Carnegie Religion and Media Program to sponsor public interviews with authors Lisa Miller, Jimmy Creech

The Carnegie Religion and Media Program at Syracuse University will sponsor public interviews with Lisa Miller, religion writer at Newsweek, and Jimmy Creech, author of a new memoir about his fight for gay and lesbian rights in the United Methodist Church, during the first week of April in the Joyce Hergenhan Auditorium in SU’s Newhouse 3.

Miller, a former editor at the Wall Street Journal, will speak on “Faith, Politics and the Tea Party in 2012” on Tuesday, April 5, at 2 p.m. She is the author of “Heaven: Our Enduring Fascination with the Afterlife” (Harper, 2010), which will be published in paperback later this month.

Creech, put on ecclesiastical trial twice by the United Methodist Church for officiating at same-sex unions, will speak on “Fired for Justice: A Pastor, the News Media and an Institution at a Moral Crossroads” on Thursday, April 7, at 5 p.m. His book, “Adam’s Gift: A Pastor’s Calling to Defy the Church’s Persecution of Lesbians and Gays,” has just been published by Duke University Press.

Miller and Creech will both be interviewed by Gustav Niebuhr, associate professor and director of the Carnegie Religion and Media Program in the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications and The College of Arts and Sciences. Both events are free and open to the public, and will be followed by book signings by the authors.

The Carnegie Religion and Media Program, established through the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications with a grant from the Carnegie Corporation of New York in 2007, includes an academic minor (part of the Religion and Society Program in The College of Arts and Sciences), a speaker series and research projects in the news media.