From: Phil deHaan (dehp@calvin.edu)
Date: Tue Aug 19 2003 - 15:33:33 EDT
August 19, 2003 == MEDIA RELEASE
Mark Fackler has been named the Calvin Lecturer for 2003-2004. The post is
co-sponsored by Calvin College and the Christian Reformed Church's Campus
Ministries effort. As the Calvin Lecturer, Fackler will visit North American
college campuses (including at least one in Canada) that have a CRC Campus
Minister.
There he will deliver a public lecture with broad appeal, meet with smaller
groups of students and faculty and lead a seminar for Campus Ministry staff.
And during Interim (in January) Fackler hopes to speak at universities outside
North America.
A professor of communication arts and sciences, Fackler has a whole raft of
topics that he hopes to address in 2003-2004, but most are linked by their
connections to media.
For example, one area of interest for Fackler is the continent of Africa, a
place he has visited several times for extended stays as part of sabbatical
projects. Africa, he says, has been described as a continent in chaos. HIV
finds more victims there than anywhere else, government corruption is legendary
and tribalism resists modernity. Poverty, food supply, ecological
indifference, illiteracy and the danger of public dissent round out a short
roster of problems facing the 54 nations below the Sahara. Is there a role for
responsible media and publicly minded journalism in Africa he asks. And could
a revival of public media there sharpen our own North American media?
Fackler also is intrigued by the internet. He notes that every medium in the
public marketplace, save one, has linked freedom with responsibility to find
reasonable balance between social values, customs and a person's right to think
and learn freely. The one which defies this pattern, he says, is the internet.
A member of the Calvin communication arts and sciences department since 1998,
Fackler also has assisted in the production of Bible products for all ages,
including work on the Life Application Bible Commentary and The Quest Study
Bible as well as Max Lucado's The Inspiration Study Bible and Tyndale House's
The Family Resource Bible. So, one area he hopes to also cover next year in
his talks on college campuses is Biblical literacy. He also uses the New
Testament book of Philippians to look at the differences between work for hire
and work for God and the Old Testament book of Ecclesiastes to examine
"post-modern angst in the pre-modern world."
Fackler has written books on such topics as media ethics, popular religious
magazines and social ethics and the press. He is on the editorial advisory
boards of both Christian History magazine and the Journal of Mass Media
Ethics.
Contact Fackler at 616-526-6274 or mfackler@calvin.edu
-end-
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