Six years ago, Bristol BookFest was started by two local people, one of whom had taught a “great books” course elsewhere. Starting this month, there’s a second situation with a similar heritage. Eight-year Bristol resident Andrew Brereton led a “great books” course for first-year students as a professor at Seton Hall University. He “loved being a guide as students worked through interesting – and sometimes challenging – text.”

Brereton and his wife, Linda Cunningham, have been singing with the St Michael’s Episcopal Church choir for several years. He recently learned that the new minister, Ginny Wilder, was working on expanding the parish’s programming. Brereton suggested holding a series of discussions on selected literature that isn’t overly religious but raises questions about human meaning. “I’m not an Episcopalian,” he says, “but my wife and I have found the parish to be a very welcoming place and I hope people who attend will have conversations that are interesting and fun. I also hope they gain confidence in their own powers of interpretation.”

Brereton calls the program “Reading Between the Lines” because he believes a good story “is always more than the words on the page. We keep returning to stories because they contain a surplus of meaning that can’t be exhausted by a single reading…The same is true of our own eyes. There is no truly human existence without interpretation, and I think shared stories give us a wonderful way to practice that work together.”

The Man Booker Prize-Winning novel “The Life of Pi” buy Canadian Yann Pastel will be discussed at the Parish House, 378 Hope Street, across the street from St, Michael’s Church, on Tuesday, October 25, from 7 to 8:30 p.m. “Watership Down” by Richard Adams will be discussed at the parish house on Tuesday, December 1, starting at 7 p.m. Two sessions in the spring next year, April 6 and May 4, will be devoted to The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri.

Brereton studied theology as a way to deepen his Christian faith. He sees himself as “an optimistic agnostic.” Over time, though, he says he has become less intellectually committed to particular creeds and doctrine. “I still have faith – in the sense that all of us live by faith whenever we commit ourselves to something we cannot prove. I hope that the universe is ultimately grounded in love, but I can't prove that. So I try to remain hopeful while also remaining intellectually humble.”
To register, please email both Brereton at ajbrereton@msn.com and the St. Michael’s parish office at info@stmichaelsbristolri.org.