Conversations in Divinity

 

Conversations in Divinity is on hiatus during the 2006-2007 academic year.

Aquarterly series at which Divinity School faculty discuss their current research, these events are held at 5:30 p.m. at the Chicago Cultural Center, located at Michigan Avenue and Washington Street in downtown Chicago (unless otherwise noted). For more information, please contact Mary Kraybill at mjkraybi@uchicago.edu.

March 23, 2006
"How Biblical Is the Christian Right?" Coming from her perspective as an historian of ancient Christian biblical exegesis, Margaret M. Mitchell, Professor of New Testament and Early Christian Literature in the Divinity School, examines current trends in biblical interpretation and re-presentation among the self-identified Christian right in contemporary America.

March 9, 2006
Dwight N. Hopkins, Professor of Theology in the Divinity School, will speak on "Black Religions and Spiritualities in Global Perspectives." Professor Hopkins works in the areas of contemporary models of theology, black theology and liberation theology. In this “conversation,” Professor Hopkins will discuss the mission of the International Association on Black Religions and Spiritualities, established in January 2006 to build a network of black peoples internationally whose primary concerns revolve around issues of justice and human dignity for darker skin communities and countries worldwide. Association membership is drawn from Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, Latin America, England, and the USA. The Association strives to inspire hope that a better world is possible—a world where cooperation, peaceful relations and joint action programs rule. The Association focuses on a spirituality of justice, compassion, education and advocacy.

February 2, 2006
Paul Mendes-Flohr, Professor of Modern Jewish Thought in the Divinity School, will discuss "Reflections on Leviticus 19:18" at the Carnelian Room in San Francisco (full location details here). The biblical injunction to love one’s neighbor ‘as thyself’, affirmed by all monotheistic faiths, is fraught with ambiguity. Who is one’s neighbor? What does it mean “as oneself ”? Indeed, what if one does not love oneself? Can love be commanded? After all, love is as an emotion grounded in the imponderable inclinations of the heart. The University of Chicago Divinity School invites you to participate in a conversation with Paul Mendes-Flohr during which Professor Mendes-Flohr will address these questions largely (but not exclusively) from the perspective of Judaism.

January 31, 2006
Richard A. Rosengarten, Dean and Associate Professor of Religion and Literature in the Divinity School, will discuss "Intelligent Design and Divine Providence in History and in the 21st Century" at the Kansas City Public Library (full location details here). The recent stir surrounding the concept of "intelligent design" produced yet another version of the perennial American debate surrounding science and religion. Lost in the furor over whether, and what, to teach our secondary school students was a set of enduring questions that have absorbed theologians and scientists for milennia: If we can speak of God, what can we say about God's plan for the universe? And about the human capacity to understand that plan? Richard Rosengarten's talk will outline some classic religious responses to these questions, in an attempt to suggest that the concept of "intelligent design" has a much longer history than its most recent expositors in the culture wars around science and religion have suggested.

September 15, 2005
James T. Robinson, Assistant Professor of the History of Judaism, will discuss "Jacob's Ladder of Ascent: Medieval and Modern Perspectives on a Biblical Motif." Jacob's ladder played a central role in medieval and early modern debates about science and religion. It was interpreted as the cosmos and cosmic chain, the scientific curriculum, the human soul, the universal soul, and the levels and stages of human development. Professor Robinson will discuss several examples from the history of interpretation, in order to chart the development of this popular biblical motif and consider its contemporary repercussions.

April 7, 2005
"Traumatic Devotion: Mysticism and Mourning in Late Medieval Mysticism" by Amy Hollywood, Professor of Theology and the History of Christianity in the Divinity School. Mel Gibson's 2004 film The Passion of the Christ has provoked impassioned responses, both positive and negative, largely because of its emphasis on the extremity of Christ's physical suffering. Gibson here follows traditions first established in the late Middle Ages, traditions that call on the believer to visualize, meditate on, and feel compassion for Christ's intense bodily pain. The paper will look at the Revelation of the German Dominican Margaret Ebner, a virtuosa of meditation on Christ's Passion, whose own body physically conforms to that of Christ on the cross. The real question, of course, will be why? What religious value did Ebner find in her compassion for and identification with Christ's suffering? Do the values and meanings visible in Ebner's practice find a parallel in Gibson's twenty-first-century filmic representation?

January 20, 2005
"Assassins of the Old Man of the Mountain" by Michael J. Murrin, David B. and Clara E. Stern Professor in the Humanities and Professor of Religion and Literature in the Divinity School. Marco Polo and others wrote about the Assassins of the Old Man of the Mountain, and Europeans were fascinated by the stories. Professor Murrin will establish the context for these assassinations, which were carried out by a Shiite sect living in Iran and Syria. This sect protected itself by sending out killers who assassinated highly placed people who persecuted them. Normally the act was done in public for all to see. Professor Murrin will explain why stories of these assassinations on the Silk Road lingered in the European imagination for hundreds of years and the effect this has had on attitudes about Asia.

October 7, 2004
"The Box, the Bestseller, and the Blockbuster: Angles of Assessment on Christian Origins in Popular Culture" by Margaret Mitchell, Associate Professor of New Testament and Early Christian Literature in the Divinity School and the Division of the Humanities. Professor Mitchell will discuss three recent cultural phenomena that reflect contemporary fascination with the world of early Christianity: the James ossuary; Dan Brown's Da Vinci Code; and Mel Gibson's Passion of the Christ.

April 1, 2004
"Global Justice and the Social Contract" by Martha C. Nussbaum, Ernst Freund Distinguished Service Professor of Law and Ethics in the Law School, the Divinity School, the Department of Philosophy, and the College. The most influential model of social justice in the Western tradition is the idea of the social contract: "free, equal, and independent" people get together and decide to leave the State of Nature, framing principles by which to live together, because it is mutually advantageous to do so. Professor Nussbaum’s “conversation in divinity” will argue that this model is an inadequate basis for principles of global justice for the interdependent world in which we live, and I propose a new alternative.

January 8, 2004
"The Christian Sophocles: Flannery O'Connor and the Religious Uses of Violence" by Richard A. Rosengarten, Dean and Associate Professor of Religion and Literature in the Divinity School. Renowned for combining a stark vision of human behavior with a rich religiosity, Flannery O'Connor (1925–1964) wrote stories in which the most intense moments of revelation were inextricably yoked with acts of violence. This "conversation in divinity" will explore that fact with explicit reference to the stories and to Thomas Merton's judgment that O'Connor, like the greatest of the Greek tragedians, was a consummate artist whose vision of the relationship between human and divine never flinched.

October 2, 2003
“Action Proportioned to Nature: Solitude in the Career of Ralph Waldo Emerson" by W. Clark Gilpin, Margaret E. Burton Professor of the History of Christianity and Theology in the Divinity School. Professor Gilpin's current research explores the history of a pervasive assumption in American religion, namely, the notion that individuals are most likely to encounter God or the Absolute when they are in solitude. In this “conversation”, he will discuss the crucial role of the orator and essayist Ralph Waldo Emerson in the development of this assumption and describe the role of solitude in Emerson's distinctive form of social criticism.

April 3, 2003
"Legal Regulation of Religion in the 21st Century: Here and Abroad" by Winnifred Fallers Sullivan, Dean of Students and Senior Lecturer in the Anthropology and Sociology of Religion, the Divinity School. What is gained and what is lost for religious communities by being cozy with the powers that be? Using recent cases, Dean Sullivan, J.D., Ph.D., will compare the legal regulation of religion in several countries with a view to considering the contemporary legal status of religion in the secular state. Cases selected will be designed to illustrate the variety and complexity of this problem for the religious practitioner and for the government.

January 9, 2003
"The Open, the Void, and God" by David Tracy, Andrew Thomas Greeley and Grace McNichols Greeley Distinguished Service Professor of Catholic Studies, and Professor of Theology and Philosophy of Religion in the Divinity School.

October 3, 2002
"'God Created the World, Not Religion': Franz Rosenzweig and the Jewish Affirmation of the God of Revelation" by Paul Mendes-Flohr, Professor of Modern Jewish Thought in the Divinity School.

January 10, 2002
"Why Mysticism? A Shift in 20th Century Religious Studies" by Bernard McGinn, Naomi Shenstone Donnelley Professor of Historical Theology and of the History of Christianity in the Divinity School.

April 25, 2001
"China and the Problem of Human Rights" by Anthony C. Yu, Carl Darling Buck Distinguished Service Professor in the Humanities and Professor of Religion and Literature, the Divinity School; the Departments of English Language and Literature, Comparative Literature, and East Asian Languages and Civilizations; and the Committee on Social Thought.