This is thinking in public, a program dedicated to intelligent conversation about frontline theological and cultural issues with the people who are shaping them.

I'm Albert Moller, your host and president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville,

Kentucky.

Reverend Wilson D. Miss Campbell is professor of history at the University of Notre Dame. He has also

served as chairman of that Department of History and it's the University where he

earned his PhD in 1980. A native of Australia Professor Miss, has enjoyed a distinguished career as historian, particularly an historian of American foreign policy since World War II. He's a two-time recipient of the Harry S Truman Award for his books, George F. Kenan, and The Making of American Foreign Policy,

and from Roosevelt to Truman, Potsdam, Hiroshima, and the Cold War.

But his most recent book is the topic of our conversation today.

American Priest, the ambitious life and conflicted legacy of Notre Dame's father Ted

Hesburgh, and it's going to be a very interesting conversation.

Professor Miss Campbell, welcome to thinking in public.

Thanks very much, Dr. O'Holo.

Pleasure to be with you.

I've really looked forward to this conversation.

When I was first elected president

of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary

back in 1993, this will intrigue you.

My conservative Evangelical Southern Baptist board chairman gave me a copy of God

country Notre Dame by Theodore Hesburgh the very famous president of the University of Notre Dame, and I found it, I must tell you, incredibly helpful and frustrating.

And that was my first really, I knew who he was but that was my first real, you know, engagement with him and I was really looking forward to your book when it came out and I have to tell you I found it a feast.

How did you decide to write this biographical work of Father Hesburgh?

Well, there's a story there, and it grows out of my own involvement.

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