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Baylor BU Institute for Faith and Learning Conferences and Symposiums Baylor Symposium on Faith and Culture 2009 Secularization and Revival
  • Baylor Symposium on Faith and Culture
    • 2026 Technology and the Human Person in the Age of AI
    • 2024 Renewing and Reimagining Institutions for the Common Good
    • 2023 Called Together in an Age of Discord
    • 2022 Art Seeking Understanding
    • 2021 Living Accountably
    • 2019 The Character of the University
    • 2018 Stewardship of Creation
    • 2017 The Bible and the Reformation
    • 2016 Higher Learning
    • 2015 The Spirit of Sports
    • 2014 Faith and Film
    • 2013 Kierkegaard: A Christian Thinker for Our Time?
    • 2012 Technology and Human Flourishing
    • 2011 Educating for Wisdom in the 21st Century University
    • 2010 Human Dignity and the Future of Health Care
    • 2009 Secularization and Revival
      • Video Archive
    • 2008 Bottom-Up Approaches to Global Poverty
    • 2007 Friendship
  • Bill and Roberta Bailey Family Lecture in Christian Ethics
  • Other Conferences and Events
  • Baylor Symposium on Nicaea: Creed, Culture, and Christendom

2009 Secularization and Revival

2009 BSFC

Baylor Symposium on Faith and Culture
Thursday, October 8-Saturday, October 10, 2009

Go to:

  • Program Description
  • Featured Speakers
  • Schedule


Program Description

The question of faith's place in modern intellectual life never has seemed more pressing in academia or popular culture. While specialists have abandoned simplistic versions of the "secularization thesis," which predicted that religion would crumble inexorably under the weight of advancing science and reason, best-selling atheistic critics still lament religion's influence, deny its philosophical viability, and predict its ultimate demise. Meanwhile, scholars have demonstrated the surging strength of both Christianity and Islam in non-western parts of the world, and the persistent religiosity in the United States. Accordingly, this symposium will consider religion's place in modern thought and culture from the eighteenth to the twenty-first century.



Featured Speakers

David Bebbington

David Bebbington is professor of history at University of Stirling and distinguished visiting professor of history at Baylor University. His research interests are in the history of politics, religion, ideas, and society in Britain from the eighteenth to the twentieth century, and in the history of the global Evangelical movement. He is the author of more than a dozen books, including Evangelicalism in Modern Britain: A History from the 1730s to the 1980s (1989); and, more recently, The Dominance of Evangelicalism: The Age of Spurgeon and Moody (2005). He is a fellow of the Royal Historical Society.

José Casanova

José Casanova is senior fellow of the Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs and professor of sociology at Georgetown University. He has published works in a broad range of subjects, including religion and globalization, migration and religious pluralism, transnational religions, and sociological theory. His acclaimed work, Public Religions in the Modern World (1994), has been translated into five languages, including Arabic and Indonesian. Prior to his arrival at Georgetown, he taught at the New School for Social Research from 1987 to 2007.

William Cavanaugh

William Cavanaugh is professor of theology at the University of St. Thomas (Minnesota). With interests in political theology, social ethics, and ecclesiology, he is the author of four books and numerous articles. His first book, Torture and Eucharist: Theology, Politics, and the Body of Christ (1998), was nominated for the Award for Excellence in the Study of Religion by the American Academy of Religion. His most recent work is The Myth of Religious Violence: Secular Ideology and the Roots of Modern Conflict (2009).

Jean Bethke Elshtain

Jean Bethke Elshtain is the Laura Spelman Rockefeller Professor of Social and Political Ethics in the Divinity School at the University of Chicago. She has served on the board of trustees at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton University, held the Maguire Chair in Ethics at the Library of Congress, and is currently a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, chair of the Council on Civil Society, and serves on the boards of the National Humanities Center and the National Endowment for Democracy. Her books include Augustine and the Limits of Politics (1996), Just War against Terror: The Burden of American Power in a Violent World (2003), and Sovereignty: God, State, and Self (2008), the 2006 Gifford Lectures.

Paul Fiddes

Paul Fiddes is professor of systematic theology at the University of Oxford and principal emeritus and director of research and professorial research fellow at Regent's Park College. An ordained Baptist minister, he is recognized as one of the leading scholars of theology and literature writing today. His books include The Creative Suffering of God (1988) and The Promised End: Eschatology in Theology and Literature, Challenges in Contemporary Theology (2000). In addition to his scholarly work, he is active in ecumenical dialogue between Baptist and Anglicans, currently serving as the Ecumenical Representative on the Synod of the Church of England.

Barry Harvey

Barry Harvey is professor of theology in the Honors College at Baylor University, where he has taught since 1988. With interests in liturgical theology, systematic and philosophical theology, theological ethics, contemporary philosophy and social theory, he is the author of Another City: An Ecclesiological Primer for a Post-Christian World (1999) and Can These Bones Live?: A Catholic Baptist Engagement with Ecclesiology, Hermeneutics, and Social Theory (2008).

Philip Jenkins

Philip Jenkins is the Edwin Erle Sparks Professor of Humanities at Pennsylvania State University and Distinguished Senior Fellow at Baylor University's Institute for Studies of Religion, where he co-directs the Initiative on Historical Studies of Religion. A prolific scholar, he is the author of some 120 book chapters and scholarly articles and twenty-two books, including, The Next Christendom: The Rise of Global Christianity (2002), Decade of Nightmares: The End of the 1960s and the Making of Eighties America (2006), God's Continent: Christianity, Islam and Europe's Religious Crisis (2007), and The Lost History of Christianity (2008).

Susan Juster

Susan Juster is associate dean for social sciences in the College of Literature, Science and the Arts and professor of history at the University of Michigan. A specialist in early American history and in women, religion, and evangelical culture in Britain and America, she is the author of Disorderly Women: Sexual Politics and Evangelicalism in Revolutionary New England (1994), A Mighty Baptism: Race, Gender and the Creation of American Protestantism (1996), and Doomsayers: Anglo-American Prophecy in the Age of Revolution (2003).

George Marsden

George Marsden is the Francis A. McAnaney Professor of History Emeritus at the University of Notre Dame, where he taught from 1992 until his retirement in 2008. His research interests have centered on the history of the interaction between Christianity and American culture, American evangelicalism, and the role of Christianity in Christian higher education. His books include Fundamentalism and American Culture: The Shaping of Twentieth-Century Evangelicalism, 1870-1925 (1980), The Soul of the American University: From Protestant Establishment to Established Nonbelief (1994), and Jonathan Edwards: A Life (2003).

C. John Sommerville

C. John Sommerville is professor emeritus of English history at the University of Florida. He is the author of numerous books, including The Secularization of Early Modern England: From Religious Culture to Religious Faith (1992), The Decline of the Secular University (2006), and most recently, Religion in the National Agenda: What We Mean by Religious, Spiritual, Secular (2009). He also been a member of the Institute of Advanced Study at Princeton University and senior fellow at Harvard University's Center for the Study of World Religions.

Rodney Stark

Rodney Stark is co-director of the Institute for Studies of Religion and Distinguished Professor of the Social Sciences at Baylor University. He is the founding editor of the Interdisciplinary Journal of Research on Religion and has served as president of the Association for the Sociology of Religion and the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion. A prolific scholar, three of his books have been honored with Distinguished Book Awards from the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion and the American Sociological Association. In 1996 his work The Rise of Christianity was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. Most recently he has published Discovering God: The Origins of the Great Religions and the Evolution of Belief (2008) and God's Battalions: The Case for the Crusades (2009).

Frank Turner

Frank Turner is the director of the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library and John Hay Whitney Professor of History at Yale University. A specialist in British and European intellectual history, he has written and edited a dozen books. His acclaimed book John Henry Newman: The Challenge to Evangelical Religion (2002) was long-listed for the British Academy Book Prize in 2003. Turner served as Yale University's provost from 1988-1992.



Schedule

Thursday, October 8

1:00-2:00 PM

Registration/Check-in (Second Floor Foyer, Bill Daniel Student Center)

2:00-3:30 PM

Colloquium Sessions

Religion in 19th-Century America (Beckham Room, Second Floor, Bill Daniel Student Center)

  • "'This Accursed War is Doing Religion and the Church Serious Injury': Northern Christians Complain of Perceived Spiritual Decline during the Civil War" -- Sean Scott, Ouachita Baptist University
  • "Recovering the Religious Dimensions of Revivalism through 19th-Century Female Memories" -- Rachel Cope, Syracuse University
  • "American Home Missions, Revivals and 19th-Century Evangelicalism" -- Gary Pranger, Oral Roberts University
  • Chair -- Bill Pitts, Baylor University

Religion and the Public Intellectual: Chesterton and Adams (Baines Room, Second Floor, Bill Daniel Student Center)

  • "Challenging Modernist Ideals: G. K. Chesterton as Christian Public Intellectual" -- Marc Baer, Hope College
  • "The Education of Henry Adams as a Study in Secularization of the Academy" -- Susan Hanssen, University of Dallas
  • "Henry Adams: Lost in the Cosmos?" -- Thomas Jodziewicz, University of Dallas
  • Chair -- Julia Dyson Hejduk, Baylor University

Faith and Science (Cowden Room, Third Floor, Bill Daniel Student Center)

  • "Science at the Cutting Edge: Implications of a Multiverse" -- Gerald Cleaver, Baylor University
  • "Darwinism and Deification: A Theological Vantage Point for Considering Human Evolution" -- David A. Tait, Rogers State University
  • Chair -- Todd Buras, Baylor University

The Rationalist Critics of Enlightenment (Claypool Room, Third Floor, Bill Daniel Student Center)

  • "Joseph Ratzinger on Faith, Reason, and Speech" -- Stephen Block, Baylor University
  • "God, Truth, and Neighbor: Cardinal Ratzinger's Recovery of Classical Thought" -- Patrick Cain, Baylor University
  • "Strauss and Grant on Secular Notions of Justice" -- Mary Mathie, Baylor University
  • Chair -- Elizabeth Amato, Baylor University

Peacemaking and Secularization (Lipscomb Room, Third Floor, Bill Daniel Student Center)

  • "Giving the World Its True Self: Bonhoeffer, Christological Union, and Just Peacemaking's Misguided Secularity" -- Myles Werntz, Baylor University
  • "The Messianic Community Encounters the Science of Conflict: John Howard Yoder in Poland" -- Matt Porter, Baylor University
  • Response -- Paul Martens, Baylor University
  • Chair -- Rady Roldan-Figueroa, Baylor University

International Examinations of the State, Society, and Faith (Houston Room, Third Floor, Bill Daniel Student Center)

  • "All the Lonely Churches: The Spillover Effects of State Religion" -- Charles North, Baylor University
  • "Religion in India: Social Sources and Contexts of Religiosity in a Modernizing Society" -- Samuel Stroope, Baylor University
  • "Against All Odds: The Survival of Armenian Christians" -- Dyron Daughrity, Pepperdine University
  • Chair -- Jerry Park, Baylor University

3:30-4:00 PM

Break

4:00-5:30 PM

Colloquium Sessions

Christian Practices of Community and Citizenship (Baines Room, Second Floor, Bill Daniel Student Center)

  • "The New Benedictines: Monastic Practices in the 21st Century" -- Sr. Edith Bogue, College of St. Scholastica
  • "Liturgical Participation: John Howard Yoder and Charles Mathewes on a Christian Ethic of Contemporary Citizenship" -- Rick Elgendy, University of Chicago
  • "Reclaiming 'Koinonia': Why Christians Should Be Selfish about Community" -- David Wilmington, Baylor University
  • Chair -- Beth Barr, Baylor University

New Approaches to the Secularization Hypothesis in Literary Studies (Beckham Room, Second Floor, Bill Daniel Student Center)

  • "Typology and the Replacement Narrative in E. M. Forster's A Room with a View" -- Lynne Hinojosa, Baylor University
  • "Coleridge and the Literary Communion of Saints: Romanticism, Secularization, and the Practice of Criticism" -- Josh King, Baylor University
  • "Victorian Parables: 19th-Century Literary Engagements with Religion and Secularity" -- Susan Colón, Baylor University
  • Chair -- Daniel McInerny, Baylor University

Rethinking the Boundary between "Religion" and "Secular" in Social Movements (Cowden Room, Third Floor, Bill Daniel Student Center)

  • "The Boundaries of 'Politics' in Evangelical Congregations: The Role of Church-Based Opinion Leaders in Political Engagement" -- Lydia Bean, Baylor University
  • "Let My People Go: Salvation Schemas among Evangelical Abolitionists, 1830 and 2010" -- Austin Choi-Fitzpatrick, University of Notre Dame
  • "An Exploration of the Social-Psychological Background of Evangelical Counterpublics" -- Michael Young, University of Texas at Austin
  • "The Discourse of Resacralization: Volunteers at the Rimini Meeting" -- Brandon Vaidyanathan, University of Notre Dame
  • Discussant -- Tricia Bruce, Maryville College

American Politics, Religion, and Secularization (Gregory Room, Second Floor, Bill Daniel Student Center)

  • "Democracy and Religion" -- Fred L. Johnson, Hope College
  • "The Evangelical Roots of the American Political System: The Assaults of Post-Modernity and Its Classism on Both" -- Mark Ellingsen, Interdenominational Theological Center
  • "Secularism in America" -- Taryn Whittington, Baylor University
  • Chair -- Charles McDaniel, Baylor University

Religion and Civil Society in Russia (Claypool Room, Third Floor, Bill Daniel Student Center)

  • "Orthodoxy and Citizenship in Russia" -- Stephen Hoffmann, Taylor University
  • "Faith-Based Universities and Civil Society in Contemporary Russia" -- Konstantin Petrenko and Perry Glanzer, Baylor University
  • Chair -- Daniel Payne, Baylor University

Religion in Revolutionary America (Houston Room, Third Floor, Bill Daniel Student Center)

  • "George Washington, the American Enlightenment, and Religious Liberty" -- Jeffry Morrison, Regent University
  • "God of the Prophets at the Birth of the Nation: Prophetic Civil Religion in Revolutionary-Era America" -- David Cochran, Oklahoma Wesleyan University
  • "Refuge from the Likes of Jefferson: Building Mighty Fortresses to God in a North Carolina German Neighborhood, 1789-1798" -- Gary Freeze, Catawba College
  • Chair -- Lori Baker, Baylor University

The Fate of Religion in Modern Philosophy (Lipscomb Room, Third Floor, Bill Daniel Student Center)

  • "Spinoza and the Case of Korach" -- Maria Rafalson, Baylor University
  • "Apostates of Atheism: Nietzsche's Charge to Atheists to Abandon Their Faith" -- David Horkott, Palm Beach Atlantic University
  • "Religion and the Ethics of Resistance: A Correlation between David Tracy and Jacques Derrida" -- Nathan Crawford, Loyola University of Chicago
  • Chair -- Greg Garrett, Baylor University

5:30-7:30 PM

Break

7:30-9:00 PM

Plenary Session (Barfield Drawing Room, Second Floor, Bill Daniel Student Center)

  • Welcoming Remarks -- Darin Davis, Baylor University
  • Provost's Welcome -- Elizabeth Davis, Baylor University
  • "Intellectual Christianity in Victorian Weardale" -- David Bebbington, University of Stirling/Baylor University
  • Chair -- Thomas Kidd, Baylor University

9:00 PM

Reception (Barfield Drawing Room, Second Floor, Bill Daniel Student Center)

Friday, October 9

8:30-10:00 AM

Colloquium Sessions

Book Discussion: Crisis of Doubt: Honest Faith in Nineteenth-Century England by Timothy Larsen (Gregory Room, Second Floor, Bill Daniel Student Center)

  • Author's Remarks -- Timothy Larsen, Wheaton College
  • Response -- Keith A. Francis, Baylor University
  • Chair -- Barry Hankins, Baylor University

Reflections on Christian Higher Education I (Baines Room, Second Floor, Bill Daniel Student Center)

  • "The Faun beneath the Lampost: What Christian Scholars Often Mean When They Talk about the Enlightenment" -- Michael Kugler, Northwestern College
  • "Christocentric versus Theocentric Theological Methods in the Secular Age: The Significance of Karl Barth for Contemporary Evangelical Higher Education" -- Aaron Smith, Colorado Christian University
  • "Educating for the Real? Slavoj Zizek's Challenge to the Contemporary College" -- Michael Van Dyke, Cornerstone University
  • Chair -- Doug Weaver, Baylor University

Christians, Modernity, and Pluralism (Cowden Room, Third Floor, Bill Daniel Student Center)

  • "Modernity, the Heart, and Getting the Ideas Right: Modernity as More than Simply Getting Things Wrong" - Brad Green, Union University
  • "Worldviews and Biblical Interpretation: Options for Understanding the Character and Authority of the Bible in a Pluralistic Religious Environment" -- Wayne Brouwer, Hope College
  • "Religionswissenschaft and Ernst Troeltsch's Theory of Christianity" -- Echol Nix, Jr., Furman University
  • Chair -- Susan Bratton, Baylor University

Ecumenism and Reform (Claypool Room, Third Floor, Bill Daniel Student Center)

  • "Nineteenth-Century Europe and the Proto-Ecumenical: The Case of the Bonn Reunion Conferences of 1874 and 1875" -- Thomas Albert Howard, Gordon College
  • "The Reformation of the Church and the Modernization of Society: Abraham Kuyper's Reform of the Dutch Church" -- John Wood, Jr., Saint Louis University
  • Chair -- William Bellinger, Baylor University

Modernity and Its Critics (Fentress Room, Second Floor, Bill Daniel Student Center)

  • "Enlightenment and the Religious Turn" -- Grant Kaplan, Saint Louis University
  • "The Cognitive Value of Faith-Claims: Breaking Secularism's Stronghold on Objectivity" -- Paul Macdonald, Jr., Bucknell University
  • "Nearly 95 Theses: Qualifying Competing Supernatural Legal Systems against a Common Standard" -- Thomas C. Folsom, Regent University
  • Chair -- John Spano, Baylor University

Sociological Studies on Religious Belief (Lipscomb Room, Third Floor, Bill Daniel Student Center)

  • "Attitudes toward Science and Irreligion in the United States" -- Joseph O. Baker, Baylor University
  • "Corporal Punishment and Secularity: Parenting Disciplinary Style as a Predictor of Religious Belief and Non-belief" -- Shanna Granstra, Baylor University
  • "Theodicy and the Gods: The Role of God Concepts in Life Purpose" -- Samuel Stroope, Scott Draper, and Andrew Whitehead, Baylor University
  • Chair -- Kevin Dougherty, Baylor University

Theological Responses to the New Atheism (Beckham Room, Second Floor, Bill Daniel Student Center)

  • "How to Dismantle an Atom Bomb: Historicizing the New Atheism" -- Dominic Erdozain, King's College London
  • "Karl Barth and the Question of Atheism" -- Kimlyn Bender, University of Sioux Falls
  • "Suffering (and) the Consolations of the New Atheism: A Case for Kierkegaard" -- Scott Geis, Christian Brothers University
  • Chair -- Gayle Avant, Baylor University

The Sacred and Secular in Contemporary Film (Houston Room, Third Floor, Bill Daniel Student Center)

  • "A Cloud of Unknowing: Sacred and Secular in 21st-Century 'Apocalyptic' Popular Films" -- Brian Clayton, Gonzaga University
  • "Revisioning: Film and the Violent Future Past" -- Darrell Gwaltney, Belmont University
  • "Christian Faith and Contemporary Film in Dialogue with a Postmodern World" -- Carrie Marjorie Peirce, Azusa Pacific University
  • Chair -- David Echelbarger, Baylor University

10:00-10:30 AM

Break

10:30 AM-12:00 PM

Featured Speakers Colloquium Sessions

Session 1 (Barfield Drawing Room, Second Floor, Bill Daniel Student Center)

  • "European and American Exceptionalisms Reconsidered: Confession vs. Denomination" -- José Casanova, Georgetown University
  • Chair -- Byron Johnson, Baylor University

Session 2 (Baines Room, Second Floor, Bill Daniel Student Center)

  • "Not Anarchy but Covenant: A Response to Matthew Arnold's View of the Cultural Philistinism of Nonconformist Christianity" -- Paul Fiddes, University of Oxford
  • Chair -- Mikeal Parsons, Baylor University

12:00-1:30 PM

Lunch (Banquet Room, Fifth Floor, Cashion Building)

1:30-3:00 PM

Colloquium Sessions

What Is an Oprah? Celebrity and Spiritual Capitalism in Modern America (Gregory Room, Second Floor, Bill Daniel Student Center)

  • Kathryn Lofton, Yale University
  • Response -- Ralph Wood, Baylor University
  • Chair -- Gardner Campbell, Baylor University

Reflections on Christian Higher Education II (Baines Room, Second Floor, Bill Daniel Student Center)

  • "Christian Higher Education and Embedded Secularism: Is Education a 'Who' or a 'What' Question?" -- Steve Wilkens, Azusa Pacific University
  • "Civic Engagement, Deepened Faith: Social Gospel Theology as an Approach to Church-Related Higher Education" -- Ashley Cleere, Piedmont College
  • "Rethinking Secularization Narratives and Theory: The Case of Christian Higher Education in Eastern Europe" -- Perry Glanzer, Baylor University
  • Chair -- Michael Beaty, Baylor University

Literary Reflections on Faith, Reason, and History I (Beckham Room, Second Floor, Bill Daniel Student Center)

  • "'Legend and History Have Met and Fused': J. R. R. Tolkien, Christopher Dawson, Owen Barfield, and the Problem of History" -- Philip Mitchell, Dallas Baptist University
  • "Founded on Fact: Faith and Reason against Modernity in the Hagiographies of Evelyn Waugh" -- Marcel DeCoste, University of Regina
  • "Walter M. Miller, Walker Percy, Carl Sagan, and Scientism" -- Larry Fink, Hardin-Simmons University
  • Chair -- Donna Walker-Nixon, Baylor University

Contemporary Challenges to Religion (Cowden Room, Third Floor, Bill Daniel Student Center)

  • "Beyond Belief: Religion and Pluralism since 9/11" -- Mark Eaton, Azusa Pacific University
  • "'A pass'd mode, an outworn theme': Miracles, Science, and the 'New Atheism'" -- Francis Caponi, Villanova University
  • "The Christian Voice as 'Other': Its Loss, Recovery, and Future Challenges" -- Dennis Feltwell, Duquesne University
  • Chair -- Bruce Longenecker, Baylor University

British Evangelicals (Claypool Room, Third Floor, Bill Daniel Student Center)

  • "The 19th-Century English Baptists, Religious Equality, and the Limits to Secularization" -- Jerry L. Summers, East Texas Baptist University
  • "Revival and Its Impact on the Life of the Scottish Church: 1900-1935" -- Kenneth Roxburgh, Samford University
  • "Revival and Marginalization: The Paradox of English Evangelicalism, 1940-2000" -- Alister Chapman, Westmont College
  • Chair -- Jerold Waltman, Baylor University

Kierkegaard: Faith, Ethics, and the Self (Houston Room, Third Floor, Bill Daniel Student Center)

  • "Kant and Kierkegaard: The Edge of the Precipice and the 'Leap' Beyond" -- John Westbrook, Marquette University
  • "'The Ethics of Sorrow': The Loss and Recovery of Ethics in Ascetic Spirituality and Kierkegaard" -- Brandon Pierce, Abilene Christian University
  • "Selfhood in Hölderlin and Kierkegaard" -- Amy Lapisardi, Marquette University
  • "Suffering and Enchantment: Placing Kierkegaard in Charles Taylor's A Secular Age" -- George Connell, Concordia College
  • Chair -- Paul Martens, Baylor University

Mainline Protestants and American Culture (Fentress Room, Second Floor, Bill Daniel Student Center)

  • "Where Have All the Protestant Voices Gone?" -- Dale Soden, Whitworth University
  • "Religious Pluralism and Secularization in Contemporary America: Evangelicalism as Seen through the Eyes of Christianity Today" -- William Vance Trollinger, Jr., University of Dayton
  • Chair -- Bracy Hill, Baylor University

Modernity and the Music of the Church (Lipscomb Room, Third Floor, Bill Daniel Student Center)

  • "Singing a New Song? The Surprise of Evangelical Hymnody and the Question of Church Union in Canada, 1925" -- David McFarland, McMaster University
  • "There Is Power in the Song: Romanticism, Revivalism, and Worship Music" -- Tammy Van Dyken, Seattle Pacific University
  • Chair -- Amanda Beck, Baylor University

3:00-3:30 PM

Break

3:30-5:00 PM

Plenary Session (Barfield Drawing Room, Second Floor, Bill Daniel Student Center)

  • "A Little Leaven: From Mass Church to Creative Minority in Contemporary Europe" -- Philip Jenkins, Pennsylvania State University/Baylor University
  • Chair -- David Bebbington, Baylor University

5:00-6:00 PM

Break

6:00-7:30 PM

Dinner (Banquet Room, Fifth Floor, Cashion Building)

7:30-9:00 PM

Plenary Session (Banquet Room, Fifth Floor, Cashion Building)

  • "Genetic Fundamentalism and the Myth of the Sovereign Self" -- Jean Bethke Elshtain, University of Chicago Divinity School
  • Chair -- David Lyle Jeffrey, Baylor University

Saturday, October 10

8:30-10:00 AM

Colloquium Sessions

Secularization and Revival from the 18th Century to the Present (Cowden Room, Third Floor, Bill Daniel Student Center)

  • "The Relevance of Religion in an Age of Reason: Answering Thomas Paine's Critique of Religion" -- Scott Culpepper, Louisiana College
  • "New Perspectives on Resacralization, Secularization, and Global Enlightenment: Contours of Theological Enlightenment in Pre-Revolutionary France, 1750-1789" -- Jeffrey Burson, Macon State College
  • Chair -- Craig Clarkson, Baylor University

Literary Reflections on Faith, Reason, and History II (Claypool Room, Third Floor, Bill Daniel Student Center)

  • "Religion and Principle in Jane Austen's Mansfield Park" -- Ruth Daly, University of Dallas
  • "'A Lot Up for Grabs': The Idiosyncratic, Syncretic Religious Temperament of Kate Chopin" -- David Wehner, Mount St. Mary's University
  • "Contesting the Secular: Sympathy and the Gender Debate in Victorian England" -- Emily Griesinger, Azusa Pacific University
  • "Living without God in the World of Vanity Fair: Thackeray's Satirical Vision and the Possibility of Hope" -- Mignon Thurow, University of Dallas
  • Chair -- Mary Ziehe, Baylor University

Urban Catholicism (Fentress Room, Second Floor, Bill Daniel Student Center)

  • "The Parish, Neighborhood Change, and 'Localized Aggiornamento': The Pre- and Post-Conciliar Lives of Holy Rosary Catholic Church" -- Dominic Faraone, Marquette University
  • "Riding with St. Paul in the Passenger Side and the Creation of Consumer Sites: The Archdiocese of Milwaukee Enters the Automobile Age, 1920-1965" -- Peter Cajka, Marquette University
  • Chair -- Matt Moser, Baylor University

Religion and Recent American Public Life (Beckham Room, Second Floor, Bill Daniel Student Center)

  • "Mormonism and the Paranoid Style" -- Steven Harper, Brigham Young University
  • "Religion in Public Life: The 'Pfefferian Inversion' Reconsidered" -- David Holcomb, University of Mary Hardin-Baylor
  • "'Life' Changes: Richard Nixon, Catholics, and Abortion" -- Lawrence McAndrews, St. Norbert College
  • Chair -- Matthew Porter, Baylor University

The Religious, the Secular, and Dialogue (Baines Room, Second Floor, Bill Daniel Student Center)

  • "A Holy Alliance: the Catholic-Orthodox Partnership against Secularism" -- Jennifer M. Kent and Daniel Payne, Baylor University
  • "What Has a Fundamentalist to Do with Liberal Education?" -- Mason Marshall, Pepperdine University
  • Chair -- Ken Jones, Baylor University

Considering Modernity through Pre-modern Sources (Lipscomb Room, Third Floor, Bill Daniel Student Center)

  • "Recalling the Plato We Never Knew: Rethinking Modern Christian Anti-Platonism by Reading (with) Gregory of Nyssa" -- Aron Reppmann, Trinity Christian College
  • "'Standing at the Very Edge of the Infinite': Aristotle and Václav Havel on Natural Beauty and Spiritual Epiphany" -- Ian Corbin, Boston College
  • "Man, Creature, or Creator: The Humanism of Catherine of Siena vs. Ludvig Feuerbach" -- Sr. Catherine Joseph Droste, OP, Aquinas College
  • Chair -- Timothy Heckenlively, Baylor University

Sacred and Secular Places and Practices (Houston Room, Third Floor, Bill Daniel Student Center)

  • "Common Beauty on the Town Square: The Loss of Judgment to Inner Convictions and Back Again" -- Christopher Miller, Judson University
  • "Secular Spaces, Sacred Memories: American Museums and Memorials as Sites of Public Reverence" -- Jay Green, Covenant College
  • "Graveyard Shifts: Secularization and Death Practices in 19th-Century Louisville, Kentucky" -- Jeffrey Bain-Conkin, University of Notre Dame
  • Chair -- Andrew Wisely, Baylor University

10:00-10:30 AM

Break

10:30 AM-12:00 PM

Plenary Session (Barfield Drawing Room, Second Floor, Bill Daniel Student Center)

  • "The Search for New Church Clothes" -- Frank Turner, Yale University
  • Chair -- Jeffrey Hamilton, Baylor University

12:00-1:30 PM

Lunch (Banquet Room, Fifth Floor, Cashion Building)

1:30-3:00 PM

Colloquium Sessions

Religion, Secularization, and the Aims of Higher Education (Cowden Room, Third Floor, Bill Daniel Student Center)

  • "Secularization, Educational Purpose, and Religion in the College Curriculum, 1850-1930" -- Katherine Sedgwick, University of Pennsylvania
  • "Men and Women Moving Religion Forward: Student Religious Groups at Men's, Women's, and Coeducational Colleges and Universities, 1870-1917" -- Andrea Turpin, University of Notre Dame
  • "Learning, Doing, and Believing: Understanding Secularization in American Higher Education through Student Reflections at Brown University, Cornell University, and the University of Michigan between 1880 and 1920" -- Jeffrey Bouman, Calvin College
  • Chair -- Lydia Bean, Baylor University

Revivalism in the 18th Century (Claypool Room, Third Floor, Bill Daniel Student Center)

  • "Converted at Cambuslang: 'Experimental Religion' in Scotland's Age of Reason" -- Keith Beebe, Whitworth University
  • "Andrew Croswell and the Anatomy of American Antinomianism in the Wake of the First Great Awakening" -- Robert Caldwell, Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary
  • "Enlightenment and Religion in the Thought of John Erskine" -- Jonathan Yeager, Indiana Wesleyan University/Taylor University
  • Chair -- Alex Beaujean, Baylor University

The Religious and the Secular in Politics (Houston Room, Third Floor, Bill Daniel Student Center)

  • "Reviving Subsidiarity: Politics in a Secular Age" -- Lewis McCrary, Georgetown University
  • "Political Involvement and Religious Corruption" -- Jeremy Neill, University of Notre Dame
  • "Natural Law and Political Liberalism" -- Daniel Young, Northwestern College
  • Chair -- Simon Burris, Baylor University

African American Spirituality (Baines Room, Second Floor, Bill Daniel Student Center)

  • "Socialist Saints and Communist Christians: W. E. B. Du Bois, Religion, and the Cold War" -- Phillip Sinitiere, Sam Houston State University
  • "Stepping Out on Faith: Representing Spirituality in African-American Literature from the Late Harlem Renaissance to the Civil Rights Movement" -- Anton Smith, University of Southern California
  • Chair -- Hakeem Tijani, Baylor University

Religion and 19th-Century Intellectual History (Lipscomb Room, Third Floor, Bill Daniel Student Center)

  • "Deconstructing 'Mammon': The Farmer-Labor Alliance's Challenge on the American Church, 1886-1909" -- Janine Giordano, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
  • "The Ladies with the Lamps: Protestant Female Religious Communities and the Birth of the Modern Nursing Profession in Sweden" -- Todd Green, Luther College
  • "An Account of the San Francisco Seaman's Bethel: The California Gold Rush and the Transformation of William Taylor's Mission" -- Robert F. Lay, Taylor University
  • Chair -- Susan Colón, Baylor University

Dostoevsky and Modernity (Gregory Room, Second Floor, Bill Daniel Student Center)

  • "Dostoevsky, Solzhenitsyn, and the Church without Christ" -- Jessica Hooten, University of Mary Hardin Baylor
  • "The Romantic Eye as the Root of Revival in Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov" -- Aaron Thurow, University of Dallas
  • Chair -- Michael R. Stevens, Cornerstone University

3:00-3:30 PM

Break

Book Signing and Reception Sponsored by Baylor University Press: C. John Sommerville, Religion in the National Agenda: What We Mean by Religious, Spiritual, Secular (White Room, Second Floor, Bill Daniel Student Center)

3:30-5:00 PM

Featured Speakers Colloquium Sessions

Session 1 (Houston Room, Third Floor, Bill Daniel Student Center)

  • "Re-Envisioning Mr. Williams's Wall of Separation, or One and a Half Cheers for Secularization." -- Barry Harvey, Baylor University
  • "Violence and the Religious/Secular Distinction" -- William Cavanaugh, University of St. Thomas (Minnesota)
  • Chair -- Jason Whitt, Baylor University

Session 2 (Cowden Room, Third Floor, Bill Daniel Student Center)

  • "The Blood of Saints: Violence and Revival in Early America" -- Susan Juster, University of Michigan
  • Chair -- Lydia Bean, Baylor University

Session 3 (Beckham Room, Second Floor, Bill Daniel Student Center)

  • "The Seven Reactions to Secularization, and Hopes for Revival" -- C. John Sommerville, University of Florida
  • Chair -- Carey Newman, Baylor University

5:00-5:15 PM

Break

5:15-6:00 PM

Vespers (Foyer of Meditation, Armstrong Browning Library)

6:00-7:30 PM

Dinner (Banquet Room, Fifth Floor, Cashion Building)

7:30-9:00 PM

Plenary Session (Banquet Room, Fifth Floor, Cashion Building)

  • "The Protestant Ethos and the Spirit of Secular America: The Rise of Worldview Naturalism in the Universities as a Case Study" -- George Marsden, University of Notre Dame
  • Chair -- Thomas Kidd, Baylor University

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