Seminars/Conferences : Christian Worldview
The Christian Worldview and the Academy
(Click here for the conference’s website)(Click here for audio recordings of the conference’s sessions)
A conference sponsored by
The Aquinas Institute, Athletes in Action, The Baptist Student Fellowship, Christian Leadership Ministries, Manna Christian Fellowship, Princeton Evangelical Fellowship,
Princeton Faith and Action,
and The Witherspoon Institute.
Princeton, New Jersey • November 9-11, 2007
Detailed Schedule
OVERVIEW
Inspiration
America sustains a perennially vibrant dialogue about how religion, and specifically Christianity, shapes adherents’ approach to knowledge. Indeed, at times tension derails the discussion as participants on both sides of belief talk past or misunderstand one another. College students are among the youngest participants in this discourse and speak often of being caught between the demands of faith and reason as though these were contradictory obligations. The Witherspoon Institute is organizing a conference that examines how the Christian worldview affects scholarship and the commitment to engage culture.
Organization
The conference will consist of a series of academic lectures, panel discussions, and breakout sessions given in the course of the November 9-11, 2007 weekend. This conference is first and foremost geared towards students; this makes Princeton University the ideal venue. Princeton is also a convenient location for students in Philadelphia, Washington, New York, and Boston to visit for the weekend.
Professor Byron Johnson would be the director of the conference. He is a professor of sociology at Baylor University and the Director of Baylor’s Institute for Studies of Religion. He is also a Senior Fellow of the Witherspoon Institute and heads its Religion and Civil Society Program. He has published extensively on the role of religion in relation to problems such as at-risk youth behavior, recidivism, and prisoner reentry. Given his academic reputation and personal commitment to Christian faith, he is well suited to lead this conference.
Content of Conference
Contrary to the perception of certain intellectual circles, no oil-and-water dynamic need exist between academic excellence and Christian faith. History instructs us in this, as so much of the Western intellectual inheritance rests on the work of great Christian figures like Augustine, John Chrysostom, Thomas Aquinas, Anselm, Erasmus, John Calvin, and John Witherspoon. And yet, Christian students today are told via explicit arguments and subtle denigration that their positions on many issues lack rational foundations. Not only are Christian beliefs and practices under attack, but moral norms of sexual ethics and human dignity are increasingly challenged or even dismissed. The Christian Worldview conference will bring together thinkers from both inside and outside the academy to address several issues:
- The nature of Christian truth and how we can know it.
- Secularism and the Challenges of Faith
- The Authenticity and Historicity of Scripture
- The relationship between, and compatibility of, Christianity and science.
- The rejection of scientific materialism as a philosophy
- The nature of the universe as a designed system
- The Christian and the Polis: where and how Christian and natural law principles influence public policy, with subsections on:
- Bioethics
- Sex and Marriage
The proposed topics of the Christian Worldview conference reflect the worries that students regularly confide to their priests and pastors, as these clergy have related to the Witherspoon Institute. Far from being a pep talk, however, the conference aims instead to explore how orthodox Christianity shapes one’s approach to scholarship and to engagement with the secular and academic worlds.
The Witherspoon Institute is in the process of recruiting a sterling roster of academics to address the topics of the conference. Each topic will receive a two-part treatment followed by ample time for student questions. As of now, our program reads as follows:
CONFERENCE PARTICIPANTS
Russell Moore – Dean of the School of Theology, Southern Baptist Theological Seminary
• Opening Night Address
John Haldane – Professor of Philosophy and Director of the Centre for Ethics, Philosophy, and Public Affairs, University of St. Andrews, Edinburgh
• Secularism and the Challenges of Faith, part I: Philosophy
Nancy Pearcey – Scholar for Worldview Studies, Philadelphia Biblical University
• Secularism and the Challenges of Faith, part II: Sociology/Culture
Darrell Bock – Research Professor of New Testament Studies, Professor of Spiritual Development and Culture, Dallas Theological Seminary
• Scriptural Authenticity and Historicity, part I
Fr. Paul Mankowski – Lector in Biblical Hebrew, Pontifical Biblical Institute
• Scriptural Authenticity and Historicity, part II
Jean Bethke Elshtain – Laura Spelman Rockefeller Professor of Social and Political Ethics, University of Chicago
• Marriage and Sex, part I
Laura Garcia – Adjunct Assistant Professor of Philosophy, Boston College
• Marriage and Sex, part II
Nigel Cameron – Institute on Biotechnology and the Human Future
• Bioethics
Maureen Condic – Associate Professor of Neurobiology and Anatomy, University of Utah School of Medicine
• Bioethics
Patrick Lee – Professor of Bioethics, Franciscan University at Steubenville
• Bioethics
Robert P. George – McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence and Director, James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions, Princeton University
• Bioethics
John Polkinghorne – Cambridge University
• Science and the Christian Worldview, part I
Philip Jenkins – Distinguished Professor of Religious Studies and History, Pennsylvania State University
• Science and the Christian Worldview, part II
Fr. Richard John Neuhaus – First Things magazine
• Closing Address
Conference Partners
The Aquinas Institute, the Baptist Student Fellowship, Princeton Evangelical Fellowship, Manna, Princeton Faith and Action, Christian Leadership Ministries, Athletes in Action, and the Witherspoon Institute have agreed to partner in this project. The Orthodox Christian Fellowship and the Wesley Foundation will also lend their support. The broad range of speakers’ backgrounds and concerns reflects the denominational diversity of the aforementioned groups. The conference also serves to foster unity among Christians at a time when common interests before the foe of secularism outweigh denominational disputes.
Strategic Outreach
As explained above, the Christian Worldview conference is intended first for students. The project’s chaplaincy partners have dedicated themselves to heavily promoting the event with their membership. Chaplaincies and fellowships from the rest of the Ivy League and peer Northeastern institutions (e.g. MIT, Williams College, Swarthmore) will be invited to attend as well. Princeton students from our partner fellowships will spearhead this interscholastic promotion, which we expect to equal or exceed the effectiveness of a print campaign. We expect to welcome several hundred students to the conference.
Vision for Outcome
The conference’s primary aim is to equip students with a set of arguments to defend Christian faith and morality as a valid, eminently reasonable system of belief, particularly in the context of the secular academy. The conference puts in front of them role models who have excelled in scholarly life while practicing Christian faith. The importance of these role models cannot be underestimated. The Witherspoon Institute hopes to assemble the conference lectures into a compendium to be distributed to participating chaplaincies and fellowships. This, the conference sponsors hope, will spur an ongoing dialogue among students and their chaplains about how to live as Christians and scholars. The Witherspoon Institute would be interested in facilitating future discussions along the lines of this worldview conference, thus making it the first event in an ongoing series dedicated to the ideal of faithful and mature Christian scholarship.
Given the conference’s target demographic—elite small college and Ivy League undergraduates—there will be a significant number of attendants considering careers in academia. One of the Witherspoon Institute’s primary missions is to foster the moral and intellectual formation of the next generation of scholars. We provide a number of outstanding networking and academic opportunities for those students, including summer seminars and fellowships for graduate study, and will make this known to conference attendants.
Please direct inquiries to Patrick Hough (email).
Updated April 10, 2008