Os Guinness
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Os Guinness is a writer and social critic living in McLean, Virginia.
Born in China during World War II where his parents were medical missionaries, he is the great-great grandson of Arthur Guinness, the famous Dublin brewer. He started school at a boarding school in China, and remained there until 1951 when the communists forced most foreigners to leave. Since then he has lived mostly in England, Switzerland, and the United States.
Educated in England, he did undergraduate studies at the University of London and postgraduate studies at University of Oxford where he graduated with a D.Phil in the social sciences from Oriel College.
Guiness speaks and writes on many issue connected with faith, society, and public policy. His chief concern is to bridge the chasm between academic knowledge and popular knowledge, taking things that are academically important and making them intelligible and practicable to a wider audience, especially as they concern matters of public policy. He has been involved in several projects in this area, including a BBC television documentary on the presidential election in 1980, a major public opinion survey, and the American Express study on the United States, "America in Perspective."
He has written or edited more than 25 books. His first book, The Dust Of Death (1973) is a critique of the counterculture. His contention that Christianity could be a third way between left and right was taken up in the UK by a group of people who founded Third Way Magazine.
Other books include In Two Minds (1975), The Gravedigger File (1983),The American Hour (1993), The Call (Word, 1998), Time for Truth, Invitation to the Classics, and Unspeakable: facing up to the challenge of evil (Harper, 2005).
Since 1984, he has lived in the Washington, DC area. He was a Guest Scholar at the Woodrow Wilson Center for International Studies and a Guest Scholar and Visiting Fellow at the Brookings Institution. From 1986-1989 he was the Executive Director of the Williamsburg Charter Foundation, one of the drafters of the Williamsburg Charter, and co-author of the public school curriculum "Living With Our Deepest Differences." In 1991 he founded The Trinity Forum, and served as a Senior Felloow until 2003. Currently he is an independent writer and speaker, having spoken to political groups and to numerous universities, including Oxford, Cambridge, Harvard, Stanford, and the University of Virginia.
He is a member of The Falls Church in Falls Church, Virginia.
[edit] Related Guinness family
- Henry Grattan Guinness great-grandfather to Os Guinness
- Mary Geraldine Guinness his great-aunt who wrote many biographies including one of his grandfather and his aunt - her namesake in "Pearl's Secret"
