HONORARY ADVISORY BOARD
We draw inspiration from these historic pioneers whose lives span the last 2,000 years—and whose attitudes, actions, and beliefs embody the types of stories we aim to tell.
Sir Sidney Poitier
Artist. Man. American. 1927–2022
CHAPEL LILY
“I've learned that I must find positive outlets for anger or it will destroy me. There is a certain anger: it reaches such intensity that to express it fully would require homicidal rage—self destructive, destroy the world rage—and its flame burns because the world is so unjust. I have to try to find a way to channel that anger to the positive, and the highest positive is forgiveness.”
Biography
Sir Roger Scruton
English philosopher, writer and oenophile. 1944–2020
AUDACIOUS CONSERVATEUR
“Beauty is an ultimate value—something that we pursue for its own sake, and for the pursuit of which no further reason need be given. Beauty should therefore be compared to truth and goodness, one member of a trio of ultimate values which justify our rational inclinations.”
BIOGRAPHY
Malcolm Muggeridge
British journalist & satirist. 1903–1990
PERIPATETIC GARGOYLE ADMIRER
“Well was the camera originally named obscura. It is the ego's very focus, with all the narcissism of the human race concentrated into its tiny aperture. It advances upon one in a television studio like some ferocious monster, ravening and bloodshot eyed. Of all the inventions of our time it is likely to prove the most destructive. Whereas nuclear power can only reduce us and our world to a cinder, the camera grinds us down to spiritual dust so fine that a puff of wind scatters it, leaving nothing behind.”
BIOGRAPHY
Flannery O’Connor
American novelist. 1925–1964
BRUTALLY GRACEFUL RACONTEUR
“The basis of art is truth, both in matter and in mode.”
BIOGRAPHY
Whittaker Chambers
American editor. 1901–1961
RELUCTANT “RED-HERRING” WITNESS
“As I continued to pray raggedly, prayer ceased to be an awkward and self-conscious act. It became a daily need to which I looked forward. If, for any reason, I were deprived of it, I was distressed as if I had been deprived of some life necessity, like water. I cannot say I changed. There tore through me a transformation with the force of a river, which, dammed up and diverted for a lifetime, bursts its way back to its true channel. I became what I was. I ceased to be what I was not.”
BIOGRAPHY
María del Carmen Serdán Alatriste
Heroine of the Mexican Revolution. 1875–1948
GRACEFULLY FIERCE RADICAL
“Mas vale morir de pie que vivir arrodillado.”
BIOGRAPHY
Etty HillesuM
Dutch mystic of the Holocaust. 1914–1943
PROTECTOR OF BEAUTY AND LOVE
“I know that a new and kinder day will come. I would so much like to live on, if only to express all the love I carry within me. And there is only one way of preparing the new age, by living it even now in our hearts.”
BIOGRAPHY
Franz Jägerstätter
German conscientious objector & martyr. 1907–1943
ERSTWHILE ENEMY OF THE STATE
“Neither prison nor chains nor sentence of death can rob a man of the faith and his own free will. God gives so much strength that it is possible to bear any suffering, a strength far stronger than all the might of the world.”
BIOGRAPHY
G.K. Chesterton
English journalist & apologist. 1874–1936
OVERGROWN CIGAR-SMOKING ELF
“Fairy tales do not tell children the dragons exist. Children already know that dragons exist. Fairy tales tell children the dragons can be killed.”
BIOGRAPHY
Theodore Roosevelt
American statesman & writer. 1858–1919
BULL MOOSE WRANGLER
“Character, in the long run, is the decisive factor in the life of an individual and of nations alike.”
BIOGRAPHY
Harriet Tubman
American abolitionist. 1820–1913
UNDYING TRAIN CONDUCTOR
“I looked at my hands to see if I was the same person now I was free. There was such glory over everything. The sun came up like gold through the trees and I felt like I was in heaven.”
BIOGRAPHY
Fr. Augustus Tolton
Venerable former slave. Virtuous champion for justice. Quintessential American. 1854–1897
FRANCISCAN FLAME OF FIRE
“The Catholic Church deplores double slavery—that of the mind and that of the body. She endeavors to free us from both.”
BIOGRAPHY
Fyodor Dostoevsky
Russian writer & thinker. 1821–1881
SOLITARY PRISON LABORER
“Beauty will save the world.”
BIOGRAPHY
William Blake
English poet & visionary. 1757–1827
MOST GLORIOUS LUMINARY
This life’s dim windows of the soul
Distort the heavens from pole to pole
And lead you to believe a lie
When you see with, not through, the eye.
BIOGRAPHY
Blaise Pascal
French scientist & apologist. 1623–1662
DOUBTFUL POLYMATH PRODIGY
“The heart has its reasons … which reason knows not.”
BIOGRAPHY
William Shakespeare
English poet, playwright, & actor. 1564–1616
BRILLIANT BARD OF AVON
“The eyes are windows to the soul.”
BIOGRAPHY
Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
Spanish writer. 1547–1616
VETERAN OF THE BATTLE OF LEPANTO
“In order to attain the impossible, one must attempt the absurd.”
BIOGRAPHY
Francois Rabelais
French Renaissance writer, physician, & monk. 1483–1553
RABELAISIAN RENAISSANCE MAN
“I go to seek a Great Perhaps.”
BIOGRAPHY
Joan of Arc
“Pucelle d'Orleans” & martyr. 1412–1431
THUNDERBOLT OF ORLEANS
“I am not afraid. I was born to do this.”
BIOGRAPHY
Andrei Rublev
Russian iconographer. d. 1430
MIGHTY OAK OF MAMRE
“He who venerates the icon … venerates in it the person of the one so depicted.”
BIOGRAPHY
Dante Alighieri
Italian poet. 1265–1321
“IL SOMMO POETA” (THE SUPREME POET)
“Beauty awakens the soul to act.”
