Disciples Divinity House

A conference on May 19-20 will honor W. Clark Gilpin, the Margaret E. Burton Distinguished Service Professor of the History of Christianity and Theology, at his retirement from the Divinity School faculty. Entitled Writing Religion: Representation, Difference, and Authority in American Culture, the conference will ask how the project of "writing religion" has shaped questions about representation, difference, and authority in American culture. It features lectures by Divinity School colleagues Curtis Evans and Catherine Brekus, a panel discussion, and a lecture by Mr. Gilpin, "Writing Transcendence: When Words Exceed Themselves in Nineteenth-Century America."

Mr. Gilpin served as the Dean of the Disciples Divinity House from 1983-90, shaping a sense of call to leadership among House Scholars; he served as Dean of the Divinity School from 1990-2000, playing a remarkable and significant role in leading one of the major divinity schools in the world; and he was the first Director of the Marty Center, inaugurating new forms and venues of public conversation about religion. A historian of Christianity who studies the cultural history of theology in England and America since the seventeenth century, his first book was The Millenarian Piety of Roger Williams. While serving as dean, he wrote A Preface to Theology. Recent projects include work on the letter from prison as a genre of religious literature and a study of solitude in New England intellectuals. With Catherine Brekus, he recently edited a book entitled American Christianities. He earned his MA and PhD from the Divinity School as a Disciples Divinity House Scholar. He leads the Disciples History and Thought Seminar at the Disciples Divinity House, and he is a member of the Board of Trustees. Read the University's press release here.