On Thursday, April 10, 2008, Dr. Paul Schervish presented the fifth annual Thomas H. Lake Lecture on Faith & Giving. His lecture was titled "Receiving and Giving as Spiritual Exercise."
Paul G. Schervish is Professor of Sociology and Director of the Center on Wealth and Philanthropy (CWP) at Boston College, and national Research Fellow at the Indiana University Center on Philanthropy. He is also Senior Advisor to the Wealth & Giving Forum, a peer-centered endeavor to deepen the philanthropic engagement of the nation's 700 wealthiest families and to the John Templeton Foundation. Schervish was appointed a Fulbright Scholar for the 2000-2001 academic year at University College Cork in the area of research on philanthropy. For the 1999-2000 academic year he was appointed Distinguished Visiting Professor at the Indiana University Center On Philanthropy. He has been selected five times to the NonProfit Times annual "Power and Influence Top 50," a list which acknowledges the most effective leaders in the non-profit world. He received a bachelor's degree in classical and comparative literature from the University of Detroit, a Masters in sociology from Northwestern University, a Masters of Divinity Degree from the Jesuit School of Theology at Berkeley, and a Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Current activities include developing and training fundraising and financial professionals in the use of a discernment methodology based on Ignatian principles for guiding wealth holders through a self-reflective process of decision-making about their finances and philanthropy; analyzing what key religious and philosophical thinkers understand and teach about discerning the use of wealth for philanthropy; estimating wealth transfer projections for states and metropolitan regions, and analyzing the patterns of relative philanthropic generosity among cities, states, and regions in the U.S.