Inspiring Minds to Engage the World with Wisdom, Compassion, and Courage
The Headmaster Presents lecture series invites distinguished speakers to campus to provide insights into various disciplines through a Christian worldview, fostering intellectual curiosity, personal responsibility, and spiritual growth.
Reading as a Spiritual Practice
January 30, 2026
7:00 PM – 8:30 PM
The Bear Creek School
Diamond Performing Arts Center
8525 208th Avenue NE
Redmond, WA 98053
We invite you to join us for Headmaster Presents: Reading as a Spiritual Practice with Dr. Jessica Hooten Wilson. An award-winning author, professor, and speaker, Dr. Wilson is passionate about helping readers see how faith and imagination come together through great books.
Doors open at 6:30 p.m., and light refreshments will be served.
In this talk, she will share how reading can be more than an intellectual pursuit—it can be a spiritual discipline that deepens our faith, shapes our character, and forms us into people of wisdom and holiness. Drawing on her recent book, Reading for the Love of God, Dr. Wilson will inspire us to approach literature not just as entertainment but as a means of encountering God’s truth and beauty.
Jennifer Hooten Wilson, Ph.D., is the Fletcher Jones Chair of Great Books at Pepperdine University. As a professor, author, and speaker, she is passionate about helping people see how faith, literature, and the imagination work together to shape both the mind and the heart.
She is the author of several award-winning books, including The Scandal of Holiness: Renewing Your Imagination in the Company of Literary Saints and Giving the Devil His Due: Flannery O’Connor and The Brothers Karamazov, which received Christianity Today’s Book of the Year in Arts & Culture. Her recent book, Reading for the Love of God: How to Read as a Spiritual Practice, invites us to think of reading as a way of deepening our faith.
Dr. Wilson’s work has been recognized with numerous fellowships and awards, including a Fulbright Fellowship, the Emerging Public Intellectual Award, and the Hiett Prize in the Humanities. She also serves as a Senior Fellow at The Trinity Forum.
Whether in the classroom, on the page, or from the stage, Dr. Wilson inspires others to read deeply, think Christianly, and allow great books to lead us toward lives of wisdom and holiness.
Patrick Carruth, originally from Georgia by way of Memphis, came to The Bear Creek School in 2007 after a long career in the classroom and as Dean of Faculty at Evangelical Christian School in Cordova, TN, when he took on the position as Bear Creek’s second head of school.
A teacher at heart, Patrick enjoys opportunities to be with students in the classroom. And as a student, he is drawn to timeless books by C. S. Lewis, G. K. Chesterton, and Calvin. Patrick also enjoys the great outdoors with hiking and fly-fishing among his favorite recreational activities. He holds a B.A. Literature from University of Georgia and an M.A. Literature from University of Memphis.