Stephen Prothero, professor of religion at Boston University and a recent guest on Stephen Colbert’s show, will speak at 4 p.m. May 1 in Sydnor Performance Hall, Schewel Hall.
Prothero’s guest appearance on Stephen Colbert gives a humorous glimpse at his book. God is Not One: The Eight Rival Religions That Run the World — and Why Their Differences Matter (HarperOne, 2010).
Prothero’s talk, “Fostering Religious Literacy after 9/11 and Revolution 2.0,” is the 2011 Zaidee Creel Williams Lecture.
Prothero is also author of The New York Times bestseller Religious Literacy: What Americans Need to Know (HarperOne, 2007). He has commented on religion on dozens of National Public Radio programs, and on television on CNN, NBC, MSNBC, FOX, and PBS. He was also a guest on “The Daily Show” with Jon Stewart and “The Oprah Winfrey Show.”
A regular contributor to The Wall Street Journal and USA Today, he has also written for The New York Times, Slate, Salon, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, and The Boston Globe.
In 2010, he was invited to speak about religious literacy at the White House. Prothero received his BA from Yale University in American studies and his PhD in religion from Harvard University. He lives on Cape Cod, and he tweets @sprothero.
The Zaidee Creel Williams Lectureship was endowed in 1987 by Austin B. Creel and other family members in honor of Zaidee Creel Williams, a 1924 graduate of LC who taught in public schools in Virginia, Maryland, and West Virginia. The funds are to be used for lectures on religious studies.