Author & Journalist Colleen Carroll Campbell Will Discuss Young Adults -- The New Faithful -- in Burleigh Lecture October 26

October 11, 2004

October 11, 2004, Greencastle, Ind. - Colleen Carroll Campbell -- an award-winning journalist, former speechwriter to President George W. Bush, and author of the critically acclaimed book, The New Faithful: Why Young Adults Are Embracing Christian Orthodoxy -- will deliver the Burleigh Lecture at DePauw University, Tuesday, October 26.  The 7:30 p.m. speech by Campbell, a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, will take place in the ballroom of DePauw's Memorial Student Union Building and is free and open to all.

Campbell's book, published in 2002, has enjoyed strong sales and national media attention. It has been featured in such national publications as the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, National Review, Commonweal, Publishers Weekly, and Christianity Today. The book also has been adopted as required reading by several colleges, and was a finalist for the 2002 ForeWord Magazine Book of the Year Award.

E. J. Dionne Jr., author of Why Americans Hate Politics, and co-editor (with John J. DiIulio Jr.) of What's God Got to Do With the American Experiment?, wrote, "With the knowledge of an insider and the sprightly facility of a good journalist, Colleen Carroll tells one of the largely unheralded stories of our time: the turn of so many highly educated young Americans toward serious religious commitment. How did these young people become, as she puts it so well, 'defenders of orthodoxy in an age that denigrates dogma?' Carroll unravels the mystery in a book that will become an important document of our time. The orthodox, the unorthodox and the flexible souls in between will find grist here for lively argument and serious reflection." CNN's Robert Novak adds, "Colleen Carroll blends investigative reporting with profound analysis to reveal a world of young people that most of us do not know exists. This brilliant young journalist opens the door to exciting and inspiring vistas."

Since the release of The New Faithful, Colleen Carroll Campbell has received speaking invitations from institutions across America, including requests to present her research to staff members at the White House and on Capitol Hill, and an appointment as the featured author at the Seminar in American Religion at the University of Notre Dame. In 2002, Campbell began work toward a doctorate in philosophy at Saint Louis University. She interrupted her studies later that year to accept a job as one of six speechwriters to President George W. Bush. Campbell wrote speeches for the President on topics ranging from education to the faith-based initiative to the fight against AIDS and the reconstruction of Iraq. Now a fellow at the Washington-based Ethics and Public Policy Center, Campbell frequently discusses issues of religion, politics, and culture in the print and broadcast media, and has appeared on such national television and radio networks as FOX News, PBS, and CBS Radio. Throughout her career, Campbell's writing has appeared in a wide variety of publications and media outlets, including the Weekly Standard, National Review Online, Washington Times, Beliefnet.com, and Washingtonian magazine. Campbell writes a biweekly column for Our Sunday Visitor, the nation's largest Catholic newsweekly, and will launch a magazine column on the "new feminism" this fall in Lay Witness.

A Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Marquette University, where she served as editor-in-chief of the campus magazine, Campbell’s first full-time journalism job was with the Memphis Commercial Appeal, where she wrote a series of front-page stories exposing political misconduct among elected officials in Collierville, Tennessee. In 1997, she moved to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, where she gained experience in investigative reporting and narrative journalism. She graduated from the National Institute for Computer-Assisted Reporting in 1998, and used her investigative and storytelling skills later that year to write a five-part series on the St. Louis Public Schools. The series uncovered corruption and waste in the city school system, and resulted in her nomination as a finalist for the Livingston Awards, the largest all-media, general reporting prizes in American journalism. The series also caught the attention of the Post-Dispatch's editorial page editor, who invited Campbell to join the newspaper’s editorial board. At age 24, she became its youngest member.

Campbell wrote daily editorials on a wide variety of topics, from education and social issues to media and culture, and her work earned her a Fellowship for Editorial Writers from the Hechinger Institute at Columbia University. In 2000, Campbell won a $50,000 Phillips Journalism Fellowship that allowed her to take a year’s leave from her newspaper job and travel the country, researching and writing about a little-noticed trend that had attracted her attention: The appeal of traditional religion and morality to a growing number of young Americans. The result of her research was The New Faithful: Why Young Adults Are Embracing Christian Orthodoxy.

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