Imago Dei Leadership Forum is led by Founder and President, John A. Murray.
A graduate of Vanderbilt University (BA, 1990) and Dartmouth College (MALS, 1995), John is a leader in academia with over two decades of independent school experience in teaching and administration–including 17 years as a Head of School.
While at Dartmouth, he wrote his master’s thesis as a documentary script on the history of American higher education from 1636 to 1933. Entitled The Cross in the Ivy, his work explored the Christian history of the Eastern and Ivy league colleges and how they became secularized. He has given numerous lectures on this subject, including the prestigious Dartmouth Senior Symposium.
As a thought-leader in regard to equipping children and parents to impact modern culture, John has extensive experience in impacting the broader public through film-making, writing and speaking. His award-winning documentary, Think About It: Understanding the Impact of TV-Movie Violence was nationally distributed by Active Parenting from 2000-2010.
His enhanced e-textbook, entitled In Whose Image? Image-bearers of God vs. The Image-makers of Our Time, prepares teens to understand what it means to be an image-bearer of God, while equipping them to recognize and avoid being re-created by the image-makers of our time–covering such areas as identity, body image, race, media discernment, history, and the Christian faith to name a few.
His award-winning articles addressing education, history, politics, media and youth culture have appeared in numerous publications, including The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, The Barna Group, The Washington Examiner, The St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Des Moines Register, The Atlanta Constitution, Citizen Magazine, Movieguide, and Fox News.com to name a few. He received two national writing awards from The Amy Foundation in 2010 and 2012.
He has also appeared on several media outlets and podcasts including CNBC, MSNBC, USA Today, The Daily Signal, Breakpoint, World Magazine’s “The World and Everything in It,” and CNN Radio.
He has served as a guest lecturer and panelist for such groups as the Council on Educational Standards and Accountability (CESA), The Hudson Institute, The Wheelock Conference (Dartmouth College), the North Carolina Association of Independent Schools, the Georgia Independent School Association, the Association of Christian Schools International (ACSI), the National Association of Junior Auxiliaries, the Southeast Symposium on Community Violence, Ravi Zacharias’ International Ministries, and a number of other public and private school assemblies and church youth groups and retreats.
A Colson Center Fellow, he has also served on the Newseum’s Educator Advisory Task Force in Washington, D.C., the Association of Independent Maryland and DC Schools (AIMS-DC) Accreditation Committee, and has led the Christian School Association of St. Louis (CSASL).
He and his wife Barbara have four children–Andrew, Mary Stuart, Kingsley, and Sara Cate.