Heritage Day Returns to TWU Next Week

Tennessee Wesleyan University will welcome Dr. Brent Strawn as the 2022 Heritage Day lecturer, March 21 and 22. Strawn is a professor of Old Testament at Duke Divinity School and will present a lecture entitled, “The Greatest Story Never Told: Why the Bible is Not a Story (but something far better).”

Heritage Day returns in 2022 after a two-year hiatus due to COVID-19. The event celebrates TWU’s history and relationship with the United Methodist Church (UMC). TWU is a member of the Holston Conference of the UMC.

The events kick off Monday evening with Strawn’s “Greatest Story Never Told…” lecture at 7 p.m. in Johnson Event Center in Colloms Campus Center. Tuesday, March 22, Strawn will speak at 11 a.m. as part of the Heritage Day Convocation held in Townsend Auditorium. The Tuesday event will include a performance by the University choir under the leadership of Dr. Marius Bahnean. All events are free and the community is invited to join.

Strawn is an ordained elder in the North Georgia Conference of The United Methodist Church and regularly speaks and preaches at churches across the country. He has appeared on CNN on matters ranging from Easter celebrations to Pope Francis to gun violence, and he has also served as both translator and member of the editorial board for The Common English Bible.

In addition to his post in Duke’s Divinity School, Strawn also teaches in the Duke Law School. A Ph.D. from Princeton, Strawn’s interests include ancient Near Eastern art, early Israelite religion, the Psalms, and Old Testament theology. He has published over two hundred and fifty articles, chapters in books, contributions to reference works, and reviews.

He is the author of What Is Stronger than a Lion? Leonine Image and Metaphor in the Hebrew Bible and the Ancient Near East (Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2005), The Old Testament Is Dying: A Diagnosis and Recommended Treatment (Baker Academic, 2017), The Old Testament: A Concise Introduction (Routledge, 2019), Lies My Preacher Told Me: An Honest Look at the Old Testament (Westminster John Knox, 2021), and Honest to God Preaching: Talking Sin, Suffering, and Violence (forthcoming by Fortress Press, 2021). He has edited or coedited over twenty-five volumes, including The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Bible and Law (Oxford, 2015), which received the 2016 Dartmouth Medal from the American Library Association for most outstanding reference work.