Tag Archives: secularism

Christian humanism seminar outline (follow-up to the “sketch”)

Posted on August 23, 2022 | Leave a comment

Michelangelo, “The Creation of Adam,” ca. 1511; wikimedia commons, public domain

This follows up from the more sprawling “sketch for a seminar on Christian humanism.” We seem to be getting close here:

  1. Prologue:  marks of the current crisis
  2. Classical origins:  virtues – character and education for citizenship:  What is human excellence?
  3. Patristic phase:  anthropology – Incarnation, soteriology (theosis):  How does God prepare us for full human flourishing?
  4. Medieval phase:  the sectors – education, sciences, arts, and healthcare:  How can reason and tradition help us foster flourishing in response to God?
  5. Early modern phase:  common good – vocation, the family, the polis, the markets, and secularization:  What values will guide our life together?
  6. 19th & early 20th century:  anti-humanisms – the fruits of secularization:  What are we without God? (the “abolition of man”)
  7. The post-WW II phase:  the humanities – literature, “great books,” beauty:  How can we reclaim our common humanity and train our imaginations & affections?
  8. Epilogue: lessons for the current crisis and a closing look at inter-traditional dialogue in a postsecular age

Now we have to ask (1) do these pieces work well together? (coherent whole? logical flow? right size?), (2) would this framing serve faculty seminar participants well? and (3) what readings would support each unit?

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Posted in Christian humanism, Christian humanism, work, & economics

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Christian foundations of science and technology innovation, part I

Posted on June 17, 2022 | 3 comments

Illustration from C Armstrong, “The Pursuit of Science for God and Neighbor,” Common Good magazine issue #3, pp. 48-53

For many years I’ve attended – and sometimes spoken at – the Acton Institute’s annual four-day June meeting, “Acton University.” The 2022 meeting will happen June 20-23 both in-person in Grand Rapids and online. I’ll be giving a talk there titled “Christian foundations of science & technology innovation: A story in ten facts.” Here it is:

I’d like to start our reflection together with a question about finding Christian vocation in this tremendously important sector of modern work: science and technology.

Christians today are often told that we must bridge the so-called “sacred-secular divide” by finding divine purpose and mission in our daily work. And that sounds good in theory. It certainly has good support in both Scripture and tradition—from the Apostle Paul to Gregory the Great to Martin Luther and beyond. But where it often runs aground is in our actual experience.

Because, truthfully, our modern work contexts, and even the nature of the work we do in those contexts, seems to many of us—for many reasons—about as secular as can be.

So here’s the vocation question: How can we discover Christian vocation in fields of work that Luther could not have even imagined—let alone the Apostle Paul? In particular, how can modern people of faith experience work in the scientific laboratory or the high-tech firm as Christian mission?

Continue reading →

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Posted in Christian humanism, Christian humanism, work, & economics, Medieval Wisdom for Modern Protestants, Work with purpose

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Can we find Christian vocation in the “secular” world of work?

Posted on November 15, 2017 | 1 comment

industryfactory

After a hiatus, I’m back. Sorry friends – it’s been a crazy life this past year or more. If anyone ever asks you to start an entrepreneurial initiative at a conservative religious college, maybe think a couple times before saying “yes” . . .

So, on the question above: “Can we find Christian vocation in the “secular” world of work?”

First I should say (but you know this already): It ain’t easy. It ain’t obvious. And for a lot of us, we’re just not sure it can ever really happen.

The other day I was at Upper House – a Christian study center on the campus of the University of Wisconsin–Madison – and I talked about this with a group of marketplace folks & pastors. Thought you might be interested to see the four stories I told to answer the question. [If these help you, or confuse you, or you think they’re bunk – unleash a comment or two. I’m always happy to engage.]

For those in a hurry, here’s the nutshell:

(1) This question is important to me personally

(2) There are (it seems to me) at least four questions lurking behind this question for many Christian folks

(3) Being a historian, I rooted around in the cellar of history and found four folks who I think can help us out with those questions

(4) Spoiler alert: Their names are Gregory, John, Charles, and . . . well . . . Clive.

OK, here goes, in five linked posts (my intro + the four guys & their answers):

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Posted in Work with purpose

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Galileo as secularist hero . . . and Catholic saint

Posted on July 23, 2010 | Leave a comment

A museum in Florence, Italy is now displaying two fingers and a tooth from Galileo Galilei as “secular relics.” The relics, disinterred in the 18th century and until recently lost from public view, resurfaced recently and are now on display at Florence’s Galileo Museum.

What’s odd about this (typical) spin on Galileo as a secularist hero is that he was a devout Catholic whose motives, early research, and behavior during the ecclesiastical trial all stemmed from his deep faith. For a thorough Christian-historical account of the “Galileo Affair,” check out this article by Virginia Stem Owens. Here’s a taste:

Say the name Galileo, and most people picture the astronomer standing before scowling Inquisition judges, forced to recant his claim that the earth revolves about the sun.

To secular scholars, Galileo Galilei (1564-1642) was a martyr to religious bigotry, demonstrating how pious superstition can shackle human knowledge. To Protestant historians, Galileo’s fate is a sharp contrast to the freedom other Enlightenment luminaries, like Robert Boyle, Isaac Newton, and Johannes Kepler, enjoyed in Reformation regions.

But there’s more to Galileo’s story. Continue reading →

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Posted in Resources for Radical Living

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The Christian integralism of Dorothy Sayers: Precursor to radical orthodoxy?

Posted on July 10, 2010 | 5 comments

It occurs to me as I look over the previous post of notes from Lee W. Gibbs, The Middle Way: Voices of Anglicanism (Cincinnati, OH: Forward Movement Publications, 1991) that Sayers sounds like a precursor of today’s “radical orthodoxy” movement. This is so both in her insistence that theology be resurrected as “queen of the sciences” and in her ressourcement from the Middle Ages. Here’s the bit that triggered the thought:

“Sayers is not so much anti-science or anti-technology as she is a Christian integralist who perceives that science and technology have become over-emphasized and predominant in the modern world, too often at the expense of theology and philosophy as equally valid and necessary paths to truth and knowledge. What she calls [109] for is a return to the more proper balance achieved during the Christian Middle Ages, where philosophy was seen to be a subdivision of theology, and science a subdivision of philosophy.” (108 – 9)

And here’s the wikipedia bit on radical orthodoxy. Note especially the “Main Ideas” and “Influences” listed here: Continue reading →

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Posted in Medieval Wisdom for Modern Protestants

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Berea College and UVa: Two vastly different centers of theological excellence

Posted on March 17, 2010 | 1 comment

Radical egalitarian hotbed Berea College. Brilliant theological think-tank UVa (University of Virginia).

Berea was founded in slave Kentucky in 1855 as an integrated school committed to the equality of all in God’s sight. It has survived to today with its vision intact, while the institution it modeled itself on, Oberlin College, now has no idea who Charles Finney was or how Christianity suffused its own founding (I know; I attended Oberlin for two years in the mid-1980s).

UVa was founded by the Deist Thomas Jefferson as a secular institution, with a desire to become a place of open dialogue, rather than a school under the thumb of a Christian denomination. For that very reason, perhaps, the doors of its religious studies department opened to some of the best and brightest Christian thinkers in the country, alongside scholars of other religions, and this secular school is now a regular Christian theological think-tank.

OK, I’ll admit it: I did not come up with the bright idea of digging into the history of these two schools and writing a stellar article about them. But Jason Byassee did. Here’s what Jason discovered about the history and present power of these two very different but equally kingdom-serving institutions.

Thanks, Jason, for another superlative article.

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