Breaking Ground to Behold Ground: The Only Way Through is Through

37 North Market Street,Lancaster PA 17603

17 September, 2021

Description

Anne Snyder is inspiring a dynamic cross-section of people to respond to the major crises of the past year with wisdom, hope, courage. We are pleased as punch to have landed Anne Snyder as a speaker. After a few years of upheavals in America, we are looking for scholars and leaders who can point us toward something like civility, and moreover, something more than being “right.” We’ve found in Anne’s writings a precise line of reasoning, eloquence, and a heart full of compassion. Check this out: “It doesn’t bode well that structures of power are dominating our mental maps while odes to self-care seduce our souls. Whatever happened to conceiving of agency as something more than the individual’s rights and desires? Where is forgiveness in our calculus of what is owed?” — Anne Snyder, from "O Virtue, Where Art Thou?" Comment Magazine, Vol. 39, No. 2, Spring 2021 (Cardus) What she’ll have to say to us in this moment will be utterly timeless, and therefore, uncommonly relevant. Please, plan to attend, and be sure to invite a friend or two. Anne’s center point is an historic faith rooted in Scripture which means it’s rooted in an ethic of human dignity from God, in love as the supreme virtue, and the over-pressing reminder that truth exists. Let’s give Anne a hearty Lancaster welcome, and for God’s sake, let’s work toward making it a virtuous and more beautiful place for all. We intend that her time with us will be a catalyst for such renewal. Anne Snyder is the Editor-in-Chief of Comment Magazine and the founder of Breaking Ground, a collaborative web commons created in 2020 to try to inspire a dynamic cross-section of thinkers and practitioners to respond to the major crises of this past year with wisdom, hope and courage. She is the host of The Whole Person Revolution podcast and the author of The Fabric of Character, published in 2019. From 2016 to 2019 she directed The Philanthropy Roundtable‘s Character Initiative, a program seeking to help American foundations and business leaders strengthen “the middle ring” of morally formative institutions. She maintains a post as a Fellow with the Urban Reform Institute, a Houston-based think tank that explores how cities can drive opportunity for the bulk of their citizens, and is a Senior Fellow with The Trinity Forum. From 2014 to 2017 Anne worked with Laity Lodge and the H.E. Butt Family Foundation in Texas, and before that she worked at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, World Affairs Journal and The New York Times. Anne serves as a trustee for the Center for Public Justice and Nyack College, and has published widely, including The Atlantic Monthly, The Washington Post, City Journal, Philanthropy Magazine, The Orange County Register, Houston Business Journal, Bittersweet Monthly and of course Comment. She lives somewhat reluctantly in Washington, DC, with (not so reluctantly!) her husband, David, where together they seek to unearth the closet creatives that hum quietly behind the resuméd blue suits and expert eyes, where they are the blessed beneficiaries of a village of young artists who unmask all impulses toward pretension and have expanded the meaning to “family,” and where, if you’re in town, you’re always welcome to swing by for s’mores and David’s scotch of the month! engaging current culture with ancient faith in Lancaster City, Pennsylvania