Past Lecture Events
2019-2020 Lecture Events
Noah Toly
“The Gardener's Dirty Hands”
January 23, 2020 / 7 p.m.
Canyon Commons
In this powerful lecture, Toly offered an interpretation of environmental governance that draws upon insights into the tragic — the need to forego, give up, undermine, or destroy one or more goods in order to possess or secure one or more other goods. Toly engaged Christian and classical Greek ideas of the tragic to illuminate the enduring challenges of environmental politics. He suggested that Christians have unique resources for responsible engagement with global environmental politics while acknowledging the need for mutually agreed, and ultimately normative, restraints.
Noah Toly is Professor of Urban Studies and Politics & International Relations at Wheaton College where he directs the Center for Urban Engagement. He also serves as Non-Resident Senior Fellow for Global Cities at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs and as a member of the faculty at the Free University of Berlin's Center for Global Politics.
Amsa Uddin
“When Islam is Not a Religion”
January 21, 2020, 7 p.m.
Hoover 105
Uddin is one of the country's premier religious liberty lawyers, applying her scholarship to the protection of religious expression for people of all faiths in the U.S. and abroad.
Meghan Sullivan
“The Love Imperative — A Defense”
October 24, 2019, 7 p.m.
Hoover 105
We naturally think of love as discriminatory – you love your partner more than strangers, your friends more than your adversaries, and your home team over opponents. Indeed, most philosophers – influenced by the Greeks – have worked hard to carve out a theory of when and why we are permitted to be so partial in our affections. Universal love, if we can even understand it, seems only like an option for saints or hippies ... not a realistic or practical ethical framework for most of us. This lecture will provoke you to think deeply about your philosophical approach to ethics and the motivation behind your morality.
Meghan Sullivan is professor of philosophy and the Rev. John A O’Brien Collegiate Chair at the University of Notre Dame. Sullivan’s research tends to focus on philosophical problems concerning time, modality, rational planning, value theory, and religious belief (and sometimes all five at once). She has published work in many of the leading philosophy journals, including Nous, Ethics and Philosophical Studies. Sullivan is deeply interested in the ways philosophy contributes to the good life and the best methods for promoting philosophical thought.
Dr. Sullivan's lecture will be available for download upon the completion of her associated paper, expected in late 2020.
Ray Barfield, MD, PhD
“Seeking God in the Ruins: A Pediatric Oncologist's Story of Finding Beauty and Hope Amidst Suffering and Death”
Thursday, Sept. 26, 2019, 7 p.m.
Canyon Commons
Ray Barfield lost his Christian faith after witnessing the suffering of children with cancer. Though he later returned to Christianity, his doubts transformed his perspective on human flourishing. Join us as Barfield shares how it’s not so much the absence of suffering but our response to it that fosters wholeness.
Dr. Barfield is a pediatric oncologist and palliative care physician. He joined the faculties of Duke's Medical School and Divinity School in 2008. The first half of his career focused on improving immune therapies for childhood cancer and understanding the moral aspects of decision-making in medical research involving children. At Duke he has focused on the role of theology, humanities, and the arts in the formation of physicians. Dr. Barfield was the founding director of two programs at Duke: Pediatric Quality of Life and Palliative Care and Theology, Medicine, and Culture. Currently he is the director of the Medical Humanities Program for the Trent Center for Bioethics, Medical Humanities, and History of Medicine in the Medical School. He has published widely in medicine, philosophy, and literature.
Dr. Barfield's lecture is linked here.
In addition to Ray Barfield, panelists are as follows: Kristen Lakis, Duke University; Pam Fifer, GFU School of Nursing; Daniel Kang, GFU Department of Physical Therapy. The panel event was held earlier in the day.
2018-2019 Lecture Events
Keri Day, Associate Professor of Constructive Theology and African American Religion, Princeton Theological Seminary
“Rethinking Azusa: If it Wasn't for the Women”
Thursday, April 4, 2019, 7:30 p.m.
Hoover 105
Day presented a moving examination of the Azusa Street Revival of 1906-1915, powerfully woven into contemporary concerns of today.
Day’s teaching and research interests are in womanist/feminist theologies, social critical theory, cultural studies, economics, and Afro-Pentecostalism. She is the author of Unfinished Business: Black Women, The Black Church, and the Struggle to Thrive in America (2012) and Religious Resistance to Neoliberalism: Womanist and Black Feminist Perspectives (2015). She is at work on her third book manuscript, which explores how early Pentecostalism contributes to the religious and democratic imagination. In 2017, she was recognized by ABC News as one of six black women at the “center of gravity” in theological education in America.
Day received her
Robert P. George
“Civic Virtues and the Constitution: The Founders’ Plan to Protect Liberty and Prevent Tyranny”
Thursday, March 14, 2019, 7:30 p.m.
Bauman Auditorium
Robert P. George is McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence and director of the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions at Princeton University. He is also a visiting professor at Harvard Law School. He has served as chairman of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom and as a presidential appointee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. He has also served on the President’s Council on Bioethics and as the U.S. member of UNESCO’s World Commission on the Ethics of Science and Technology. He was a Judicial Fellow at the Supreme Court of the United States, where he received the Justice Tom C. Clark Award.
A Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Swarthmore College, he holds the degrees of J.D. and M.T.S. from Harvard University and the degrees of D.Phil., B.C.L. and D.C.L. from Oxford University, in addition to 19 honorary degrees. He is a recipient of the U.S. Presidential Citizens Medal and the Honorific Medal for the Defense of Human Rights of the Republic of Poland, and is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Baylor University has named its new Washington, D.C.-based program the “Robert P. George Initiative in Faith, Ethics, and Public Policy.” Professor George’s most recent book is Conscience and Its Enemies (ISI Books).
Dr. Bradley Campbell, PhD
“Dignity, Victimhood, and the Future of the University”
Wednesday, November 7, 2018, 7:30 p.m.
Hoover 105
Dr. Bradley Campbell will draw from his work to discuss the challenges that new moral concepts and related trends are posing to scholarship, free speech, and to students’ well-being at contemporary universities, along with some possible solutions.
Dr. Campbell is the author of The Geometry of Genocide: A Study in Pure Sociology and coauthor (along with Dr. Jason Manning of West Virginia University) of The Rise of Victimhood Culture: Microaggressions, Safe Spaces, and the New Culture Wars. Campbell is broadly interested in the study of moral conflict – clashes of right and wrong – and has written widely about law, violence and genocide. More recently, his work has examined the conflicts on college campuses over microaggressions, safe spaces, trigger warnings and free speech.
He holds a BA in sociology from Lee University, an MS in applied sociology from Clemson University, and a PhD in sociology from the University of Virginia. He is an associate professor of sociology at California State University, Los Angeles.
Gabe Lyons
“Faithfulness in the Age of Distraction”
Friday, September 28, 2018 at 7:30 p.m.
Bauman Auditorium
The Honors Program presents a powerful address by Gabe Lyons, co-author of Good Faith (2016), unChristian (2007) and the author of The Next Christians (2010), a manifesto for how Christians can faithfully lead in a changing culture.
On Friday night, September 28, Gabe will present “Faithfulness in the Age of Distraction,” a life-changing talk that will pierce through your scattered, frantic day-to-day— the too-tight schedules, the looming deadlines, the constant technological buzz—everything that has become a barrier to your relationship with God and others. You’ll come away with new tools and a refreshed perspective on what it takes to live out the gospel in our modern world.
Gabe Lyons is the founder of Q, a learning community of Christian leaders where they are equipped to
Gabe speaks to over 100,000 people each year on topics of equipping the next generation, cultural issues and research related to the intersection of faith and public life. He lives in Nashville with his wife, Rebekah, and their three children.