I am finally back from the annual meeting of the American Academy of Religion and the Society of Biblical Literature. This year's meeting was held at the Convention Center in Washington, D.C. and, fittingly, from start to finish there were speeches, papers, panels, and discussions of the role of religion in politics. There was literally no time for blogging.
The picture above is of Susan Thistlethwaite, President of Chicago Theological Seminary. She was one of the panelists at the Religion, Politics, and the State Group's Sunday Morning discussion on the theme "Progressive Politics and Religion: Has the Left "Gotten It"? Seated next to her is Amy Sullivan, editor of Washington Monthly, who presided over the discussion. Here's a link to Adelle M. Banks article for RNS about the conference.
Below is a picture of a different conference on "Theology, Critical Theory, and Radical Democracy" moderated by Corey Walker of Brown University that same day. From right to left in this picture are Victor Anderson of Vanderbilt Divinity School, Catherine Keller of Drew University, John Caputo of Syracuse University, Jim Wallis of Sojourners, and Obrey Hendricks, Jr. of New York Theological Seminary. Outside the picture, but also participating, was Graham Ward of the University of Manchester.
2 comments:
Thistlethwaite and Wallis are friends. Anderson is one of the brightest of current Baptist voices outside of the usual Baptist-owned institutions. Wish I could have gone.
Anderson's comments were indeed astute. He called for a political philosophy that makes maximization of the value of the least advantaged a priority.
I was also very impressed with Caputo. He asked what a political system would look like if the least were the first and concluded that it would be a politics of forgiveness, generosity, mercy and hospitality.
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