Os Guinness
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Os Guinness (born 1941) is an author and social critic.
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[edit] Biography
Guinness was born in China in 1941 during World War II. The son of medical missionaries and the direct descendant of Arthur Guinness, the famous Dublin brewer, he remained in China until 1951 when the Communists forced most foreigners to leave the country. When he was three years old, there was a famine in China in which five million died, including his two brothers.
Guinness escaped China with a Princeton University professor (his parents followed several years later) and returned to England where he was educated. He received his undergraduate degree from the University of London followed by postgraduate work at the University of Oxford, where Guinness received a D.Phil in the social sciences from Oriel College.
Guinness has written or edited more than twenty-five books, including The American Hour (1993), The Call: Finding and Fulfilling the Central Purpose of Your Life (1998), Invitation to the Classics (1998), Time for Truth: Living Free in a World of Lies, Hype, and Spin (2002), Long Journey Home: A Guide to Your Search for the Meaning of Life (2003), Unspeakable: Facing up to Evil in an Age of Genocide and Terror (2005), and The Case for Civility: And Why Our Future Depends on It (2008). His passion is to bridge the chasm between academic knowledge and popular knowledge, taking what is academic and making it intelligible and practical to a wider audience, especially as it relates to faith and public policy.
Since leaving China, Guinness has lived in England, Switzerland, and the United States. He was a freelance reporter with the BBC, and in 1984, moved to the Washington, D. C. area. In the States, he has been the Guest Scholar at the Woodrow Wilson Center for International Studies and a Guest Scholar and Visiting Fellow at the Brookings Institute. From 1986-1989, Guinness served as the Executive Director of the Williamsburg Charter Foundation, which is a bicentennial celebration of the First Amendment. While serving in this role, Guinness helped draft the Williamsburg Charter and co-authored the public school curriculum entitled Living with Our Deepest Differences.
In 1991, Guinness founded the Trinity Forum, an organization that hosts forums for senior leaders in business and politics. He served as a senior fellow at The Trinity Forum from 1991-2004, and has also spoken widely at many universities, and business and political conferences throughout the world.
He currently lives in McLean, Virginia, with his wife, Jenny. They have one son, Christopher, who lives in New York.
[edit] Notes
[edit] See also
- Arthur Guinness, Irish brewer and the founder of the Guinness brewery business, his great-great-great-grandfather
- Henry Grattan Guinness, preacher and author, his great-grandfather
- Mary Geraldine Guinness, missionary and author, his great-aunt
[edit] References
- The Great Experiment: Faith and Freedom in America (2001)
- God in the Dark: The Assurance of Faith Beyond a Shadow of Doubt (1996)
- Steering Through Chaos: Vice and Virtue in an Age of Moral Confusion (2000)
- Interview with Os Guinness on his Case for Civility
