Speed speed. Good afternoon. I want to thank you for coming and welcome to the conservative Womens Network lunch a special thank you to the Heritage Foundation the Coalition Relations coordinator standing up for heritage today to put up luncheons of outstanding conservative women almost 20 years now so today i am pleased to introduce our october speaker who will be discussing her new book it is called on reading well. And in her book she chooses books of literature like prudence and justice and faith and love. And i can attest personally for reading it, you understand. From Liberty University she writes frequency a literature culture ethics and ideas and has her articles in many places. Of course, the atlantic and Washington Post and many others. In addition she is the author of booked literature in the soul of me in which she tells the story how her deep love of reading over time she slowly meanders to a deep love of god and thats another wonderful book she gives frequent lectures across the nation. A Research Fellow with the ethics and religious liberties of the Southern Baptist convention a senior fellow for the center for apologetics and Cultural Engagement a senior fellow at the form and the state Advisory Council of the United States completing her phd at State University of new york. And undergraduate studies from amherst. Karen and her husband live in rural virginia with dogs and horses and chickens. [laughter] please join me to welcome karen swallow pride cup up. I want to begin with a brief reading from a brief introduction that i will talk about what the rest of the pages contain. A love story. The story of how my deep love of reading slowly meandered into a deep love of god. Iv tell my reading widely and indiscriminately i learned lessons i never learned in church or sunday school as well as emotional and intellectual lessons i never would have encountered within the realm of my limited experience. Most importantly by reading up on all kinds of characters created by all kinds of authors come i learned how to be the person god created me to be. One of the books that proved most formative in this treatise published 1644 the puritan poet has an epic poem with an epic argument from the Building Block for freedom of speech and freedom of the press. To go against parliamentary licensing orders that all publications to be approved by the government before being printed a legal concept later to be notice prior restraint. But his own political faction at the time, his own people but then to make a deeply theological argument that christians today or those nervously prone to a censoring spirit would do well to consider. With the polarized situation milton associate censorship with the roman catholics and with that reformation heritage independence of intellectual religious and personal liberty. Because it cannot have both good and evil what you have to distinguish between the innocent in the virtuous never want evil is but what a way to learn the difference but is in this world so necessary for virtue . But then that confirmation of truth how can we more safely but it is not enough to read quietly one must also read well and virtuously. The word virtue has many shades of meaning but in general virtue can be simply understood at excellent. Reading is an active virtue or excellence and also a habit that cultivates more virtue in return. Literature bodies first by offering images in action and vicarious practice to exercise or shoot but that of which habits of mind and then to accrue but first it means reading closely to be faithful to text and context and interpret accurate and insightfully. Indeed there is something in the reform of reading the shape of a action itself. The attentiveness necessary for deep reading that you practice in reading Literary Works as opposed to skimming through them but so many people and trying for but if you experience but now your Attention Span is short and is is nil. If that is all the mines and that demands but those those are well documented its hard to explain what the internet is doing but often over a one burst. The faster the better and also screen to screen the facts of the braider in a book on a she amplified hoops usually when you feel you lost your ability to read well or never had it all reading well its not easy. Just takes time and attention. The virtue or excellence of literature cannot be understood apart from his form. To read literature is it by its nature the ecstatic experience . What it says . The form is how it is said. Unfortunately we are conditioned to focus on content or if we read or watch a film we turned but often neglect this form. Part of the tendency is the fruit of born of a culture with the utilitarian effort but the real life issues but then what is communicated . Informational text in the same way the painting different from what covers the wall. Save material. So my exploration is a digit number but what it attempts to model to examine the insights about virtues that these works offer. I have selected from my favorite Literary Works that could help us to learn the classical virtues and illogical and heavenly. Sometimes they are shown or given the exploratory movement and have negative examples. Literary characters either way have a lot to teach us about character. Yet to read well is not to but rather the but in the experience but to approach our great books to the literary books are works of art to be enjoyed for their own sake rather than being used for our personal benefit. To use our literature instead of speeding it reading well adds to her life but but rather in that friendship that adds to our life to alter us. I wanted to read through the interaction by what i mean by reading well. I want to talk about virtue in general because that is something we dont talk about a lot or we even know what the virtues are or what they mean. We have such a rich legacy and heritage that we could talk about what aristotle does but then a pair of scissors and the sports car but also looking at the protest sport so here we arrive the problem that we have the 21st century. She is and then to agree on the purpose or meaning of human lif life. We often think there is even such a thing. There is no purpose or meaning so this is really the reason why we have lost this treasure trove of the virtues because and talking about virtue we can make her way backwards. So i do draw on the book a very important book by mcintyre where and how is it we live in a culture . Of all of the i think he did this and what is so they are each and extreme deficiency and virtue is in the very middle. So just to give a few examples i think its a hopeful particularly in a culture today that is so pulverized and fragmented, i dont know if you have business noticed this but but then to be defined by polarization in this moment. So for a couple of examples, courage talks about this that we can in the polarized culture think more is better if something is good they had more is better but that is not virtue. We think of that is something you can never have too much of. But aristotle says otherwise. In excess of courage actually becomes rash because you can be bold or rash but it could be courageous but not virtuous. Have you had enough boldness and precious . So temperance, again, i but then to be holding. But but just not too much. Or too little. Because they dont satisfy our thirst but to desire sex is good too but they have to be put in proper order so if statuses and were eating disorders those are practices that deny a good healthy appetite of vices just as it is to indulge too much. Does have to do with the desire. Is not just going through aristotle that the patients of suffering in if you are alive and in this world you will suffer there is no choice. We must all suffer and the only thing we can choose i know we are sitting in traffic but to finish it is to endure evil without anything in return for i want to be careful because i ended up as i was revising this book it can be weapon eyes or whoever you might be talking about but then to not seek justice but again this is where the tendencies today we think more is better. Someone who is humble but it is accurate but thats an accurate Self Assessment for Christian Point of view or but do not regard yourself too little or too much to say but the virtues are a little different that is the equivalent smile coming directly from the bible of so just briefly a very hopeful that i thought i went to jeff about a virtual justice which i examined a tale of two cities. But justice was the hardest virtue for me to research and put my mind around and research but also a society and culture of community to obtain or have social justice. But unfortunately that is the right ordering of relationships within the community so as individuals we need to desire that ordering and then the french revolution is the center of the story. And then to be controlled by the aristocracy and the came out and order theoretically hopefully think god to correct that injustice. As we all know as a result what happened was not a restoration of justice simply but with those justices to be imposed once those who have been oppressed those who had a festive so thats an example not the corruption and then writing about his own country england following the french revolution. He was basically that error of access is what they saw the french revolution. There are two layers and i read about the chapter in a way i hope we could see our moment where we see cries of injustice everywhere and need to be concerned about it. Theres is also International Human tendency to into this telling he gives us of the french revolution for his time and i have tried to reach for our yard signs to bring back the virtue of justice. So now i would love to take questions from you. Give me some feedback. This book for those who dont read this book for those who dont read. I go to georgetown and i have worked in the summer as well but my question is i have read it a couple of times im not a scholar but one of the things he talks about of someone who is a good person and following their behavior and then to find those that are models maybe not. But what is courage in one situation may not be in another. But what i talk about is the best answer to your question. And then to go out on the internet you have to share it with me. [laughter] this is how it should be in this how you go about this. But it does doesnt always work in real life. That is a relativism that is prudence which is a form of wisdom to figure out what things are great theoretical that may be have to be tempered or modified in a real situation that is prudence. I think we look at a role model but also look at our virtues and no role model is perfect but then referencing mcintyre in your book. [laughter] i have a twopronged question but even baptist ones. [laughter] the absences is so negative and chastity as part positive. Regardless of two situation to start but not that example of chaste behavior to do that with that relationship most likely there is poetic justice a half but to talk about it in terms of less and all the things but then to understand marriage be distributed to so yes. I am your attorney here at the Heritage Foundation. But would you say that regarding tenacity you could say that a middle contacts with the middle ground. All of these are discerned by the extreme the but with justice standards its okay to be with that. But in a different time if that was not the norm that would have contributed to chastity. Now there are objectives for moral standards that our conceptual and changing from culture to culture. Again this is where the virtues are so helpful and important. You want to go with rules but then to be connected with one another. You cannot have one virtue without the other spirit given teaching students literature now for many years what about the changes that you see as far as getting to college and their preparedness . Talking about a few different things, i will say that with that superficial thing in five or ten years students were enamored with and i dont have to do any of that anymore. They want the actual physical book so we have reached a saturation point. And the same with the laptop dont use your laptops during the lecture and write it down because i do want the book to be well received not that im on the internet all the time i confess. And so for paying attention and reading books and my evangelical community this looks like theologians i am so excited about that. Another thing i would say is my mom. [laughter] shes so modern with her iphone and facebook and we get more and more students who want to be writers. But they are enamored with writing but they dont know that foundation and widely from reading well. I am an intern here at the Heritage Foundation you mentioned a few virtues that the book came straight from god so how does your faith or had you believe other people who write literature of faith can tell a story with characters that our virtuous that maybe others who dont have that faith could not show . I went to some christian film festivals that condemned only using the story for a moral purpose so what recommendations would you give christian writers to incorporate good virtue in their stories to show perspective they can offer without a hammer. Right. That is an important critique when i talk about the virtues i dont claim anywhere this is the theme of the book where the message you try to convey that literature is much more complex so i am providing that lens its about hope i say. I dont think, i mean its they are. Is not that im violating the text but with that theological hope but for something christian artists need to look at the examples of the role models that are already there and if its a good art the human lessons come out of it and dont let the message overwhelm the yard to because then it becomes the sermon. I hear them every week. And if we are trying to do art and do it well. Or what they say in the bible that if you are in the womb you will come out if youre in a strong christian view it will come out in the same way that is ethical and living a christian life. And then just have a good carpenter according to christian values. It is a great book. Actually hired an artist to do the cover it wasnt the publisher to do the inside illustrations because i wanted the book to be beautiful it is above what the publisher would have done. Here you go a month with your favorite phrase. No good deed goes unpunished. [laughter] i know that well. Thank you for having me. And we are selling the books outside as well. [applause]