Conference to re-examine theology and culture

January 14, 2009 -  

A spring conference will bring together scholars and practitioners to re-examine the role and value of culture in theological reflection and the role and value of theology in cultural reflection. Where and how do new theologies and theories of culture intersect? How do these emergent perspectives aid interpretation of and engagement within the ecumene, the whole encultured world? Entitled Culturing Theologies, Theologizing Cultures: Exploring the Worlds of Religion, the conference will be held April 22-23. Planned as the Divinity School’s Sharpe Lectures, it is co-sponsored by the Disciples Divinity House’s Hoover Lectures. Conference organizers are Garry Sparks and Chris Dorsey, both theology Ph.D. candidates and Disciples Divinity House Scholars.

University of Michigan anthroplogist Webb Keane, author of Christian Moderns: Freedom and Fetish in the Mission Encounter, will keynote the conference. Opening and closing lectures will be given by Divinity School professors Kathryn Tanner and William Schweiker, respectively. University of Virginia professor and DDH Board president Larry Bouchard will speak about art, secularism, and “spirituality.” Other speakers are Chicago anthropologists Jean Comaroff and Robin Shoaps, Morehouse College president Robert Franklin, and Columbia philosopher Souleymane Bachir Diagne. Two sets of panel presentations will explore theological worlds within contemporary Palestine, Southern India, and Senegal, and historic intersections of cultures and ideas including 16th-century Spanish scholastic humanism and land theology in the book of Leviticus. Panelists include Mr. Sparks, Mr. Dorsey, and Divinity House Scholars Kristel Clayville and Santiago Piñón, Jr.