Mendenhall Lecture Series
The Rev. Dr. PT Wilson, University Chaplain, gives the welcome address at the Mendenhall Dinner.
2012 Mendenhall Speaker, Samuel Freedman, in conversation with a student during the Mendenhall Dinner.
In 1905, the Reverend Doctor Marmaduke H. Mendenhall endowed a lectureship at DePauw. His desire was to enable the University to bring to campus “persons of high and wide repute, of broad and varied scholarship,” to address issues related to the academic dialogue concerning Christianity.
Although Dr. Mendenhall was a pastor in the North Indiana Annual Conference of what was then called the Methodist Episcopal Church, one of the parents of the United Methodist Church, he explicitly dictated that lecturers be selected without regard to denominational divisions. Thanks to this endowment, DePauw is able to bring a theological/religious scholar of international repute to campus each semester. This tradition has been going on for nearly a century.
Below is a list of Medenhall Lecturers from 1913 - Present:
Year |
Speaker |
| 1913 | Edwin H. Hughes |
| 1914 | George P. Eckman |
| 1915 | J.R. Mott |
| 1917 | Francis J. McConnell |
| 1918 | William H. P. Faunce |
| 1919 | John Kelman |
| 1920 | Ernest F. Tittle |
| 1921 | Charles R. Brown |
| 1922 | William F. McDowell |
| 1924 | Albert C. Knudson |
| 1925 | Lucius H. Bugbee |
| 1926 | Francis J. McConnell |
| 1927 | Edwin A. Hughes |
| Robert G. McCutchan | |
| Peter Lutkin and others | |
| 1929 | Harry N. Wieman |
| 1932 | Charles McConnell |
| 1933 | Walter E. Bundy |
| Ralph W. Sockman | |
| Ivan L.Holt, Edwin | |
| Lewis, Louis | |
| Untermeyer, Henry H | |
| Crane, and Edgar Blake | |
| 1936 | Conference on Preaching |
| 1938 | Paul A. Schilpp |
| 1940 | Georgia E.Harkness |
| 1941 | Earl B. Marlatt |
| 1942 | Franklin S. Hickman |
| 1943 | Roy L. Smith |
| 1954 | Gerald A.Kennedy |
| 1955 | Walter E. Bundy |
| 1956 | Ralph W. Sockman |
| 1957 | Harold A. Bosley |
| 1958 | Francis G. Ensley |
| 1959 | Hedley W. Plunkett |
| 1960 | Nels Ferre |
| 1961 | Howard Thurman |
| 1962 | L. Harold DeWolf |
| 1963 | Eugene C. Blake |
| 1964 | Joseph Sittler |
| 1965 | Peter A.Bertocci |
| 1966 | Joseph Haroutunian |
| 1967 | Julian N. Hartt |
| 1968 | William Stringfellow |
| 1969 | Colin W. Williams |
| 1970 | Langdon Gilkey |
| 1971 | Huston Smith |
| 1973 | Albert C. Outler |
| 1974 | J. Robert Nelson |
| 1975 | Cynthia C. Wedel |
| 1977 | Rollo May |
| 1979 | David B. Greene |
| 1982 | Neal F. Fisher |
| 1983 | Arthur R. Peacocke |
| 1984 | Walter Brueggemann |
| 1985 | W. Edward Farley |
| 1986 | Rosemary Radford Ruether |
| 1988 | Stanley M. Hauerwas |
| 1989 | John B. Cobb, Jr. |
| 1990 | James A. Forbes, Jr. |
| 1991 | Phyllis Trible |
| 1992 | Parker J. Palmer |
| 1993 | Nancy Fuchs-Kreimer |
| 1994 | Matthew Fox |
| 1995 | George Marsden |
| 1996 | Karen Armstrong |
| 1997 | Neil Postman |
| 1999 | Luke T. Johnson |
| 2000 | Peter van Inwagen |
| 2001 | Peter Gomes |
| 2002 | Parker J. Palmer |
| 2002 | Jane I. Smith |
| 2003 | John Shelby Spong |
| 2003 | Philip Gulley and James Mulholland |
| 2004 | Elaine Pagels |
| 2005 | William Willimon |
| 2005 | Marcus Borg |
| 2006 | Larry Dossey |
| 2006 | J.F. Haught |
| 2007 | Leonard Sweet |
| 2008 | John Roth |
| 2008 | Miguel De La Torre |
| 2009 | Tom Krattenmaker |
| 2010 | Michael Zimmerman |
| 2011 | Kristen Leslie |
| 2012 | Samuel Freedman |