We The People: In Search of the Common Good

We The People: in Search of the Common Good is a program of public lectures on crucial issues facing our society sponsored by a group of lay people and clergy of the Congregational and Unitarian churches of Exeter New Hampshire. We have come together because we are deeply concerned that the thinking on these issues has been polarized by one-sided arguments from extreme voices.

Believing that Americans must be well informed to end this polarization, we are inviting to Exeter a number of people with knowledge and understanding to speak on subjects that concern us all, among them social security, the Christian conservative movement, pluralism, the environment, and the United Nations. Through these lectures we hope to bring people together for the common good. In some cases our speakers will also be speaking at the morning assembly at Phillips Exeter Academy.

The lectures, which will include a question and answer period, will be held at 7 PM at the Congregational Church in Exeter. They will be free and open to the public. Speakers will include Diana Eck, head of the Pluralism Project at Harvard and Professor of Hindu Studies, Paul Solmon, economics reporter for PBS, Vincent Harding, who worked with Martin Luther King, Jr., and headed the SCLC, and former US senator Tim Wirth, now head of the United Nations Foundation.

The first lecture, on the Christian conservative movement, will be given on Sun. October 9 by Professor Jeff Sharlet of Harper’s Magazine and New York University.

Mr. Sharlet is co-author, with Peter Manseau, of

Killing the Buddha: A Heretic’s Bible, selected by Publishers Weekly as a top ten religion book of 2004. He has commented on religion and politics for a wide array of media, including The New York Times, NPR, NBC, BBC, CBC. He is currently working on a book about the Christian conservative movement to be published by HarperCollins/Morrow in 2006. You can read his article “Inside America’s Most Powerful Megachurch,” describing Ted Haggard’s New Life Church in Colorado Springs, in the May 2005 issue of Harper’s. According to Mr. Sharlet, no pastor has more influence over “the political direction of evangelicalism” than Ted Haggard