Best-selling author will speak at Baptist covenantion

Best-selling author John Grisham will speak at the New Baptist Covenant meeting Jan. 30-Feb. 1 in Atlanta, reports ReligionAndSpirituality.com. Grisham, a member of University Baptist Church in Charlottesville, Va., joins a lineup of famous Baptists including former presidents Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton, former Vice President Al Gore and Republican senators Lindsey Graham and Charles Grassley.

"The Celebration of a New Baptist Covenant," organized by Carter, will seek to unite an estimated 20 million Baptists around Christ-centered social ministry, Associated Baptist Press reported Friday.

Grisham, 53, taught Sunday school and regularly goes on mission trips. Program co-chair Jimmy Allen said "The subthemes of his fiction reveal his understanding of the plight of the poor, his commitment to seek justice in our criminal system, his concerns for environment and his descriptions of the challenge to reach across the racial lines that divide us."

Allen said Grisham will speak Jan. 31 on "Respecting Diversity." Grisham, whose 21 books sold more than 100 million copies, said his faith led him to a writing career. As a young attorney in Mississippi, he heard the testimony of a 12-year-old rape victim and determined to write about it, leading to his first novel, A Time to Kill.

Grisham's mission trips to Brazil led to his novel The Testament, in which the lead character, an attorney, goes to Brazil to find a missionary who inherits a fortune.

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[01/03/2008]

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