Ronald C. White of the San Francisco Theological Seminary and the Huntington Library will deliver the September Bradley Lecture.

“It’s only words.” It cannot be denied that this modern shibboleth has sometimes seemed to win the day. In the era of speechwriters and ghostwriters, many have become cynical about both the speaker and the speech.

            Why do Abraham Lincoln’s words still resonate today?Lincoln’s eloquence may prove to be his most lasting legacy. As we ponder Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address on the fifth anniversary of the events of September 11, 2001, his words are hauntingly contemporary. Lincoln believed that words matter and so should we . A man of his time, his words now encourage us to define America in our time.

Ronald C. White Jr. is the author of Lincoln’s Greatest Speech: The Second Inaugural (Simon and Schuster, 2002) and The Eloquent President: A Portrait of Lincoln through His Words (Random House, 2005). He is Professor Emeritus of American Religious History at San Francisco Theological Seminary, a visiting professor in the history department at UCLA, and a fellow at the Huntington Library in San Marino, California. He has lectured on Abraham Lincoln at the White House and been interviewed on The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer. Lincoln’s Greatest Speech was honored as a New York Times Notable Book of 2002 and was on the bestseller lists of the Washington Post and the San Francisco Chronicle. The Eloquent President was a fall 2005 selection of the Book-of-the-Month Club and a Los Angeles Times bestseller. The book was selected by the History Book Club as its Main Selection for March 2005, and was also a selection of the Quality Paperback Book Club. White is the author or editor of seven books and is presently writing a biography of Abraham Lincoln which will be published by Random House in January 2009.