2025 Humanities for Everyone

2025 Humanities for Everyone Forums: Confronting the Powers on Earth and the Powers in Heaven

Humanities for Everyone is a set of two, non-credit, 8-week forums for Bethel alumni and friends that provides guided, small group discussion of selected “Great Books,” under the direction of Bethel Professor Emeritus Daniel Ritchie. It is informally linked to Bethel’s Humanities Program—a program of history, literature, theology, philosophy, politics, and the arts in the western tradition. Each 8-week forum will consist of four bi-weekly Zoom meetings, in which we will discuss about 50 pages of text. Ample guides will be provided for each reading.

Humanities for Everyone seeks to nurture Bethel community members and friends in their lifelong learning and Christian discipleship. It aspires to cultivate meaningful relationships among Bethel community members and connections to the ongoing life of Bethel University. Participants (Bethel University alumni, parents/family members, friends, and employees) can register for one or both forums.

Winter 2025:

“Exercising Power, Relinquishing Power: The Federalist and Shakespeare’s Tempest”

Right after MLK and Inauguration Day, our Winter sessions will begin with the American Founders’ views of presidential power, judicial review, and the separation of powers. We’ll then turn to Shakespeare’s Tempest (Prof. Ritchie’s favorite play). There, the powerful magician, Prospero, has lost his dukedom from his own neglect and now uses his magic to rule over a strange island and its even stranger inhabitants. What will he do to regain his power—and how will he use it?

• Week 1: January 13—First lecture on The Federalist available

• Week 2: January 21—Meeting #1 on The Federalist

• Week 4: February 4—Meeting #2 on The Federalist

• Week 6: February 18—Meeting #3 on The Tempest

• Week 8: March 4—Meeting #4 on The Tempest

Spring 2025:

“Judgment & Grace in The Great Divorce by C.S. Lewis & Four Stories of Flannery O’Connor”

In this forum we’ll explore the fictional worlds created by two authors who were preoccupied by the ways grace and judgment intersect in our experience. In The Great Divorce, the narrator takes a trip through Hell—or is it Purgatory?—and listens to the souls’ response to God’s loving invitation. In several stories by the great American Catholic writer Flannery O’Connor, we’ll pursue similar themes in the Jim Crow South as her characters recognize—and fail to recognize—the shocking ways that God’s grace comes into their lives.

• Week 1: March 24—First lecture on The Great Divorce available

• Week 2: April 1—Meeting #1 on The Great Divorce

• [Break for Holy Week: April 13-20]

• Week 4: April 22—Meeting #2 on The Great Divorce

• Week 6: May 6—Meeting #3 on The Stories of Flannery O’Connor

• Week 8: May 20—Meeting #4 on The Stories of Flannery O’Connor