The program for the 2019 Annual Meeting in Sewanee will have four sessions:

• Norman Austin (Professor Emeritus of Classics, The University of Arizona) will speak on the expulsion of all western missionaries from China in 1951, on his personal experience growing up in  China, the son of missionary parents who were expelled, and about the state of Christianity in China today.   

• David Middleton (Professor Emeritus of English and Poet in Residence Emeritus, Nicholls State University in Thibodaux, Louisiana). will introduce us to The Life, Poetry, and Prose of Alabama Poet John Martin Finlay (1941-1991)

• Nick Birns (NYU), Ben Brabson (Indiana University), Charles Huttar (Hope College) and Debora Shuger (UCLA) will constitute a panel surveying The Guild of Scholars: Past, Present, Future, and facilitate an hour-long discussion among members on the the Guild’s mission today and its potential contribution to the Church eighty years after its foundation.

• Warren Smith (Professor Emeritus of Classics, The University of New Mexico) will counter an early pagan slur that Christians worshipped a donkey by presenting evidence of The Ass as a Christian and Muslim Symbol.