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.
Past events
Reading as a Spiritual Practice
January 30, 2026
Dr. Jessica Hooten Wilson, an award-winning author, professor, and speaker, is passionate about helping readers see how faith and imagination come together through great books.
She shared 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 inspired us to approach literature not just as entertainment but as a means of encountering God’s truth and beauty.
Jessica 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.
Paradise Regained: A Biblical Theology of Creation Care
February 27, 2025
For our first event of this series, President and Headmaster Patrick Carruth invited Dr. Jonathan Moo, New Testament and environmental studies professor at Whitworth University, for a discussion on how Christian principles and being made in God's image should guide ethical leadership in addressing climate change by emphasizing stewardship, responsibility, and compassion. Dr. Moo shared insight about the importance of leading with faith and how it can positively impact our personal and professional lives.
Jonathan Moo, Ph.D., holds graduate degrees in wildlife ecology and biblical studies. His publications range from studies in the New Testament and early Judaism to a number of influential essays and books on Christianity and ecology including Let Creation Rejoice (IVP) and Creation Care: A Biblical Theology of the Natural World (Zondervan). He currently sits on the board of A Rocha USA, a national community of Christians working in biodiversity conservation to protect and restore vulnerable habitats and species.
An internationally sought-after speaker, Moo is also a popular teacher and mentor of students at Whitworth University. He has received the university’s Innovative Teaching Award and been named a Most Influential Professor in three of the last six years.