“First Things” Editor Rusty Reno To Deliver 2022 Commencement Address
The College is pleased to announce this year’s commencement speaker: R. R. “Rusty” Reno, Editor of First Things. The event, which will celebrate the academic achievements of the members of the Class of 2022, will take place on Monday, May 23, 2022 (at 10:30AM).
“We’re excited that Rusty will be joining us this May,” said President Glenn Arbery. “He is an important contemporary voice in American thought, and his contributions in the realms of both academia and political analysis are invaluable. In his recent article in the Wall Street Journal, ‘Why I Stopped Hiring Ivy League Graduates,’ Dr. Reno made a compelling argument in support of the very kind of education we offer here at Wyoming Catholic.”
“And he should know,” Dr. Arbery continued, “having hired Veronica Clarke (‘19), an alumna of Wyoming Catholic College, to work with him on the editorial staff at First Things. He can advise our seniors well as they prepare to put the skills they’ve honed here to good use: ‘loving truth, thinking clearly, communicating eloquently, and engaging with the world as it is.’ I am honored to consider him a good friend, and I very much look forward to his address.”
Before moving to First Things, Dr. Reno was a professor of theology and ethics at Creighton University. Reno is the author of several books, including Resurrecting the Idea of a Christian Society, Fighting the Noonday Devil—and Other Essays Personal and Theological, In the Ruins of the Church, Redemptive Change: Atonement and the Cure of the Soul, and a theological commentary on the Book of Genesis in the Brazos Theological Commentary on the Bible series, for which he also serves as general editor. He has also coauthored two books, Heroism and The Christian Life and Sanctified Vision: An Introduction to Early Christian Interpretation of the Bible. His scholarly work ranges widely in systematic and moral theology, as well as in controverted questions of biblical interpretation.
This will not be Dr. Reno’s first visit to the College. In October 2016, he delivered a lecture on “Resurrecting the Idea of a Christian Society,” which was later converted into an edition of the College’s Integritas publication. An avid rock-climber, he loves returning to Wyoming.
