Jon Meacham holds the Carolyn T. and Robert M. Rogers Chair in the American Presidency at Vanderbilt University, where he is also a distinguished visiting professor and co-chairs the Vanderbilt Project on Unity & Democracy. A biographer and contributing editor at Time, he lectures widely in the United States on history, politics, and religious faith, and is the Canon Historian of Washington National Cathedral. In 2020, Meacham was a visiting lecturer at American Baptist College in Nashville, Tennessee. He is the author of numerous New York Times bestsellers, including His Truth Is Marching On: John Lewis and the Power of Hope; The Soul of America: The Battle for Our Better Angels; The Hope of Glory: Reflections on the Last Words of Jesus from the Cross; Songs of America: Patriotism, Protest, and the Music That Made a Nation (with Tim McGraw); Destiny and Power: The American Odyssey of George Herbert Walker Bush; Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power; American Gospel: God, the Founding Fathers, and the Making of a Nation; Franklin and Winston: An Intimate Portrait of an Epic Friendship. He is the editor of two volumes: Voices in Our Blood: America’s Best on the Civil Rights Movement and In the Hands of the People, an anthology of Thomas Jefferson’s writings. Meacham’s And There Was Light: Abraham Lincoln and the American Struggle was published in October 2022. It spent 16 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list and has been honored with the Richard Nelson Current Award of the Lincoln Forum; the Gilder Lehrman Lincoln Prize (a co-winner with Jonathan W. White’s A House Built by Slaves); the Barondess/Lincoln Award of the Civil War Roundtable of New York; the Annual Award of Achievement of the Lincoln Group of New York; and the 2023 Abraham Lincoln Institute Book Award. Meacham’s American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for biography in 2009; the book was cited as an “unlikely portrait of a not always admirable democrat, but a pivotal president, written with an agile prose that brings the Jackson saga to life.” A member of the Council on Foreign Relations and of the Society of American Historians, Meacham has written for The New York Times, The Washington Post, Vanity Fair, and Garden & Gun. Meacham is also a regular guest on “Morning Joe” and other broadcasts. Meacham’s biography of President Bush was named one of the ten best books of the year by The Washington Post and one of the best books of the year by The New York Times Book Review, Time, National Public Radio, and the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Destiny and Power was also honored for excellence in “Politics and Leadership” in 2015 by the Plutarch Committee of BIO, the Biographers International Organization.
Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power received the 2013 Fraunces Tavern Museum Book Award from the Fraunces Tavern Museum and the Sons of the American Revolution in the State of New York, a prize that “recognizes books of exceptional merit written on the Revolutionary War era.” Franklin and Winston was honored with the Colby Award of the William E. Colby Military Writers’ Symposium at Norwich University. Meacham was also honored with the 2015 Nashville Public Library Literary Award; other winners include John Lewis, Robert K. Massie, Margaret Atwood, John McPhee, Billy Collins, Doris Kearns Goodwin, John Irving, Ann Patchett, John Updike, David McCullough, and David Halberstam. A former executive editor at Random House, he published the letters of Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., and books by, among others, Al Gore, John Danforth, Mary Soames, and Charles Peters. After serving as Managing Editor of Newsweek for eight years, Meacham was the Editor of the magazine from 2006 to 2010. He is a former editor of The Washington Monthly and began his career at The Chattanooga Times. Born in Chattanooga in 1969, Meacham was educated at St. Nicholas School, The McCallie School, and graduated in 1991 from The University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee, with a degree summa cum laude in English Literature; he was salutatorian and elected to Phi Beta Kappa. He has served as a trustee of the Thomas Jefferson Foundation, whose board he chaired, of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History, of The New-York Historical Society, of The McCallie School, and of The Harpeth Hall School. Meacham chaired the National Advisory Council of the John C. Danforth Center on Religion and Politics at Washington University. He has served on the vestries of St. Thomas Church Fifth Avenue and of Trinity Church Wall Street as well as the Board of Trustees and the Board of Regents of The University of the South. The Anti-Defamation League awarded Meacham its Hubert H. Humphrey First Amendment Prize. In 2013 the Historical Society of Pennsylvania presented him with its Founder’s Award; in 2016 he was honored with the Sandra Day O’Connor Institute’s Spirit of Democracy Award; in 2017 he was made a Churchill Fellow of Westminster College, Fulton, Missouri, in services at the Church of St. Mary the Virgin. In 2021, the National Archives awarded Meacham its Records of Achievement Award; in 2022, he was honored, with Annette Gordon-Reed, with the Aspen Institute’s Public Service Award. Meacham also received an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree from the Berkeley Divinity School at Yale University in 2005 and holds honorary doctorates from Williams College, Middlebury College, Wake Forest University, the University of Tennessee, Dickinson College, Sewanee, Loyola New Orleans, Loyola Baltimore, Millsaps College, and several other institutions. He lives in Nashville and in Sewanee with his wife and children.
Keynote Speaker February 28, 2024 The Rev. Josh Bales
Josh is equal parts Singer-Songwriter, Anglican/Episcopal Priest, and Licensed Mental Health Counselor. He holds both an M.Div. and M.A. in Counseling from Reformed Theological Seminary, a Certificate in Anglican Studies from Nashotah House Theological Seminary, and is a Senior Fellow for the Colson Center. With 20 years of touring experience, thousands of albums sold and downloaded, and well over half a million digital streams in recent years alone, Josh has cultivated a faithful following of energetic listeners that few independent artists can boast. After early releases like “About A Boy” (2003), Self-Titled (2005), and "Underneath The Armor” (2008), Josh's fans funded his 2012 "Count The Stars EP,” with multi-award winning producer, Ed Cash. Josh followed this with a country-infused pop album of love songs, "Somehow I Knew,” and two collections of retuned hymns and songwriter originals: "The Birds Their Carols Raise” (2015) and “Come Away From Rush & Hurry” (2018). In August 2023 Josh joined Nashville producer Jeremy Casella to release a six-song EP of original music called "The Weight of Glory." Originally from Chattanooga, TN Josh now lives in Orlando, FL where he serves as Canon Priest at the Cathedral Church of Saint Luke. Most importantly, Josh is a husband to Mindy and father to Daphne (8), Lucy (5), and Dottie (4 mths).
KEYNOTE SPEAKER on March 6, 2024 The Rev. Dr. Rosalyn Nichols
Dr. Nichols is a native Memphian and since 2001 has served as organizing Pastor of Freedom’s Chapel Church (DOC) where all are welcomed to love, grow and share together. In 1998 Dr. Nichols organized A More Excellent Way, Inc. with a mission to help individuals from all walks of life to enter into, engage in and maintain spiritually healthy relationships toward the elimination of relationship violence. She is the current President and founding partner of MICAH (Memphis Interfaith Coalition for Action and Hope), the Inter-Faith Officer for MIFA (Metropolitan Inter-Faith Association) and an Alpha Kappa Alpha, Inc., BEO Chapter member. Her travels led her as visiting professor in Gweru, Zimbabwe; as a church planter to the provinces of China, and clergy member to the Holy Land. She preached and presented at the Samuel D. Proctor Conference, was a convener and presenter for the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship & Mercer University Conference on Sexuality and Covenant, and a Missions Educator for the Lott Carey Foreign Mission Convention. Dr. Nichols’ deepest passion is transformational teaching, preaching while working with others to seek justice, love mercy and walk humbly before her God.
KEYNOTE SPEAKER on March 13, 2024 The Rev. Dr. Joel Huffstetler
Fr. Joel Huffstetler has served as the Rector of St. Luke’s Episcopal Church in Cleveland, Tennessee since June 2003. Before that, he served as Assistant to the Rector at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Chattanooga, and St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church, Canton, NC. He received his D.Min. and M.Div. from the University of the South, Sewanee, Tennessee. He is the author of several books, including Practical Faith and Active Love: Meditations on the Epistle of James, Changed Eyes: Pandemic, Protests, Proclamation, and is the posthumous editor of the works of Michael Mayne.
KEYNOTE SPEAKER on March 20, 2024 The Rev. Dr. Luke A. Powery
The Rev. Dr. Luke A. Powery is the Dean of Duke University Chapel and Associate Professor of Homiletics at Duke Divinity School. A national leader in the theological study of the art of preaching (homiletics), Powery regularly delivers sermons at Duke Chapel as well as at churches throughout the United States and abroad. He is often a keynote speaker and lecturer at educational institutions, conferences, symposia, and retreats.
His teaching and research interests are located at the intersection of preaching, worship, pneumatology, and culture, particularly expressions of the African diaspora. His book Becoming Human: The Holy Spirit and the Rhetoric of Race received the 2023 Book of the Year from the Religious Communication Association and also the Academy of Parish Clergy. He is also the author of Spirit Speech: Lament and Celebration in Preaching; Dem Dry Bones: Preaching, Death, and Hope; Rise Up, Shepherd! Advent Reflections on the Spirituals; Were You There? Lenten Reflections on the Spirituals. He has co-authored an introductory textbook on preaching, Ways of the Word: Learning to Preach for Your Time and Place (with Sally Brown); Getting to God: Preaching Good News in a Troubled World (with John Rottman and Joni Sancken); and most recently, Living the Questions of the Bible. He is also a general editor of the nine-volume lectionary commentary series for preaching and worship titled Connections: A Lectionary Commentary for Preaching and Worship.
Powery was ordained by the Progressive National Baptist Convention and has served in an ecumenical capacity in churches throughout Switzerland, Canada and the United States. He is a member of the Academy of Homiletics, for which he has served as Secretary; the American Academy of Religion; and the Society for the Study of Black Religion. Powery served as a member of the executive lectionary team for The African-American Lectionary and is the recipient of numerous scholastic fellowships and awards. In 2008, the African-American Pulpit named him one of twenty outstanding black ministers under the age of 40 who are helping shape the future direction of the church. In 2014, he was inducted into the Martin Luther King Jr. Collegium of Scholars at Morehouse College for his ethical and spiritual leadership in the academy, church, and broader society.
Prior to his appointment at Duke, he served as the Perry and Georgia Engle Assistant Professor of Homiletics at Princeton Theological Seminary. He received his Bachelor of Arts in music with a concentration in vocal performance from Stanford University, his Master of Divinity from Princeton Theological Seminary, and his Doctor of Theology from Emmanuel College at the University of Toronto.
He is married to Gail Powery, and the couple has two children.