Dr. Anthony Bradley Metcalf Speaker

Dr. Anthony Bradley visited MUS as the guest speaker of the 25th Metcalf Symposium. Bradley spoke to fathers, mentors, and sons on masculinity, boyhood, and growing up during his evening session February 8. He returned to campus February 9 to address the MUS community in Hyde Chapel, encouraging the boys to ask the question, “Who is it that God made me to be?”
Clay Smythe ’85, chair of the Religion Department and co-founder of the Metcalf series with Bubba Halliday ’82, introduced him saying, “Dr. Bradley is as fine a speaking candidate for the Metcalf Symposium as we’ve had in 25 years.”
 
Bradley serves as a distinguished research fellow at The Acton Institute and research professor of Interdisciplinary and Theological Studies at Kuyper College, Grand Rapids, Michigan. Author of a dozen books, he studies and writes on covenant theology, criminal justice reform, youth and family, poverty, education policy, social ethics, and race in America. His most recent title is “Heroic Fraternities: How College Men Can Save Universities.” (Learn more at dranthonybradley.com.)
 
Bradley began his speech describing a TikTok interview in which a reporter asked a boy what he wanted to be when he grew up and how much money he wanted to make.
 
“The questions were wrong questions ... but this kid responded to the wrong question with the right answer,” Bradley said. “He said he wants to be a doctor so he can make people feel OK. The reason he wanted to be a doctor isn’t because he wanted a certain lifestyle, he wanted to have a nice house, or he wanted to join a country club. The reason he wanted to be a doctor had everything to do with making other people feel better.”
 
Bradley made the point that the question should be what kind of man you want to be. “Your character matters far more than what you do.”
 
He added that we all have two paths before us, one of selflessness and one of selfishness. He wants young men to ask themselves the important questions about life before they go down the wrong path.
 
“Who is it that God made me to be? That’s the question you need to pursue. That’s what you have to figure out. Be vigilant about that question. Because the answer to that question is the one that matters.”
 
See more photos HERE. See Dr. Bradley’s chapel HERE.
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