Robert D. Putnam will deliver the ninth annual Hubert L. Dellinger, Jr., Lecture at Concordia Seminary, St. Louis. The public is invited to attend his lecture, “Community Engagement in a Changing America,” on Tuesday, Sept. 18, at 7:00 p.m. in the Seminary’s Clara and Spencer Werner Auditorium. There is no admission charge and no tickets are issued.

Putnam is the Peter and Isabel Malkin Professor of Public Policy at Harvard University and Visiting Professor at the University of Manchester (UK). Among his many written works is his best-selling book, Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community (2000). In 2003, he authored Better Together: Restoring the American Community, which describes a dozen promising examples of social capital-building in communities across America. He is currently undertaking research on the challenges of building community in an increasingly diverse society.

Putnam was educated at Swarthmore College, Balliol College, Oxford; and Yale University, and has received honorary degrees from Swarthmore and Stockholm University. Before coming to Harvard in 1979, Putnam taught at the University of Michigan and served on the staff of the National Security Council.

For his theory of social capital, Putnam was awarded the 2006 Johan Skytte Prize in Political Science, one of the discipline’s most prestigious, by the Skytte Foundation at Uppsala University.

The Hubert L. Dellinger, Jr. Lecture Series, established in 1997, is designed to feature nationally-known speakers who address subjects which intersect the disciplines of theology, sociology, philosophy and law. Previous speakers have included United States Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, Prof. Stephen L. Carter of Yale University, William F. Buckley, George Will, then television political analyst Tony Snow, political advisor David Gergen, and former United States Attorney General Edwin Meese.

For more information, contact Seminary Relations, Concordia Seminary, 801 Seminary Place, St. Louis, MO 63105; (314) 505-7365; semrelations@csl.edu.