992.

“The Call of the Cross and the Altar,” the inaugural Patrick Gilchrist Lectures, Trinity Presbyterian Church, Charlotte, NC, April 1992.

“Driving out the Devil with Mockery and Clarity: C. S. Lewis’ Screwtape Letters,” First Baptist Church, Winston-Salem, NC, July-August 1992; Lamberth Memorial Baptist Church, Roxboro, NC, September 1992; First Baptist Church, Washington, DC, May 1993; First Presbyterian Church, Winston-Salem, NC, October 1994; First Baptist Church, Tuscaloosa, AL, June 1998; Mt. Tabor United Methodist Church, Winston-Salem, NC, March 2002; St. Charles Avenue Baptist Church, New Orleans, LA, January 2003; Friends University, Wichita, Kansas, November, 2005.

“The Tragic Vision of Kaye Gibbons,” Reynolda House Luncheon Book Discussions, Winston-Salem, NC, September 1992; Wake Forest University Alumnae College Day, Winston-Salem, NC, February 1993.

“The Four Great Christian Things: Creation, Fall, Redemption, Judgment,” Autumn Retreat, Trinity Presbyterian Church of Charlotte, gathered at the Montreat Conference Center, Montreat, NC, October 1992.  Also at Green Street Methodist Church, Greensboro, NC (1993); First Baptist Church, Winston-Salem, NC (1994); First Presbyterian Church, Winston-Salem, NC (1995); and Greystone Baptist Church, Raleigh, NC (1996).

“The Deflowering of a Virginal Nihilist: A Reading of Flannery O’Connor’s ‘Good Country People,’“ Mideast Conference on Christianity and Literature, Messiah College, Grantham, PA, October 1992.

“Why the Gospel Cannot Be Reduced to the Social Gospel,” First Presbyterian Church, Bloomsburg, PA, November 1992.

“C. S. Lewis as the Chief Christian Tutor to the Twentieth Century,” a North Carolina Humanities Council Lecture, Elkin Public Library, Elkin, NC, January 1993.

“Fallen Men and Women in the Fiction of Kaye Gibbons,” Southeastern American Academy of Religion, Charleston, SC, March 1993.

“The Saltless State of the Church,” Downtown Kiwanis Club, Winston-Salem, NC, March 1993.

“Fight the Good Fight, Finish the Race, Keep the Faith,” Grayson County High School Baccalaureate Sermon, Independence, VA, June 1993.

“Trusting in God and Discerning the Truth,” Opening Convocation Address, Hiwassee College, Madisonville, TN, September, 1993.

“Flannery O’Connor’s ‘Greenleaf,’” O. Henry Study Club, Lexington, NC, September 1993; also at the Wake Forest University Alumni Council, Winston-Salem, NC, February 1994.

“Is Flannery O’Connor a Racist Writer?” the 12th Annual Paul W. Barrus Lecture, Texas A&M University-Commerce, March 1994.

“‘Where Is the Voice Coming From?’ Flannery O’Connor on Race,” plenary address at The Habit of Art: A Four-Day Symposium on Flannery O’Connor’s Life and Work, Milledgeville, GA, April 1994.  Invited responses by Willie Jennings, Duke University Divinity School; Henry Russell, Anderson College; and Sharyn Dowd, Lexington Theological Seminary.

“The Fire of God’s Fury and the Fire of God’s Mercy,” Henry County Baptist Ministers’ Conference, Martinsville, VA, May 1994.

“Flannery O’Connor’s ‘Revelation’: The Meaning of Race and Grace,” the Sunday Evening Seminar, Christ Church Christiana Hundred, Wilmington, DE, October 1994.

“Recovering the Gospel of Eternal Salvation,” Martinsville-Henry County Ministerial Association, Martinsville, VA, January 1995.

“C. S. Lewis as Apologist and Confessor of Christian Faith,” Christian Theological Seminary, Indianapolis, IN, February 1995.

“C. S. Lewis in Light and Shade: A Reading of William Nicholson’s Shadowlands,” Edyvean Repertory Theatre, Indianapolis, IN, February 1995.

“Flannery O’Connor as a Roman Catholic Enthusiast for the Fundamentalist South,” the 32nd Annual Jean Fortner Ward Lecture, Greensboro College, Greensboro, NC, March 1995.  Also delivered at a conference on “Flannery O’Connor and the Christian Mystery: A Seventieth Birthday Symposium, Brigham Young University, Provo, UT, November 1995.

“Flannery O ‘Connor on the Question of Race and Religion in the American South,” the Harry Vaughan Smith Lectures, Mercer University, Macon, GA, April 1995.

“In Defense of a Renewed Christendom,” at the Wesleyan Theological Consortium on “Spreading Scriptural Holiness into the 21st Century,” Rose Hill House of Studies, Aiken, SC, July 1995.

“The Theology of Four Eighteenth Century Hymn Writers: Isaac Watts, Charles Wesley, John Newton and William Cowper,” Autumn Retreat, Trinity Presbyterian Church of Charlotte, gathered at the Montreat Conference Center, Montreat, NC, October 1995.  Also delivered at First Baptist Church, Winston-Salem, NC, July-August, 1995; First Presbyterian Church, Winston-Salem, NC, October-November, 1995; First Presbyterian Church, Hendersonville, NC, February 1996; St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Waco, TX, March-April 2000; North Park Presbyterian Church, Dallas, TX, February 2002; First Baptist Church of America, Providence, Rhode Island, June, 2012.

“The Beauty of Holiness,” First Presbyterian Church, Hendersonville, NC, February 1996.

“Christian Worship: Giving Honor to God,” Martinsville-Henry County Ministerial Association, Martinsville, VA, February 1996.

“Two Cheers for Christendom,” Southeastern American Academy of Religion, Columbia, SC, March 1996.  Invited responses given by Elizabeth Newman, St. Mary’s College; Clay Stalnaker, North Carolina State University; and Bruce Haddox, Simpson College.

“Flannery O’Connor as a Christian Comedian,” Wake Forest University Parents’ Council, Winston-Salem, NC, February 1996; Friends of the Library, Elkin, NC, March 1996; First Presbyterian Church, Winston-Salem, NC, September-October, 1996; Austin Heights Baptist Church, Nacogdoches, TX, February 2000; the Phi Alpha Theta Lecture, Navarro College, Corsicana, TX, March 2000; Wilshire Baptist Church, Dallas, TX, May-June 2003.

“Bunyan, Baptists, and Post-Modernism,” organizer and leader of a panel discussion, National Association of Baptist Professors of Religion meeting in conjunction with the Catholic College Theology Society, University of Dayton, Dayton, OH, June 1996.

“Importunate Christians,” First Baptist Church, Whiteville, NC, August 1996.

“Flannery O’Connor’s Strange Southern Alliance,” Loyola College of Maryland, Baltimore, MD, October 1996.

“Obedience to the Unenforceable: Flannery O’Connor and the Mystery of Manners,” plenary address at the Mideast Conference on Christianity and Literature, University of Dayton, Dayton, OH, October 1996; given also at the annual Conference on Christianity and Literature, meeting with the Modern Language Association, Washington, DC, December 1996.

“A Baptist-Calvinist Reading of Justification and Sanctification,” Mercer University School of Theology, Atlanta, GA, February 1997; Lamberth Memorial Baptist Church, Roxboro, NC, March 1997; Vestavia Hills Baptist Church, Birmingham, AL, June 1998; North Park Presbyterian Church, Dallas, TX, February 2002.

“Kathleen Norris’ The Cloister Walk,” Reynolda House Book Discussion, Winston-Salem, NC, April 1997.

“A Call for a Latter-Day Reformation,” First Baptist Church, Hendersonville, NC, January 1997; Roanoke Valley Ministers Conference, Roanoke, VA, April 1997.

 “‘I Wonder What Sort of Tale We’ve Fallen Into?’: On the Relation of Stories to The Story,” the plenary address at the Southeast Conference on Christianity and Literature, Elon College, Burlington, NC, April 1997.

“A Christian Approach to Non-Christian Religions,” First Presbyterian Church, Tuscaloosa, AL, August 1997.

“Hearing the Voice of God in a Wounded Woman’s Look,” a Convocation Sermon at Samford University, September 23, 1997

“Flannery O’Connor’s A Good Man Is Hard to Find,” six lectures at the Independent Presbyterian Church, Birmingham, AL, January-February 1998; also at Wilshire Baptist Church, Dallas, TX, May-June, 2003 and St. Charles Avenue Baptist Church, New Orleans, January 2004.

“Flannery O’Connor as a Christian Writer,” the Charles O. Stephens Memorial Lecture on Christians in the Arts, Vestavia Hills Baptist Church, Birmingham, AL, March 1998.

“Four Lenten Lectures on the Poetry of George Herbert,” St. Luke’s Episcopal Church, Birmingham, AL, March 1998; St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Waco, TX, February-March, 1998.

“Walking with God in the Workplace,” a devotional given at the Samford University Relations Office Retreat, Birmingham, AL, March, 1998.

“Walker Percy as Christian Critic of Our Society,” five lectures at the Episcopal Cathedral Church of the Advent, Birmingham, AL, April-May 1998.

“Peter De Vries and the Need for Christian Disbelief,” Calvin College Festival of Faith and Writing, Grand Rapids, MI, April 3, 1998.

“How Shall They Hear Without a Preacher?” “Be Ye Hearers of the Word and Not Doers Only,” “The Sermon as the Center of Baptist Worship,” and “The Uses of the Imagination in Preaching the Gospel,” the Warren Carr Lectures on Preaching, First Baptist Church of Elkin, North Carolina, and the Pilot Mountain Baptist Association, Winston-Salem, North Carolina, June 1998.

“Flannery O’Connor’s Christ-Haunted South,” Department of English, Louisiana State University in Shreveport, Louisiana, October 1998.

“Flannery O’Connor’s Preachers,” The Pruit Symposium on The Christ-Haunted South, Baylor University, Waco, Texas, October 1998.

“Study as Holiness, Study as Weariness,” Truett Theological Seminary, Baylor University, November 1998.

“The Disappearance of the No-God in Modern Literature,” Third Annual Literary Festival, Mary Hardin-Baylor University, Belton, Texas, January 1999.  Given also to the Baylor University Philosophy Club, January 1999, and as the keynote address at the Midwest Conference on Christianity and Literature, Campbellsville University, Campbellsville, Kentucky, April 1999.

“Loud, Dogmatic, and Certain: Three Good Christian Words,” Faculty Convocation Address, Truett Theological Seminary, Baylor University, January 1999.

“The Scandal of Our Redemption,” the 10th Centennial Enrichment Series, First Presbyterian Church, Kerrville, Texas, March 1999.

“Christianity and Comedy,” Seventh and James Baptist Church, Waco, Texas, April 1999.

“The Grandeur of God and the Love of Literature,” New Faculty Seminar, Baylor University, Waco, Texas, August 1999.

“The Beautiful, the Ugly, and the Holy,” plenary address, the Southwest Conference on Christianity and Literature, Abilene Christian University, Abilene, Texas, October 1999.

“Evil as a Perversion of Personhood: A Reading of Ivan Karamazov and the Grand Inquisitor,” the Baylor University—North Texas University Joint Conference on Fyodor Dostoevsky, November 1999.

“Paul Wells Barrus: A Man of Godly Fear and Suffering Obedience,” a eulogy delivered at his vigil service, St. Elizabeth Ann Seton Catholic Church, Plano, Texas, January 2000.

Three Kinds of Christian Witness in Imaginative Literature (“The Desire for Fantasy in C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien,” “The Necessity of Satire in Walker Percy and Flannery O’Connor,” “The Call to Devotion in George Herbert and Gerard Manley Hopkins”): The E. C. Westervelt Lectures, Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary, Austin, Texas, February 2000.

“Lest the World’s Amnesia Be Complete: A Reading of Walter Miller’s A Canticle for Leibowitz,” Art and Soul: The Annual Conference on Religion and Literature, Baylor University, Waco, Texas, February 2000.

“‘Lost in Wonder, Love, and Praise’: The Witness of the Wesleys for Christian Life Today,” the Carleton-Willson Families Lecture, McMurry University; Abilene, Texas, March 2000.

“Outward Life in Christ as the Basis for Inward Piety: A Response to Alister McGrath” and “What Evangelicals Can Learn from Karl Barth,” For All the Saints: An International Symposium on Evangelical Theology and Christian Spirituality, Beeson Divinity School, Samford University, Birmingham, Alabama, October 2000.

“O’Connor’s Preachers and Bakhtin’s Dialogism,” South Central Modern Language Association, San Antonio, Texas, November 11, 2000.

“Lewis and Tolkien on Nature and Grace,” Conference on Christianity and Literature, the Modern Language Association, Washington, DC, December 30, 2000.

“C. S. Lewis’s Supernaturalism: A Tolkienian Critique,” Art and Soul: The Baylor Symposium on Religious Faith and Literary Art, Waco, TX, February 24, 2001.

“A Brief Statement on Public Theology,” the Harvard-Baylor Colloquium, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, March 22, 2001.

“Creating a Christian Educational Culture amidst a Multicultural and Anticultural Age,” Southwest Lilly Fellows Program in Humanities and the Arts, University of Dallas, Dallas, TX, March 24, 2001.

“The Moviegoer: Walker Percy’s Satiric Send-up of Our Godless ‘Christian’ Culture,” and “‘A Good Man Is Hard to Find’: Flannery O’Connor as Re-Shaper of our Sentimental Sensibility,” Northwestern State University of Louisiana, Natchitoches, LA, April 20, 2001.

“Saying Something Good, True, and Beautiful about Sally Fitzgerald’s Contribution to Flannery O’Connor Scholarship,” American Literary Association, Cambridge, MA, May 23, 2001.

“‘Pertaining to the Earth’: Wendell Berry’s Stoic Naturalism,” American Literary Association, Cambridge, MA, May 24, 2001.

“Milton on Conscience and Bunyan on the Church” (with David Lyle Jeffrey), a response to “The Fall into Subjectivity: Milton’s ‘Paradise Within’ and ‘Abyss of Fears and Horrors,’” by Anthony Low, New York University; Southwestern Conference on Christianity and Literature, Baylor University, Waco, TX, September 29, 2001

“The Tragic and the Redemptive in J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings,” the Mead-Swing Lecture, Oberlin College, Oberlin, Ohio, October 9, 2001.

“J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings: A Book for Our Time of Terror,” the jointly-sponsored Logos Academy-Cambridge School Faith and Culture Lecture, Park Cities Presbyterian Church, Dallas, TX, November 16, 2001; Louisiana State University at Shreveport, November 10, 2001; St. Charles Avenue Baptist Church, New Orleans, LA, January 19, 2002; St. James Episcopal Church, Baton Rouge, LA, January 21, 2002; Texas A&M University, College Station, TX, February 5, 2002; North Park Presbyterian Church, Dallas, TX, February 23, 2002; University of Notre Dame, South Bend, IN, February 27, 2002; Mt. Tabor United Methodist Church, Winston-Salem, NC, March 5, 2002; Art and Soul: the Annual Conference on Religion and Literature, Baylor University, Waco, TX, March 16, 2002; the Paul Barrus Lecture, Texas A&M-Commerce, October 19, 2002; Cleveland State University, Cleveland, OH, November 14, 2002; Southern Methodist University, Dallas, TX, November 21, 2002;

West Point Grey Baptist Church, Vancouver, British Columbia, July 20, 2003; Campbell University, Buies Creek, NC, March 30, 2004; John Brown University, Siloam Springs, AR, February 1, 2005; Cornerstone University, Grand Rapids, MI, February 15-16, 2005; Wisconsin Lutheran College, Milwaukee, WI, February 17, 2006; Coram Deo Academy’s Third Annual Classical Educators Training Conference, Carrollton, TX, August 8, 2006;Second Baptist Church, Lubbock, TX, September 16, 2006; Redeemer Presbyterian Church, New Orleans, LA, October 14, 2006; University of North Carolina at Greensboro, NC, October 26, 2006; Malone College, Canton, OH, October 3, 2007; Mount Vernon Nazarene University, Mount Vernon, OH, October 4, 2007; Hillsdale Academy, Hillsdale, MI, November 9, 2007; Mississippi College, Clinton, MS, November 12, 2007; LeTourneau University, Longview, TX, February 22, 2008; Columbia International University, Columbia, SC, November 21, 2008; Aquinas Academy, Pittsburgh, PA, November 20, 2009; Crandall University, Monckton, New Brunswick, October 13, 2011; Lees-McRae College, Banner Elk, North Carolina, October 22, 2012; Covenant School of Dallas, November 1, 2012; Carnegie Library, Newnan, Georgia, April 7, 2013; Georgetown College, Georgetown, Kentucky, February 27, 2014; Highlands Latin School, Louisville, Kentucky, February 28, 2014; Aquinas College, Nashville, Tennessee, March 11, 2014. (Available on-line at: https://search.brave.com/search?q=ralph+wood+lectures+on+youtube&source=desktop)

“Teaching and Living and Dying ‘As If Nothing Had Happened’: The Example of J. R. R. Tolkien,” the Conference on Christianity and Literature Annual Luncheon, New Orleans, LA, December 28, 2001.

“The Aesthetics of Memory and the Aesthetics of Revelation in William Faulkner and Flannery O’Connor,” University of Notre Dame, South Bend, IN, February 27, 2002.

“The Suffering that Makes for Character,” St. Charles Avenue Baptist Church, New Orleans, LA, January 2002; North Park Presbyterian Church, Dallas, TX, February 2002; Mt. Tabor United Methodist Church, Winston-Salem, NC, March 2002.

“The Conflict Between C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien on Fundamental Matters,” the Calvin College Festival of Faith and Writing, Grand Rapids, MI, April 19, 2002.

“Flannery O’Connor: Roman Catholic Writer at Home in the Protestant South,” Sights and Sounds of the South: Reading Flannery O’Connor, a symposium sponsored by the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities, Louisiana State University at Shreveport, July 25, 2002.

“The Gospel According to Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings,” Oklahoma State University, Stillwater, OK, September 18, 2002; University of Oklahoma, Norman, OK, September 19, 2002; keynote address at the Duke University Divinity School Convocation and Pastor’s School, Durham, NC, October 15, 2002; the Cambridge School of Dallas, Dallas, TX, November 21, 2002; Texas Military Institute, San Antonio, TX, March 8, 2003; St. Alban’s Episcopal Church, Waco, TX, April 27 and May 4, 2003; Regent College, Vancouver, BC, July 14, 2003; Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, November 3, 2003; Illinois State University, Normal, IL, November 4, 2003; Austin Heights Baptist Church, Nacogdoches, TX, November 14-15, 2003; Friends University, Wichita, KS, November 20, 2003; the Tolkien-Lewis Festival sponsored by the C.S. Lewis Society of Kansas, Wichita, KS, November 22, 2003; First Baptist Church, Austin, TX, November 30, 2003;Wilshire Baptist Church, Dallas, TX, December 14 and 21,2003;

First Baptist Church, Tyler, TX, February 1, 2004; St. James’ Episcopal Church, Baton Rouge, LA, February 6-7, 2004; Texas A&M University, College Station, TX, February 12, 2004; Dallas Baptist University, Dallas, TX, March 5, 2004; South Main Baptist Church, Houston, TX, March 6, 2004; Houston Graduate School of Theology, Houston, TX, March 24, 2004; Highland Park Baptist Church, Austin, TX, May 12, 16, 2004; the Good Shepherd Community Church, Toronto, ON, September 18, 2004; Valley Covenant Church, Eugene, OR, October 8-9, 2004; Providence Methodist Church, Charlotte, NC, March 6-7, 2005; First Baptist Church, Winston-Salem, NC, September 11, 2005; First Presbyterian Church, Brookings, SD, October 2, 2005; Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL, October 21, 2005; Northwest Bible Church, Dallas, TX, January 25, 2006.

“On Not Speaking of Man in a Loud Voice: Flannery O’Connor’s Grotesque Preachers of the Gospel,” Baptist House of Studies, Duke University Divinity School, Durham, NC, October 14, 2002.

“Gratitude,” an acceptance speech upon being named a Distinguished Alumnus of Texas A&M University-Commerce, October 20, 2002

“Life and Death: An Interpretation of the Commandment against Killing,” Society for Evangelical Doctrine, Christ Episcopal Church, Plano, TX, February 28, 2003.

“Creating a Christian Culture: The Challenge of Christian Education in a De-Christianized ‘Civilization,’” The Daunt Lecture in Church and Society, Texas Military Institute, San Antonio, TX, March 7, 2003.

“Supporting Baylor’s Religious Mission: The Mutual Obligation of Faculty and Administration Alike,” at a colloquy in honor of Donald Schmeltekopf, “The Baptist and Christian Character of Baylor University,” Waco, TX, April 11, 2003.

“Tolkien’s Transformation of Justice into Mercy in The Lord of the Rings,” American Political Science Association, Philadelphia, PA, August 29, 2003.

“Baylor University: Being Christian in the New Millennium,” at a conference on “Formation and Renewal” held at the University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, IN, October 4, 2003.

“The Untold Story of Sabbath Lily Hawks: Flannery O’Connor and the Gospel of Life,” at Revelations: Flannery O’Connor, the Visionary and the Vernacular, Georgia College and State University, Milledgeville, GA, October 10, 2003.

“‘Jesus Thown Everything Off Balance’: Flannery O’Connor and Catholic Culture,” University of Notre Dame Catholic Culture Series, South Bend, IN, November 10, 2003.

“Romance in an Eroticized World,” Texas A&M University, College Station, TX, February 12, 2004.

“Toward a Better Evangelical Engagement with Contemporary Culture,” Union Theological Seminary-Presbyterian School of Christian Education, Charlotte, NC, February 21, 2004; South Main Baptist Church, Houston, TX, March 5, 2004; Annapolis Christian Academy, Corpus Christi, Texas, May 21, 2004.

“Jews and Christians as Wayfarers in the Wasteland,” Highland Park Baptist Church, Austin, TX, May 16, 2004; St. Charles Avenue Baptist Church, New Orleans, LA, January 23, 2005.

“Flannery O’Connor as Moral Tutor to Nihilistic Age,” Plenary Address, the Midwestern Conference on Christianity and Literature, Indiana Wesleyan University; Marion, IN, March 19, 2004.

“An Alternative Vision for the Christian University,” Campbell University, Buies Creek, NC, March 30, 2004.

“Flannery O’Connor’s Witness to the Gospel of Life Amidst the Culture of Death,” the Calvin College Festival of Faith and Writing, Grand Rapids, MI, April 23, 2004.

“Tolkien and the Virtues,” Commencement Address, Texas A&M University-Commerce, May 8, 2004; Annapolis Christian Academy, Corpus Christi, Texas, May 22, 2004.

“Reclaiming the Radical Center: Two Suggestions for Renewing (or Ruining?) the Life of a Religious Press,” a seminar with the Editorial Council of the United Methodist Publishing House, Nashville, Tennessee, July 20, 2004.

“Secular and Christian Ways of Interpreting Tolkien,” guest lecture at the National Endowment for the Humanities Institute on “Tolkien and the Medieval World,” Texas A&M University-Commerce, July 27, 2004.

“Tolkien and Lewis: Companions and Combatants,” the Imago Project, Toronto, Ontario, September 17, 2004; the Annual Southwestern Inklings Conference, Oral Roberts University, Tulsa, OK, April 1, 2005; Baptist Temple Church, Alexandria, VA, March 12, 2006; Second Baptist Church, Lubbock, TX, September 15, 2006; Mount Vernon Nazarene University, Mount Vernon, OH, October 5, 2007.

“Baptists, Catholics, and What We Can Learn from Each Other,” the Institute for Church and State, Baylor University, September 28, 2004.

“The Southern Race Problem and the Southern Answer to It in Flannery O’Connor’s ‘The Artificial Nigger,’” The Pruit Memorial Symposium on Slavery, Oppression & Prejudice: Ancient Roots and Modern Implications, Baylor University, September 30, 2004.

“Christians Are the Little People, the Hobbits of the World,” Good Shepherd Community Church, Toronto, ON, September 19, 2004; Valley Covenant Church, Eugene, OR, October 10, 2004; Providence Methodist Church, Charlotte, NC, March 6, 2005; First Baptist Church, Winston-Salem, NC, September 11, 2005.

“Tolkien Our Contemporary,” Epiphanies of Beauty: The Arts in a Post-Christian Culture, a conference sponsored by the University of Notre Dame Center for Ethics and Culture, Notre Dame, IN; November 19, 2004; also given at the Conference on Christianity & Literature annual meeting in conjunction with the Modern Language Association, Philadelphia, PA; December 30, 2004.

“From Barren Modernism to Fruitful Post-Modernism: A Proposal for Christian Education in the Baptist Tradition,” National Association of Baptist Professors of Religion, San Antonio, TX, November 20, 2004.

“When Tenderness Leads to the Gas Chambers: Flannery O’Connor on the Formation of Conscience,” Society for Christian Ethics, Miami, FL, January 7, 2005.

“Walker Percy’s The Moviegoer: A New Orleans Stockbroker’s Strange Pilgrimage Toward Faith,” St. Charles Avenue Baptist Church, New Orleans, LA, January 21-22, 2005.

“On Creating a Christian Academic Community,” John Brown University, Siloam Springs, AR, February 1, 2005.

“Russell Kirk and Flannery O’Connor: Flying Buttress and Stable Pillar of the Church,” Russell Kirk Center for Cultural Renewal,” Mecosta, MI, February 14, 2005.

“Civic Virtue and Christian Higher Education,” the 2nd Annual Civitas Lecture, Cornerstone University, Grand Rapids, MI, February 15, 2005.

“Flannery O’Connor’s Enduring Witness,” the Inaugural J.J. Quinn, S.J., Memorial Lecture in Catholic Intellectual Tradition, University of Scranton, Scranton, PA, April 5, 2005; Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL, October 21, 2005; Coram Deo Academy’s Third Annual Classical Educators Training Conference, Carrollton, TX, August 8, 2006.

“American Constantinianism and Its Critics: Dickinson, Faulkner, O’Connor” (with Stanley Hauerwas, Duke University), The Pew Project on American Religion and Literature, meeting at the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Cambridge, MA, May 20, 2005

“Avoiding the Capital Vices and Living the Cardinal Virtues,” The Society for Classical Learning National Conference, Dallas, TX, June 16-17, 2005; Northside Drive Baptist Church, Atlanta, GA, September 25, 2005; First Presbyterian Church, Houston, TX, December 12, 2005; Second Baptist Church, Lubbock, TX, September 16, 2006.

“Tolkien Our Post-Modern Contemporary,” Tolkien 2005 (a celebration of the 50th anniversary of the publication of The Lord of the Rings), Aston University, Birmingham, UK, August 12, 2005.

“The World’s Heroes and the Church’s Saints,” Northside Drive Baptist Church, Atlanta, GA, September 25, 2005; First Presbyterian Church, Brookings, SD, October 2, 2005.

“J.R.R. Tolkien: Catholic Writer for an Uncatholic Age,” University of Notre Dame Catholic Culture Series, Notre Dame, IN, October 25, 2005.

“A Brief Tribute to Wayne Booth,” the Conference on Christianity and Literature, Washington, DC, December 29, 2005.

“C. S. Lewis on the God Who Is ‘Good and Terrible at the Same Time,’” Narnia on Tour, Uptown Borders Bookstore, Dallas, TX, November 19, 2005; First Presbyterian Church, Houston, TX, November 20, 2005; Northwest Bible Church, Dallas, TX, January 26, 2006; Baptist Temple Church, Alexandria, VA, March 12, 2006; First Baptist Church, Marion, NC, October 28, 2006; First Baptist Church, Weaverville, NC, October 29, 2006.

“Tolkien on the Power of Old Words,” Wisconsin Lutheran College, Milwaukee, WI, February 17, 2006.

Three Lectures on Vocation: “The Call of Christians to Become the Hobbits of the World,” “Imagination: the One Thing Requisite for Ministers,” “‘Even God’s Mercy Burns’: Flannery O’Connor and the Art of Prophetic Judgment,” Eastern Mennonite University, Harrisonburg, VA, March 16-17, 2006.

“The Twofold Ministry of the Word and Sacrament,” an ordination sermon for Wesley Dale Keyes, First Baptist Church, Farmers Branch, Texas, June 4, 2006.

“The Necessity of Christian Radicalism in the Study of Literature: A Reading of Emily Dickinson, William Faulkner, and Flannery O’Connor,” at “The Two Tasks: Redeeming the Soul, Redeeming the Mind,” a conference sponsored by Christian Leadership Ministries, Alexandria, VA, June 23, 2006.

“Jesus ‘Thown’ Everything Off Balance”: Flannery O’Connor and the Summons to Christian Radicalism in the Study of Literature,” at The Two Tasks: Redeeming the Soul, Redeeming the Mind,” a conference sponsored by Christian Leadership Ministries. Alexandria, Virginia June 23, 2006

“P.D. James on the Double Mystery of Iniquity and Charity” and “Why Should Christians Read Atheists: A Dialogue with John Stackhouse,” two public presentations at Regent College, Vancouver, BC, July 17 & 19, 2006.

“The Transforming Power of Literary Imagination,” Coram Deo Academy’s Third Annual Classical Educators Training Conference, Carrollton, TX, August 8, 2006.

“‘Compel Them to Come In’: The Gospel as Command, not Choice,” Regent College, Vancouver, BC, July 25, 2006; Second Baptist Church, Lubbock, TX, September 17, 2006.

“‘God May Strike You Thisaway’: Flannery O’Connor and Simone Weil on Affliction and Joy,” Plenary Address at Flannery O'Connor in the Age of Terrorism: An Academic Conference on Violence and Grace, Grand Valley State University, Grand Rapids, Michigan, October 7, 2006; also at Marquette University, Milwaukee, WI, April 19, 2007.

“Nature and Grace in C. S. Lewis,” Exploring the World of C.S. Lewis: Faith, Fantasy, and Grief, The Saint James Center for Spiritual Formation,” St. James Episcopal Church, Baton Rouge, LA, October 13, 2006.

“The Call of the Desert in an Age of Ashes: The Centrality of Suffering in Walter Miller’s A Canticle for Leibowitz, University of Notre Dame Catholic Culture Series, Notre Dame, IN, October 30, 2006.

“Why There Is a Balm in Gilead: Marilynne Robinson on the Liberality of the Gospel” and “The Blue-Cold Child Who Makes Tyrants Tremble: Flannery O’Connor and G. K. Chesterton on the Scandal of the Nativity,” two lectures for the Wesley Fellows Christmas Conference, with responses by Gregory Jones (Duke), Ted Campbell (SMU) and Chad Pecknold (Loyola of Baltimore); The Woodlands United Methodist Church, The Woodlands, TX, December 8-9, 2006.

“The Twin Sentimentalities Satirized in Flannery O’Connor’s Fiction: Secular Autonomy and Religious Complacency,” the Faith and Reason Institute, Gonzaga University, Spokane, WA, February 8, 2007.

“Binx Bolling and the Quest for Vocation in Walker Percy’s The Moviegoer,” the Socratic Club, Gonzaga University, Spokane, WA, February 9, 2007.

“Deadly Vices and Living Virtues: Christian Formation in a Dying Culture,” Christ Presbyterian Church, Marietta, GA, March 9-11, 2007.

“How Shall We Worship the Lord Who Has ‘No Beauty That We Should Desire Him?” three lectures at the Trinity Arts Conference, University of Dallas, Dallas, TX, June 9-10, 2007.

“The Poetry of Devotion and the Life of Worship: George Herbert, Gerard Manley Hopkins, and G. K. Chesterton,” the Presbyterian Conference on Music and Worship, Montreat Assembly, Montreat, NC, June 18-29, 2007.

“Opposition Is True Friendship: The Letters of Flannery O’Connor to Elizabeth Hester,” at “The Prophet’s Country”: A Celebration of the Life and Work of Flannery O’Connor, Emory University, Atlanta, GA, September 26, 2007.

“Epics Pagan and Christian: The Case of Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings,” Walsh University, North Canton, OH, October 4, 2007.

“Personal and Communal Hope: Flannery O’Connor and J. R. R. Tolkien” at Cynicism & Hope: Reclaiming Discipleship in a Post-Democratic Society, Reba Place, Evanston, IL, November 2, 2007. http://cynicismandhope.org/audio/play/21.

“Flannery O’Connor’s Witness to the Culture of Life Amidst Our Culture of Death,” Hillsdale College, Hillsdale, MI, November 8, 2007.

“C. S. Lewis as a Teacher for Our Time,” Christ United Methodist Church, Jackson, MS, November 11, 2007.

“G. K. Chesterton’s Answer to Modern Madness,” “Flannery O’Connor’s Life and Leading Concerns,” and “On This Rock: Why Jesus Christ and His Church Are Inseparable,” the inaugural lectures for the Institute of Third Millennium Faith, Wesley Biblical Seminary, Jackson, MS, November 11-13, 2007.

“Hospitality as the Gift Greater than Tolerance: G. K. Chesterton’s The Ball and the Cross, at The Dialogue of Cultures: A Conference Sponsored by the University of Notre Dame Center for Ethics and Culture, Notre Dame, IN, December 1, 2007. Also the keynote address at the South Central Conference on Christianity and Literature, LeTourneau University, Longview, TX, February 22, 2008.

“The Rock That Springs with the Water of Life,” DaySpring Baptist Church, Waco, TX, February 24, 2008.

“Why ‘The Dixie Limited’ Is Indeed Limited: Moral Transformation in Faulkner and O’Connor,” The Stories of Flannery and Faulkner: A Conference and Celebration, Georgia College and State University, Milledgeville, GA. April 5, 2008

“The Christian Humanism of G. K. Chesterton,” Keynote Address, Southeastern Conference on Christianity and Literature, Wingate University; Wingate, NC, April 8, 2008.

“G. K. Chesterton as Imaginative Witness to the Gospel,” the Wheaton Evangelism Roundtable, the Billy Graham Center, Wheaton College, Wheaton, IL, April 25, 2008.

“G. K. Chesterton: Christian Writer of Great Girth and Gladness,” Episcopal Church of the Holy Spirit, Waco, TX, September 7 & 14, 2008.

“God Terrible, God Merciful,” Central Presbyterian Church, Houston, TX, September 28, 2008.

“C. S. Lewis on the Deceits of the Demonic,” Austin Presbyterian Seminary Extension Program, Houston, TX, September 28, 2008; Episcopal Church of the Good Shepherd, Richmond, VA, October 11, 2008.

“Christ the King of the Strange Banquet,” Episcopal Church of the Good Shepherd, Richmond, VA, October 12, 2008.

“Flannery O’Connor on Sentimentality as the Enemy of Religion, Education, and Ethics,” Vanderbilt Medical Society, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN, October 24, 2008

“C. S. Lewis on Love, Desire, and the Demonic,” the Humanitas Project fall forum on Christianity and Culture, Nashville, TN, October 24-25, 2008.

“‘Return, Ye Children of Men’: P. D. James on the Refusal That Becomes the Inability to Bring New Life into the World,” St. George’s Episcopal Church, Nashville, TN, October 26, 2008.

“Redeeming the Time,” four keynote lectures at the Southwest Regional Retreat of the C. S. Lewis Foundation, Camp Allen, Navasota, TX, October 31-November 2, 2008.

G. K. Chesterton and the Perennial Appeal of Christian Humanism,” the Provost’s Lecture Series for Distinguished and University Professors, Baylor University, Waco, TX, November 10, 2008.

“Flannery O’Connor, Benedict XVI, and the Divine Eros,” plenary address delivered at Reason, Fiction and Faith: An International Flannery O’Connor Conference, the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross, Rome, Italy, April 21, 2009; also the plenary address at a Symposium for Younger Baptist Scholars in the Academy, Regent’s Park College, University of Oxford, Oxford, England, August 4, 2009.

“The Confessional Character of Our Teaching,” National Association of Baptist Professors of Religion, Waco, Texas, May 25, 2009.

“‘The Long Defeat,’ ‘Glimpses of Final Victory,’ and Tolkien’s Roman Catholicism,” at J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings: The Real and the Imagined Middle Ages,” an NEH Summer Institute, Texas A&M-Commerce, July 29, 2009.

“The God Whose Only Opposite Is Nothing: Flannery O’Connor and Nihilism in Wise Blood,” Regent College, Vancouver, British Columbia, September 22, 2009.

“J.R.R. Tolkien and the Retrieval of Pagan Virtue in The Lord of the Rings,” Faculty and Graduate Student Seminar in the Department of English, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, September 23, 2009.

“Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov as the Premier Novel of the Modern World,” University of British Columbia Graduate and Faculty Christian Forum, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, September 23, 2009.

“Dante on Homosexuality in Inferno 15-16 and Purgatorio 27,” the Dante Reading Group, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, September 24, 2009.

“Flannery O’Connor’s Non-Client Centered Therapy,” Carey Theological College, Vancouver, British Columbia, September 24, 2009.

“Walker Percy on the Peril and Promise of Christian Physicians,” Christian Medical and Dental Society of Canada Student Organization, Vancouver, British Columbia, September 24, 2009.

Three Christian Poets for Our Unpoetic Age: “George Herbert and the Poetry of Prayer, “G. K. Chesterton and the Poetry of Christmas,” and “Wendell Berry and the Poetry of Local Life,” The Solon B. Cousins Lectures, Baptist Theological Seminary at Richmond; Richmond, Virginia, October 6-7, 2009.

“Why ‘an Oprah’ Can and Must Be Cancelled,” a response to Kathryn Lofton’s “What Is an Oprah? Celebrity and Spiritual Capitalism in Modern America,” at Secularization and Revival: The Fate of Religion in Modern Intellectual History, Baylor Symposium on Faith and Culture, Waco, Texas, October 9, 2009.

“J. R. R. Tolkien as Exemplar of the Integration of Faith and Learning,” University of Texas Graduate Christian Fellowship,” Austin, Texas, October 30, 2009.

“Education in Our Darkened Time: Seizing the Daylight of Christian Tradition,” Aquinas Academy, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, November 20, 2009.

“Why East Texas No Longer Belongs in the Bible Belt: Flannery O’Connor’s ‘A Good Man Is Hard to Find,’” McMurry University, Abilene, Texas, January 29, 2010; also at Texas A&M University-Commerce, April 8, 2010.

“George Herbert as Poetic Antidote to Busyness” and “Flannery O’Connor as Prophet to a Post-Christian and Post-Secular Culture,” Sixth Annual Growth in Grace Conference, All Saints Presbyterian Church, Austin, Texas, February 12, 2010.

“G. K. Chesterton as God’s Huge Fool: Two Lectures on His Tragic-Comic Vision,” St. Charles Avenue Baptist Church, New Orleans, Louisiana, February 18-19, 2010.

“Why New Orleans Still Matters,” the Second Annual Walker Percy Lecture, Redeemer Presbyterian Church, New Orleans, Louisiana, February 19, 2010.

“Clothing Our Moral Nakedness: Education for the Sake of Christian Virtue,” The Annual AC Weston Lecture, Augustine College, Ottawa, Canada, March 26, 2010. Also available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XqlMEA9EWME

“Life After Life After Death,” a sermon preached at Beeson Divinity School, Samford University on the final phrase of the Nicene Creed: “And in the life of the world to come,” Birmingham, Alabama, April 27, 2010.

“Undeceiving the Deceiver: The Problem of the Demonic in Flannery O’Connor’s The Violent Bear It Away,” Lilly Graduate Fellows Program, “Engaging the Great Texts Within the Christian Tradition,” Baylor University, Waco, Texas, May 18, 2010.

“Prospective Baptist Contributions to Christian Higher Education: Schooling the Heart for the Sake of Christian Existence Today,” Seminar on Academic Leadership in Baptist Universities, Baylor University, Waco, Texas, May 19, 2010.

“From the Bible Belt South to the Deep Catholic North: A Small Life Drama in Four Acts,” Opening Academic Convocation Address, Providence College, Providence, Rhode Island, September 15, 2010.

“Branding with the Cross: Flannery O’Connor on the Comedy of Christian Formation,” University of Notre Dame Catholic Culture Lecture Series, Notre Dame, Indiana, September 21, 2010; the Randall Chair of Christian Culture Autumn Lecture, Providence College, October 14, 2010; the Bean Foundation Distinguished Lecture Series, St. Anselm College, Manchester, New Hampshire, October 28, 2010; the “Faith Seeking Understanding” Lecture Series, Gordon College, Wenham, Massachusetts, February 20, 2011; Malone University, Canton, Ohio, March 30, 2011; The Staley Lecture, Shorter University, May 10, 2011.

“ “The Crucified Beauty That Will Save the World,” Union University, Jackson, Tennessee, October 20, 2011.

“The Homeless Mother with the Torn Hair: Chesterton's Marian Vision of the Nativity,” St. Anselm College, Manchester, New Hampshire, October 28, 2010.

“The Lady Who Looks on Gladiators in Grapple: G. K. Chesterton’s Marian Poems,” invited address at “Younger than Sin”: Retrieving Simplicity Through the Virtues of Humility, Wonder & Joy, the Center for Ethics and Culture Annual Symposium, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, Indiana, November 20, 2010.

“Restoring Mary’s Place to the Nativity,” First Baptist Church of America, Providence, Rhode Island, December 26, 2010.

“A Long Obedience in the Right Direction: J. R. R. Tolkien on Adventure and Quest,” the Address for the Delta Epsilon Sigma National Scholastic Society, Saint Anselm College, Manchester, Vermont, February 20, 2011; Malone University, Canton, Ohio, March 29, 2011; the Veritas School, Richmond, Virginia; February 8, 2013; LeTourneau University, Longview, Texas, March 22, 2013.

“Rum, Romanism, and the Sacramental Imagination: G. K. Chesterton’s The Flying Inn,” the Randall Winter Lecture, Providence College, Providence, Rhode Island, February 24, 2011; the John Woolman Lecture, Malone University, Canton, Ohio, March 29, 2011; Regent College, Vancouver, British Columbia, July 18, 2012.

Concluding capstone presentation for “Flannery O’Connor and Walker Percy: God’s Comic Prophets for a Deaf and Blind Age” (a two-day conference which I also organized), Providence College, Providence, Rhode Island, April 1-2, 2011.

Four Lectures on “The Poetry of George Herbert,” First Baptist Church in America, Providence, Rhode Island, April 2011.

Guest leader at the annual “Faith and Learning” faculty retreat, Waynesburg University, Waynesburg, Pennsylvania, May 2011.

“Living and Dying Upon Dogma: John Henry Newman and Flannery O’Connor on Making Christian Witness to a Post-Christian Culture,” plenary address at Revelation and Convergence: Flannery O'Connor Among the Philosophers and Theologians, a conference at Loyola University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois, October 8, 2011; also at Educating for Wisdom in the 21st Century, the Annual Symposium of the Institute for Faith and Learning, Baylor University, Waco, Texas; 

October 28, 2011; also at Radical Emancipation: Confronting the Challenge of Secularism, the Annual Symposium of the Center for Ethics and Culture, University of Notre Dame, November 11, 2011; and finally at Teaching Theology and Handing on the Faith: Challenges and Convergences, the annual joint meeting of the College Theology Society (Roman Catholic) and the National Association of Baptist Professors of Religion, Creighton University, Omaha, Nebraska, May 31, 2013.

“The Crucified Beauty That Will Save the World,” the Stuart E. Murray Lecture, Crandall University, Monckton, New Brunswick, October 13, 2011; also at Union University, Jackson, Tennessee, October 20, 2011.

“Christian Qualities in The Lord of the Rings,” the Program in Liberal Studies, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, Indiana, November 10, 2011.

“Dostoevsky on Living the Iconic Life,” the Second Annual Eighth Day Symposium, St. George Orthodox Christian Cathedral, Wichita, Kansas, January 27, 2012.

“C. S. Lewis: What’s Wrong with the World” and “G. K. Chesterton: What’s Right about the Church,” two lectures given at the Second Annual Symposium sponsored by the Eighth Day Institute, St. George Orthodox Cathedral, Wichita, Kansas, January 28, 2012. These lectures are available on-line at http://ancientfaith.com/specials/eighth_day_symposium_whats_wrong/whats_right_with_the_church_g._k._chesterton_on_the_sacramental_imagination

“G. K. Chesterton as Defender of the Faith,” 31st Annual C. S. Lewis Lecture, University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, Chattanooga, Tennessee, March 9, 2012.

“Flannery O’Connor: Race and Responsibility in a Christ-Haunted South,” The Veritas Forum, University of Tennessee at Knoxville, Knoxville, Tennessee, March 13, 2012.

“Why We Need Somebody to Shoot Us Every Minute of Our Lives: Flannery O’Connor’s ‘A Good Man Is Hard to Find,’” the Frances Mims Lecture and plenary address, Southeast Conference on Christianity and Literature, Anderson University, Anderson, South Carolina, April 13, 2012.

“Tradition: Making Witness for Those Who Sleep and to Those Yet Unborn,” DaySpring Baptist Church, Waco, Texas, May 13, 2012. 

“Having Adventures and Pursuing the Quest,” commencement address, The Regents School of Austin, Austin, Texas, May 26, 2012; Montgomery Bell Academy, Nashville, Tennessee; March 10, 2014.

“G. K. Chesterton and Christopher Hitchens: The Need for Worthy Opponents,” the G. K. Chesterton Society of Worcester, Massachusetts, meeting at Christ the King Catholic Church, June 9, 2012.

“Giving Glory and Praise to the Triune God”; “Good Intention, Bad Result, Best Outcome”; “The One Thing That Cannot Be Defeated”; “There, AND BY the Grace of God, God I”: four sermons preached at the First Baptist Church of America, Providence, Rhode Island, June 3, 10, 17, and 24, 2012.

“The Church as a Spike in the Tires of the State,” Regent College, Vancouver, British Columbia, July 16, 2012.

“G. K. Chesterton on Rum, Romanism, and the Sacramental Imagination,” Regent College, Vancouver, British Columbia, July 18, 2012.

“The Figure of ‘Sunday’: The Nightmare Character of Divine Action in Chesterton’s The Man Called Thursday, the Frances Mims Lecture and plenary address, the 31st Annual Conference of the G. K. Chesterton Society; Reno, Nevada; August 3, 2012.

“Why Tolkien Is an Implicitly Rather Than Explicitly Catholic Writer,” the Center for Ethics and Culture “Catholic Writers Series,” University of Notre Dame, September 24, 2012.

“The Dangerously Blessed John Henry Newman: On the Dangers of Unconstrained Technical Expertise,” Baylor University Symposium on Faith and Technology, Waco, Texas, October 27, 2012.

“Tolkien’s Hobbits as the Little People Who Save the World,” The Covenant School of Dallas; November 2, 2012; The Kalos Foundation Annual Lecture, Tyler, Texas, December 7, 2012.

“The Theological Roots and Remedy for Racism in Flannery O’Connor’s ‘The Artificial Nigger,’” Bishop Thomas K. Gorman Catholic School, Tyler, Texas, December 8, 2012.

“Flannery O’Connor, Fyodor Dostoevsky, and the Byzantine Icon of Christ Pantocrator,” “Living the Iconic Life: Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov,” and “Revisiting Miracle, Mystery, and Authority in Ivan Karamazov’s Grand Inquisitor,” three invited lectures for the Eighth Day Institute Symposium on “Dostoevsky: The Divine and the Demonic,” St. George Orthodox Cathedral; Wichita, Kansas, January 25-26, 2013.

“The Christian Tradition as Embodied in the Work of J.R.R. Tolkien,” Richmond Center for Christian Study, Third Presbyterian Church, Richmond, Virginia, February 7, 2013.

“Why Purity Is the Most Mysterious of the Virtues: Flannery O’Connor’s ‘Parker’s Back,’” Thomas International Center, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, February 9, 2013.

“Theosis as the Central Christian Doctrine for Our Post-Christian Age: C. S. Lewis’s The Great Divorce as Example,” plenary address at the 16th Annual C. S. Lewis and Inklings Society Conference, Le Tourneau University, Longview, Texas, March 22, 2013.

“A Prophet from Middle Georgia: Flannery O’Connor as God’s Rough-Hewn Cornerstone,” First Presbyterian Church, Newnan, Georgia, April 7, 2013.

“The Pains of Hell and the Surprises of Purgatory: Walker Percy’s Love in the Ruins,” at “Heaven, Hell, . . . and Purgatory?”, the Annual Pro Ecclesia Conference,

Loyola University of Maryland; Baltimore, MD; June 11, 2013.

“Christopher Hitchens and G. K. Chesterton: New Atheist vs. Old Convert,” Regent College, Vancouver, British Columbia, July 1, 2013.

“From Symbol to Sacrament: How My Theology Has Changed,” Regent College, Vancouver, British Columbia, July 8, 2013.

“The Place of Imagination in the Life and Work of Christian Teachers,” four lectures to the faculty and administration of the Regent Preparatory School of Oklahoma, Tulsa, Oklahoma, August 15-16, 2013.

“Flannery O’Connor, Fyodor Dostoevsky, and Christ Pantocrator,” The Flannery O’Connor Lecture Series, The Aquinas Center of Theology at Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia, September 16-17, 2013. Available on-line at:

Part One: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aY7Y8wJWLlo
Part Two: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BDpTiMNTHQo
Part Three: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eIrFPJvM-kY
Part Four: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-UwCV2d6iv4
Part Five: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x9hSuAmXeE4

Also at the Graduate Christian Fellowship, University of Texas-Austin, October 3, 20;
University of Dallas, Irving, Texas, October 7, 2014; as well as the Thomistic Center, University of St. Thomas, Houston, Texas, November 20, 2015.

G. K. Chesterton vs. Christopher Hitchens on Human Dignity, Freedom, and Death,” Center for Christian Study, Charlottesville, Virginia, September 23, 2013.

    “C. S. Lewis and Theosis: Why Christians Are Meant Not to Be Tame but Good,” the Fourth Annual Drumwright Family Lecture, Baylor University, Waco, Texas, October 8, 2013. Available on-line at http://www.abc.net.au/religion/articles/2014/02/19/3948008.htm

An interview with Frank Faulk for the Canadian Broadcasting Company’s “IDEAS” (Radio One) program on “C. S. Lewis and the Inklings,” http://www.cbc.ca/ideas/episodes/2013/10/09/cs-lewis-and-the-inklings/

http://www.cbc.ca/ideas/episodes/2013/10/17/cs-lewis-and-the-inklings-part-2-1/, October 9 and 17, 2013.

“How Reading Tolkien Enriches Home Schooling,” Classical Conversations of Tyler, Texas; October 25, 2013.

“Walker Percy vs. Søren Kierkegaard on the Nature of Selfhood: A Reading of Love in the Ruins,” at Kierkegaard: A Christian Thinker for Our Time?, The annual Baylor University Symposium on Faith and Culture, Waco, Texas; November 8, 2013. (http://www.baylor.edu/player/index.php?id=217085&gallery_id=9673)

“Fighting the Long Defeat: J.R.R. Tolkien’s Vision of History,” Honors Seminar on J.R.R. Tolkien, University of Notre Dame, South Bend, Indiana; December 12, 2013.

“Why Careful Reading Matters (also to Christians),” Jesus Creed, the blog of Scott McKnight: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/jesuscreed/2013/12/21/why-careful-reading-matters-to-christians/

“The Lady with the Torn Hair: G.K. Chesterton on the Nativity,” the Religion and Ethics website of the Australian Broadcasting Company: http://www.abc.net.au/religion/articles/2013/12/23/3916651.htm

“Baptism by Drowning: Flannery O’Connor’s “The River,” the McConnell Forum, University of Louisville, Louisville, Kentucky; February 28, 2014.

“C. S. Lewis on the Moral Formation of Physicians,” Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, Nashville, Tennessee; March 19, 2014.

“Flannery O’Connor: Divine Grace through Earthly Limits,” Crossroads Cultural Center in collaboration with the Center for Religion and Culture at St. Edward’s University; Austin, Texas, May 15, 2014.

“Walker and William Alexander Percy: Their Grateful but Tense Relation,” the Annual Walker Percy Festival, St. Francisville, LA; June 7, 2014.

“Flannery O’Connor and the Dialectics of Place,” at Flannery O’Connor and Place: An International Symposium, All Hallows College, Dublin, Republic of Ireland; July 26, 2014.

“Flannery O’Connor: Writer for Our Age of Atrocity,” Flannery O’Connor High School Colloquium for North Texas private and parochial schools, Cistercian Preparatory School, Irving, TX; October 7, 2014.

Two lectures on “J. R. R. Tolkien and the Art of Mythopoeia,” The Rabbit Room Retreat, Laity Lodge, Leakey, TX; March 26-29, 2015.

“Tolkien’s Providential Understanding of History in The Two Towers” and “Flannery O’Connor’s Radical Regard for Baptism in ‘The River,’” the McConnell Center, University of Louisville, Louisville, KY; April 17, 2015.

“Honoring Flannery O’Connor,” a tribute given at the day-of-issue ceremony for the Flannery O’Connor commemorative stamp, National Philatelic Exhibition, McLean, VA; June 5, 2015.

“Flannery O’Connor and Walker Percy on the ‘Tempestuous Restructuring of Human Consciousness,’” the Second Annual Walker Percy Festival, St. Francisville, LA; June 6, 2015.

“Heaven, Purgatory, Hell” and “C.S. Lewis and Theosis in The Great Divorce,” two addresses at Imagining the Afterlife: A Conference Exploring Imaginative Journeys in the World Beyond the Living,” the Russell Kirk Center, Mecosta, Michigan; September 7, 2015.

“C.S. Lewis and Theosis in The Great Divorce” and “Flannery O’Connor, Fyodor Dostoevsky, and the Byzantine Icon of Christ Pantocrator,” the Carleton-Willson Families Lecture, McMurry University; Abilene, Texas; October 19-20, 2015.

“The Culture of Life Versus the Culture of Death,” Commencement Address, St. Gregory’s University; Shawnee, Oklahoma, May 6, 2017.

“Neither Angels nor Beasts, but Pilgrims and Wayfarers: Walker Percy and the Benedict Option,” 3rd Annual Walker Percy Festival, St. Francisville, Louisiana, June 3, 2017.

“Baylor professor describes some of the key influences on his life,” an interview with Dave Moore: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I0u4MwSuYds&t=22s

“G.K. Chesterton as Father of the Inklings,” Fourth Inklings Oktoberfest, Eighth Day Institute, Wichita, Kansas; October 20, 2018.

“Dante in One Hundred Days,” Baylor University Series on the Divine Comedy, Opening Lecture on Canto I (September 7, 2021): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w5D4Uk7ypZM

“To Kill God in Man and to Revive Man in God: The Case of Dimitri in The Brothers Karamazov,” a Lily Foundation Conference on “The Drama of Atheist Humanism,” plenary address, Belmont Abbey College, Belmont, North Carolina, September 14, 2021. [This was my final full-scale academic presentation.]