Dear WesleyNexus Colleagues:
We are
beginning our newsletter this month with an extended quote from the preface
of Rowan Williams recent 2018 book Christ The Heart of Creation. In this passage, Williams, former
Archbishop of Canterbury and currently Master of Magdalene College, Cambridge,
reflects on the meaning of doctrine and how it provides an orienting framework
for human living, not as a network of explanations but as the means
to draw us into a way of living, thinking and acting. Thus understood, doctrines
is should not stand in opposition to the scientific findings of our
age.
Here is Dr. Williams introductory passage on this subject: “What I am trying to do in this book is to bring to light one aspect – a central and crucial aspect, I would argue – of how the Church’s language about Jesus works: how it clarifies other areas of what Christians say and organizes other doctrines around itself. I believe that if we have a little more clarity about how this language works we may have a little more understanding of why it is credible. If people take seriously doctrines such as the divinity of Christ, it is not primarily because they can treat them as if they were tidy conclusions to an argument, deductions from readily available evidence, but because – however obscurely they are grasped, however challenging the detail – they see that the language of doctrine holds together a set of intractably complex questions in a way that offers a coherent context for human living. They make sense, not first as an explanation of things but as a credible environment for action and imagination, a credible means of connecting narratives, practices, codes of behavior; they offer a world to live in. The reasons that might make us decide actually to live in that world, to inhabit, not just vaguely entertain, a scheme of language and imagery like the classical theologies of Christ’s nature, will be as various as the histories of the people who make such a decision. Reflecting on the language of doctrine will not in itself do the job of persuading anyone to believe; what it may do is to give more depth and substance to imagining what it is like to believe and what new connections or possibilities are opened up by speaking and imagining like this.
An extensive excerpt from Dr. Williams can be found here, and we commend all of our colleagues to consider this approach seriously as we are continually challenged by people in the pews who get so easily ”hung up” on doctrines handed down through the centuries.
The work of WesleyNexus is to bring you the best resources at the intersection of science and Christian faith, to promote the most reasoned and Christ-informed dialogue, that together we might make a difference in a world that is increasingly shaped by science and technology. We kindly ask your financial support to help us continue this important work. WesleyNexus is a 501(c)(3) charitable, educational organization, and we will acknowledge all gifts from individuals for tax reporting purposes. Thanks in advance for your support.
Blessings,
Jennifer, Maynard, and the rest of the WesleyNexus team
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UPCOMING EVENTS
God Can’t Stop Evil Singlehandedly With Rev. Dr. Thomas Jay Oord, Ph.D.
Sunday, October 13th, 5 – 7 PM, Trinity United Methodist Church, 13700 Schaeffer Road, Germantown, Maryland
The Rev. Dr. Thomas Jay Oord, Ph.D., theologian, philosopher, scholar, and award-winning author, will be speaking on Sunday, October 13th from 5 – 7 PM at Trinity United Methodist Church in Germantown, Maryland. A gifted speaker, he is known for his contributions to research on love, open and relational theology, science and religion, and the implications of freedom and relationships for transformation.
The usual answers to evil do not solve the questions we ask: If God is so loving and so powerful, why doesn’t God prevent unnecessary suffering and pointless pain?
In his talk, “God Can’t Stop Evil Singlehandedly,” Thomas Jay Oord gives an unusual answer to that question. Oord shares the five-fold answer that he has championed in his best-selling book, God Can’t: How to Believe in God and Love After Tragedy, Abuse, and Other Evils (SacraSage 2019).
Flyer can be found here.
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Reminder
Discovery & Faith Seeks Churches to Pilot Its New Curricula in Fall 2019
Discovery & Faith is a ministry initiative launched by WesleyNexus in 2017 to provide resources to help the next generation experience harmony between science and Christian faith. It is seeking children’s ministry partners to pilot its new curricula.
“Exploring God’s World & Word: Genesis 1” is a six-week unit for children PreK through sixth grade that brings hands-on science alongside the first Creation story in the Bible for a side-by-side, science-and-faith learning experience.
“Foundations” is a supplemental confirmation curriculum that helps confirmands construct the intellectual foundations that help them more fully understand the practice of Christian faith, particularly as it relates to a world shaped by science and reason. It uses hands-on/minds-on activities to explore:
- Belief, knowing, and trust
- Belief in God
- How to read/interpret the Bible
- The relationship between science and faith
- God the Creator
- Genesis and evolution including perspectives on Adam
- Reason, history, and the story of Jesus and the resurrection
- What science tells us about the practice of faith has positive impacts on physical and mental health and well-being
If you are interested in participating in our pilot program, please contact Jennifer Secki Shields via connect@discoveryandfaith.org
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Scientists Create A Device That Can Mass-Produce Human Embryoids by Rob Stein
We all know that technology moves faster than one’s ability to keep track of all the important advances taking place. It is not always clear if these developments should be considered advances or flashing warning signs. This short article highlights a development where large numbers of living entities that resemble very primitive human embryos can now be mass produced. Whether a blessing or curse, it is not quite clear. The article can be found here.
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Why science needs the humanities to solve climate change by Steven Allison and Tyrus Miller
In the past week, demonstrations have taken place all over the world with people of all ages coming together to highlight the serious risks to our planet by climate change. In this article, Allison and Miller highlight the importance of understanding the problem as more than just a matter of science, economics and engineering. It is also a problem of the humanities and how we understand ourselves. While the article does not highlight religion in general or Christianity in particular, the authors emphasize that “stronger collaborations across the humanities and sciences are key for effective climate solutions. Still, there are hurdles to overcome. Humanists have been criticized for failing to apply their expertise to environmental problems outside academic circles. For their part, scientists need to respect humanists as scholars in their own right, not just clever translators of hard science”. Religion too comes within this domain of the humanities. See the article here.
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Where is God in Mental Illness? By Bruce Epperly
“Both mental health and mental illness are many-faceted and elusive in nature. No one definition of mental health or illness fits all people or settings. Healthy behavior in one cultural setting may appear aberrant in another. Further, health and illness are processes and not static states. There is a temptation to define people solely in terms of illness language – “he has cancer,” “she is schizophrenic,” “he is bi-polar,” “she is obsessive compulsive.” This objectifies people and places limits on what they can achieve, freezing them as sick in contrast to those of us who are temporarily well. Process theology asserts that within limitation and concreteness, possibilities emerge. This applies to all life conditions, including persons diagnosed with mental illnesses. In the many-facetedness of life, many persons diagnosed with serious mental health issues are among the most compassionate and creative members of the human race”. The rest of the article can be found here.
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Silence the Violence: A Concert Against Gun Violence – at National UMC
On Saturday September 21, a local steering committee at National United Methodist Church in Washington DC hosted a special concert benefiting the TraRon Center in Washington, whose mission is to expose gun violence survivors to therapeutic modalities that strengthen their grieving and coping strategies. A special focus is the Center’;s work with children who have seen their brothers and sisters killed by guns on the streets, often while by-standing or otherwise randomly victimized. While the songs of the invited choirs were uplifting to all, of special interest is “The Ring of Freedom” – a hanging sculpture in the chancel of the church, fashioned by DC artist Stephanie Mercedes. A SIG Sauer MCX rifle –the exact rifle used during the Orlando Pulse Nightclub shooting—was melted down by the artist to make 49 small liberty bells to memorialize the 49 victims in the Pulse Nightclub. Mercedes melts down weapons confiscated by the DC police and turns them into creative works of art, most of which are musical. She has performed at Colleges and Universities as well as the Smithsonian and other museums. This particular creation will hang in the chancel of National UMC for another two weeks before beginning a journey to other exhibit spaces, eventually to end up in Orlando, to commemorate the lives lost there. Members of the congregation on Sunday morning were able to witness the initial stages of the creative process as Mercedes sawed into small pieces a weapon actually used in a homicide on the streets of DC. We stand with those who are now making their voices heard on Capital Hill as Congress weighs options this Fall to bring some sanity to the gun culture which has spread so deeply into the American heartland. *********************************************
Second Annual “Cosmotheandric” Conference at the Omega Center, Dec 6-8, 2019
All of us in the WesleyNexus network should have a high interest in the upcoming conference sponsored by the Omega Center at Villanova University, December 6-8, on the theme “The Inside Story: Exploring Love at the Heart of the Universe.” The work of the Omega Center is guided by Sister Ilia Delio, a Franciscan Sister of Washington, DC and American theologian specializing in the area of science and religion, with interests in evolution, physics and neuroscience and the import of these for theology. The Omega Center envisions an emerging wholeness of God, world, and humanity through the transformative power of love in our scientific age. We find ourselves in a situation in which the divisive fragmentation of our age reflects a need for a new holistic synergy of science and spirituality to heal our divisions, deepen our compassion, and ignite the human spirit toward greater unity and flourishing. The Teilhardian concept of “Omega”—upon which the Center’s vision and work is based—is understood not as destination, but as deepening toward a more unified future. Omega is the revelation of God as the fullness of love, the dynamic center at the heart of all Creation.
Our affirmation is centered in an interconnected universe of deepening complexity, consciousness, and convergence. A new story of the whole transcends our differences and distances, encouraging a planetary faith of the Earth that welcomes all God’s peoples and all God’s life as one intricately connected spiritual community. It is a story where religion and science, faith and contemplation, and nature and technology converge toward a new creation. This conference will feature the leadership of Sr. Ilia Delio, Dr. Ursula King, Dr. John F. Haught, Sr. Kathleen Duffy and Dr. Cynthia Bourgeuult. The conference will be hosted in collaboration with the Institute for Religion and Science at Chestnut Hill College, Philadelphia, PA. Registration begins Friday, December 6th, at 5:00pm at the Commonwealth Chateu, and the closing session concludes on Sunday, December 8th, at 12:45pm. More information can be found at https://omegacenter.info/conference2019/
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Evolution Weekend 2020 (14-16 February 2020) is six months away – but approaching quickly! A Message from Founder Dr. Michael Zimmerman
This will be our 15th annual Evolution Weekend and, perhaps, our most important ever. Please join hundreds of your colleagues and work to reclaim the truth from those who believe opinion is more important. Please help us demonstrate that religion and science share many important facets and important conclusions.
You’ve participated in the past, and for that I am particularly grateful. I hope you will participate with your congregation again this coming February. Please sign up now!
Just hit reply and I’ll do the rest. I’ll add you to our growing list of colleagues, already over 70 strong representing 6 countries.
Thanks very much for considering participating again and for your continued support. Together we are making a difference.
Michael
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Michael Zimmerman, Founder and Executive Director, The Clergy Letter Project
www.theclergyletterproject.org mz@theclergyletterproject.org
NOTE::
WesleyNexus plans to sponsor a Seventh Annual Evolution Program program in Maryland, and if funds permit, we will live stream the event once again for churches and colleagues across the country. Our program in 2020 most likely will take place on February 8th – so please stay tuned as our Board develops the content of the 2020 program. Details will appear in forthcoming newsletters and be posted on our website.
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John Wesley, Early Evangelicalism, and Science
Tuesday, 25 February 2020, at 7:00 pm.
Location: Parmer Hall, Messiah College, Mechanicsburg, PA.
A free lecture sponsored by The Central Pennsylvania Forum for Religion and Science, the Messiah College Honors Program, College Ministries, and the Sider Institute for Anabaptist, Pietist, and Wesleyan Studies.
The rise of evangelicalism coincided historically with the reception of modern science in mainstream culture. The new science was generally embraced by evangelicals as a source of “wonder, love, and praise.” Indeed, one of the ways in which scientific literacy spread was through the many popular works disseminated by John Wesley on science, medicine, electricity. This lecture explores Wesley’s many-sided, thoughtful engagement with science and his exemplary concern to “look upon nothing separate from God.”
Flyer link will be here
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Wesleyan Theological Society – 2020 Annual Meeting
The 2020 annual meeting will be held in March at the Nazarene Theological Seminary in Kansas City, MO. The Call for Papers has been circulated, so we encoirage all of our colleagues in the WesleyNexus nertwork to submit an abstract right now for a presentation in the Science and Religion Track. And encourage your graduate students to do the same. For further information or to submit paper proposals, contact WTS President Christina Smerick, christina.smerick@greenville.edu. The entire announcement and suggested topics for the 2020 Annual Meeting can be found here.
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The Center for Open and Relational Theology
What Is Open and Relational Theology?
“Open and Relational Theology” is an umbrella label under which a variety of theologies and believers reside. This variety shares at least two ideas in common:
God experiences time moment by moment (open)
God, us, and creation relate, so that everyone gives and receives (relational)
Most open and relational thinkers also affirm additional ideas, such as the idea love is our ultimate ethic, creatures are free at least to some extent, all creation matters, life has purpose, genuine transformation is possible, science points to important truths theology needs to incorporate, and more.
For more information click here.
IRAS CONFERENCE ANNOUNCEMENT & CALL FOR PAPERS
The theme for the 2020 IRAS Star Island Conferebnce is “NATURALISM— AS RELIGION, WITHIN RELIGIONS, OR WITHOUT RELIGION?”
IRAS, the Institute on Religion in an Age of Science, will have its 66th conference, June 27 – July 4, 2020, at Star Island, NH. What are the consequences of science-inspired naturalism for religion? In this conference, we will explore and evaluate religious and non-religious options available to those who take science seriously. Briefly, these could be characterized as replacement, reform, and rejection. Speakers will be Owen Flanagan (philosopher), Marcelo Gleiser (cosmologist); Ursula Goodenough (biologist); Sarah Lane Ritchie (theologian); Carol Wayne White (philosopher of religion); Janet Newton (chapel speaker), Willem B. Drees (past-editor of Zygon: Journal of Religion and Science). Program co-chairs for the 2020 Conference are Barbara Whittaker-Johns and Willem B. Drees. The conference will be on Star Island, a small island in the Atlantic, off the coast of Portsmouth, NH – a setting of great natural beauty. We invite proposals for short papers on the theme of the conference and on other aspects of the interactions of science and religion. Topics can be approached from various perspectives, such as science, philosophy, religious studies or theology, history, psychology or sociology. They may consider traditions such as Christianity, Islam or Buddhism; contemporary developments such as religious naturalism, spirituality, or the rise of nones; naturalism in relation to philosophical topics such as moral motivation and values, consciousness, mathematics, or scientific methodology; the history of any such developments; their usefulness in addressing individual needs or global and planetary concerns; and so on. We look forward as well to proposals for panels with up to four participants, addressing a particular issue from multiple angles. Proposals for short papers or panels are invited; deadline November 30, 2019; earlier submissions are evaluated on a rolling basis. See for more information and the submission form https://www.iras.org/2020-conference.html. For more information: Willem B. Drees, w.b.drees@tilburguniversity.edu