Pluralism, Politics and God? – An International Symposium on Religion and Public Reason
13-15 September 2007
In his controversial Regensburg lecture of 12 September 2006, Pope Benedict XVI sought to re-frame the interaction of religious traditions on the principle that ‘not to act reasonably is contrary to the nature of God’. He also called on the universities, and on all partners in the dialogue of cultures, to rediscover this principle by engaging ‘the whole breadth of reason’ – appreciating its grandeur and repudiating reductionist approaches to reason.
This unabashedly hellenistic emphasis raises important questions about the relation between faith and reason, and about the role of religion in the exercise of public reason. Is religion necessary to sustain reason? Do different religions represent competing claims about reason and rationality as well as about revelation? Does religious diversity mean that public decision-making, even as regards moral or ethical matters or human rights, should seek to bracket the God-question? Or is that not possible without undermining the rational basis for deciding and acting?
Scholars from around the world will gather at McGill on the anniversary of the Regensburg lecture to consider such timely questions and to present papers. Debates will be held on ‘Religion, Rights and the State’, ‘Reasonable Accommodation’, ‘Religion, Sex and the City’, ‘Beyond the Clash of Civilizations’ and other topics, with distinguished panelists including Gregory Baum, David Blankenhorn, the Hon. David Brown, the Hon. Michael Ignatieff, the Hon. Jason Kenney, Margaret Somerville, Janice Stein, Katherine Young, and other well-known public intellectuals from inside and outside McGill. John Witte Jr will deliver a Beatty Memorial Lecture and Nicholas Adams a Claude Ryan Memorial Lecture. On the eve of the symposium Fr Raymond DeSouza will speak on the Regensburg theme.
There are more details at the Newman Centre
The project director is Douglas Farrow, editor of Recognizing Religion in a Secular Society: Essays in Pluralism, Religion and Public Policy, who should be well known for the incomparable Ascension and Ecclesia a rich source for PhD theses. Ex-King’s, of course.
