Talk Talk and More Talk

In honor of Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize I will be listening to some people talk a lot about ideas and not necessarily do anything. Don’t get me wrong. Talk is important. Ideas are important. When the other nominees included Chinese dissidents, an Afghan human rights activist and Morgan Tsvangirai, the Zimbabwean opposition leader, who all have much more hands-on experience making peace through struggle and conflict, it seems odd for such a young president with great ideas and oratory skills to be named. Anyway…

I will be attending a lot of lectures over the next week. None of them are directly related to food production or issues, but if they are interesting enough I will certainly find a way to make them relevant to this blog.

Secularization and Revival: The Fate of Religion in Modern Intellectual History is the topic for the Third Annual Baylor Symposium on Faith and Culture. This afternoon I will be hearing Philip Jenkins speak. His lecture is titled “A Little Leaven: From Mass Church to Creative Minority in Contemporary Europe.” I have read his book The Next Christendom.

Saturday a good friend of ours from UMHB, David Holcomb, will be speaking. His lecture is titled “Religion in Public Life: The ‘Pfefferian Inversion’ Reconsidered.”

Finally, I will get to hear one of my new heroes, William Cavanaugh, who inspired my Eucharist as Eat-In post as well as the series on his book Being Consumed. His lecture will be on “Violence and the Religious/Secular Distinction.”

Next week Lamin Sanneh will be at Truett Seminary for the Parchman Lecture Series. The topic for his lectures is “Connecting World Christianity: New World Parameters.” The three lectures will be on “Antislavery and Mission: American Prelude, 1770-1783,” “Evangelical Movement and the New Society,” and “Christianity and the Moral Empire: America’s Role.” Should be very interesting stuff.

It seems I often come at things from the food side and then tie in the faith and theology, even when I’m blogging through the Bible. It will be interesting to hear some very academic theological lectures and reflect on their application to food and justice issues. Stay tuned…