Category: Conferences

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Law and Islam

The Lawyers Christian Fellowship and Christian Concern for our Nation are holding a day conference on 28th January

The legal challenges faced by Islam: How should the church respond?

Democracy in the UK and worldwide is being challenged by a new force – that of militant Islam. This conference will look at some of the issues involved in how national and international law can confront this issue, as well as what the appropriate response of the church should be.

Speakers include:

Baroness Caroline Cox – president of Christian Solidarity Worldwide

Dr Sam Solomon – Global expert on Islam and sharia law.

Paul Diamond and Charlotte Thorneycroft

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Sermon on the Mount

The Sermon on the Mount and Christian Ethics – a conference 5th-7th September, Wescott House, Cambridge

Presenters include:

Oliver O’Donovan
Professor of Christian Ethics and Practical Theology
Edinburgh University

Glen Stassen
Lewis B. Smedes Professor of Christian Ethics
Fuller Theological Seminary

Susan Parsons
President, Society Study of Christian Ethics
Editor, Studies in Christian Ethics

Carolyn Muessig
Senior Lecturer in Medieval Theology
University of Bristol

Richard Bauckham
Professor Emeritus of New Testament
University of St Andrews

The conference committee invite short papers related to the theme of the event and more general outlines of work in progress

For further details and booking arrangements will appear at:
www.ssce.org.uk

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Bible and justice

Conference on Bible and Justice
29 May – 1 June, 2008

Stanley Hauerwas
Timothy Gorringe
John Rogerson

The 2008 Conference on Bible and Justice will bring together scholars from around the world to explore how the ancient texts of the Bible can play an active role in addressing twenty-first century social concerns. The purpose of the conference is to foster discussion about the relevance of the Bible to modern social issues, and promote bridges between the academic field of biblical studies and the various endeavours for a just world.

And cut out the many centuries of the Church’s experience on this subject, I suppose? Don’t we need the Church to open the bible up to us? Is biblical studies premised on denial of this?

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Liturgy

Philosophy and Liturgy: Ritual, Practice, and Embodied Wisdom

May 20-22, 2008 at Calvin College

This conference brings together leading scholars in philosophy and theology to investigate key themes in worship with the tools of philosophy, with the ultimate goal of informing Christian practice. There is also the reciprocal goal of letting Christian liturgical practice become a fund for philosophical reflection on classic questions and themes.

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Faith and public square

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.