A religion educator once dubbedAmericas Best Theologianby Time magazine will open West Virginia Universitys 2004 Benedum Lecture Series at 8 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 16, in G24 Eiesland Hall.

Stanley M. Hauerwas, the Gilbert T. Rowe Professor of Theological Ethics at the Duke University Divinity School, will speak onSacrificing the Sacrifices of War.The lecture is free and open to the public.

Terrorism and National Security Policy: International and Domestic Implicationsis the theme for this years lecture series. Other scheduled speakers are former national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski and Village Voice columnist Nat Hentoff.

Hauerwas is a graduate of Southwestern University in Georgetown, Texas; Yale Divinity School; Yale University Graduate School; and the University of Edinburgh. He taught at Augustana College in Rock Island, Ill., and the University of Notre Dame before joining the faculty at Duke in 1984. There he served as director of graduate studies from 1985-1991.

He has authored or co-authored 25 books, includingA Community of Character: Toward a Constructive Christian Ethics,The Peaceable Kingdom: A Primer in Christian Ethics,Resident Aliens: Life in the Christian ColonyandChristians Among the Virtues: Theological Conversations with Ancient and Modern Ethics.The Hauerwas Reader,a compilation of 31 essays, was released by Duke University Press in 2001.

Hauerwas lectures widely to church and academic audiences. He delivered the prestigious Gifford Lectureship at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland in 2001.

Time named HauerwasAmericas Best Theologianin 2001.

In its 23 rd year, the Benedum Lecture Series brings nationally and internationally known researchers and scholars to the WVU campus to speak on various topics. The series is sponsored by the Claude Worthington Benedum Endowment and the Office of the Provost and coordinated by the Distinguished and Chaired Professors of WVU .