Os Guinness

Template:Short description Template:Use dmy dates Template:Template other Ian Oswald "Os" Guinness (born September 30, 1941Template:Not verified in body) is an English author, theologian and social critic now based in Fairfax County, Virginia; he has lived in the United States since 1984.

Early life and education

Ian Oswald GuinnessTemplate:Better source needed was born in China, during World War II, as his parents served there as medical missionaries, specifically, in Hsiang Cheng, on 30 September 1941. Guinness is the great-great-great grandson of Arthur Guinness, a Dublin brewer. and so is of Irish descent.Template:Better source needed His parents named him after Scottish Baptist evangelist and teacher Oswald Chambers.Template:Better source needed

Guinness returned to England in 1951 for secondary school and eventual college. He completed an undergraduate degree at the University of London (Bachelor of Divinity with honours, 1966) and a social sciences/theology D.Phil. from Oriel College at Oxford University in 1982, where he studied under Peter L. Berger.

Career

File:Os Guinness and Bill Edgar at CICCU 2013 (cropped).JPG

Os Guinness, (left) with apologist Bill Edgar, at Cambridge Inter-Collegiate Christian Union event, St. Andrew the Great, Cambridge, England.

In the late 1960s, Guinness was a leader at the L'Abri community in Switzerland, and, after Oxford, a freelance reporter for the BBC. He wrote his first book, The Dust of Death, in 1973; John Frame called it "a wonderfully erudite and persuasive critique of the western culture of the late 1960s from a thoughtful, balanced Christian perspective." As of September 2018, Guiness had written or edited more than 30 books; in them, his stated aim has been to offer insight into current cultural, political, and social contexts.

From 1986 to 1989, Guinness served as Executive Director of the Williamsburg Charter Foundation, and was the leading drafter of the Williamsburg Charter, a bicentennial clarification and reaffirmation of the religious liberty clauses of the first amendment.Template:Third party inline He was also a co-author of the public school curriculum, "Living With Our Deepest Differences", and continued through at least 2009 on its Drafting Committee.

Guiness, along with Alonzo McDonald and perhaps other founded The Trinity Forum (in 1991), was reported as of 2018 to be a Senior Fellow there. and was, as of May 2025, listed by the organisation as an Emeritus Fellow.

Guiness was a primary drafter of The Global Charter of Conscience, published at the European Union Parliament in Brussels in June 2014. He has also been associated with the EastWest Institute in New York (as a Senior Fellow), with the Woodrow Wilson Center (as a guest scholar), with the Brookings Institution (as a guest scholar and visiting fellow), and as of 2025 was listed as speaker associated with the Oxford Centre for Christian Apologetics.

Published works

As of September 2018, Guinness had written or edited more than 30 books. The following are a subset of those books, appearing between 1973 and 2024, in chronological order.

Authored books

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Edited works

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Personal life

As of 2018, it had been reported that Guinness moved his residence to the Washington, D.C. (in 1984). He and his wife Jenny have one son, and as of this date, they live in McLean, Virginia.

An Anglican, he attended the Episcopal Church, but left, finding it too theologically liberal, in 2006. He currently attends The Falls Church, in the Anglican Church in North America. He was one of the speakers at the Anglican Church in North America Assembly in June 2014.