Leading scholar in early Christianity to deliver Blake Lecture at VCU

By Brian McNeill

Elizabeth A. Clark, Ph.D., a Duke University professor of religion and history and a leading scholar in the study of Christianity, will deliver the 21st annual William E. and Miriam S. Blake Lecture at Virginia Commonwealth University.

Clark will give her talk, "Rome in the Nineteenth-Century Protestant Imaginary: American Professors, Ancient 'Pagans' and Early Christianity," on Thursday, April 10, from 7:30 to 9:30 p.m. at the Grace Street Theater, 932 W. Grace St.

Clark, who holds dual appointments as the John Carlisle Kilgo Professor of Religion and as a professor of history at Duke, is widely credited with having a transforming influence on the study of Christianity. She is the author of a number of books, including "Founding the Fathers: Early Church History and Protestant Professors in Nineteenth-Century America" and "Reading Renunciation: Asceticism and Scripture in Early Christianity."

"Professor Elizabeth Clark is among the most influential and respected scholars of early Christianity in the past generation," said Andrew Crislip, Ph.D., the William E. and Miriam S. Blake Chair in the History of Christianity and associate history professor in VCU's Department of History in the College of Humanities and Sciences. "Through her groundbreaking articles and books, along with her leadership and mentoring of a generation of students and scholars, Dr. Clark has transformed the way we think about Christianity's formative centuries."

The annual Blake lecture honors William E. and Miriam S. Blake and is presented annually by a renowned scholar. The lecture is supported by an endowed fund established by family, friends, colleagues, and those who enjoyed the History of Christianity course that Professor Blake launched at VCU.

A reception will follow Clark's lecture. The event is free and open to the public.