Keynote: Katelyn Beaty

  • Saturday, April 1, 2017
  • 7:00 PM–8:00 PM
  • CFAC Recital Hall

Why Sing When the World Is Burning?: A Vision for Culture Making Amid Despair

In moments of political crisis and cultural displacement, we are tempted to question the value of the arts, in all their superfluousness. Do we really have time the time, energy, and resources to sing songs, paint paintings, and write novels when so many other seemingly pressing things need our attention? Yet it is precisely in moments when the arts seem the most superfluous that they are the most necessary--not as a "triumph of the human spirit" but as a vision of grace and love for the world.

Katelyn Beaty is an editor at large at Christianity Today magazine and the author of A Woman's Place, a book on work and vocation for women (Simon & Schuster, 2016). A proud Calvin College graduate, she has written for The New York Times, The Atlantic, and The Washington Post and lives outside Chicago.