Res Publica: Latin for “public affairs” or “public issues”; root for the English word “republic”

Covenant College is an agency of the Presbyterian Church in America. Years ago, another agency of the PCA—formerly known as “Women in the Church”—endowed funds that allowed Covenant to establish an annual lecture series that was charged with the task of building up the church and bolstering an informed lay leadership, among both men and women, by addressing serious contemporary issues facing our world. 

These spring semester lectures are intended to challenge and equip students to address public issues thoughtfully and faithfully. They give us a chance to tap into the wisdom of top scholars from around the world who are tackling big issues that we as members of Christ’s body should know about and be willing to discuss.

2025 Res Publica Lectures: Words for Conviviality
Guest Speaker: Dr. Jeffrey Bilbro
January 16-18

Chapel Lectures: Thursday and Friday - 11:00 am, The Dora Maclellan Brown Memorial Chapel
One-Credit Course: Thursday and Friday evenings and Saturday morning, Brock Hall

Radical innovations in communications technologies are transforming culture and disrupting journalism and publishing. Fierce partisan and geographic divides are fueling political realignment. Theological disputes are undermining the institutional church while spiritual energy is being redirected into new religious movements and cults.⁠ These statements describe our current situation, but they apply equally to 1850s America.

This course aims to understand our contemporary, digital media ecosystem and to consider how we might faithfully participate in it as readers, writers, and thinkers. We’ll primarily focus on the industrialization of print and communications technologies in nineteenth-century America, however, in an effort to gain some perspective on the swirling dynamics of our own day. 

Jeffrey Bilbro

Jeffrey Bilbro is editor-in-chief of Front Porch Republic and associate professor of English at Grove City College.   He is author of Loving God’s Wildness: The Christian Roots of Ecological Ethics in American Literature, Virtues of Renewal: Wendell Berry’s Sustainable Forms, Reading the Times: A Literary and Theological Inquiry into the News, and, most recently, Words for Conviviality Media Technologies and Practices of Hope.