2011-12: Lecture V (Gregory/Unintended Reformation))
Brad Gregory
Associate Professor of Early
Modern European History
University of Notre Dame
"The Unintended Reformation: How a Religious Revolution Secularized Society"
On Thursday, April 19, the St. Anselm Institute for Catholic Thought hosted University of Notre Dame History Professor Brad Gregory for its third Annual Robert Louis Wilken Lecture. Before a lively and inquisitive audience, Prof. Gregory discussed his newest book The Unintended Reformation: How a Religious Revolution Secularized Society (Harvard). This vibrant and important work of intellectual history offers a grand synthesis of the West over the past five centuries, challenging its readers and the St. Anselm Institute audience to inquire why so many elements of modern intellectual and moral life deviate so widely from the sincere commitments of Catholics, Protestants and others in the West.
Professor Gregory's deftly employs a multiple case genealogical approach in his book--including one on the emergence of the modern research university--to recover the intellectual developments and shifting institutional terrains since the Reformation that sustain not only the contemporary hyperpluralism of religious and nonreligious beliefs, but our seeming incapacities to engage the common good or to explain why we can bemoan but are unable to move beyond the shallows of our instrumental commitments to consumerism and the therapeutic life. For a video of this talk, click here.
Thursday Night at the Movies: Feb. 23 (7:30pm)
Make plans now to join us and others on February 23 at 7:30pm for Thursday Night at the Movies in Nau Auditorium/UVA South Lawn.
We're showing The Mission, starring Robert De Niro and Jeremy Irons. This spectacularly rich and thoughtful film about war, conquest, betrayal, peace, love, and 18th century Jesuit missionaries and the Guarani of South America won the Cannes Film Festival Palme D'or Award and the Academy Award for Cinematography.
This event, co-sponsored by the St. Anselm Institute, the Department of History, and UVA Catholic Student Ministry, is free and open to all.
2011-12: Lecture IV (Wilken/Religious Freedom)
Prof. Robert Louis Wilken
"The Catholic Roots of Religious Freedom"
2012 St. Thomas Aquinas Lecture
St. Thomas Aquinas University Parish
Wednesday, Jan. 25, 2012, 7:30pm
Robert Louis Wilken is the William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of the History of Christianity Emeritus at the University of Virginia. Prof. Wilken initiated and nurtured the early development of the St. Anselm Institute and he remains the Chairman of its Board. His scholarly accomplishment are extensive, widely known and highly respected. He is the author, editor, and translator of numerous books and articles, including Isaiah: Interpreted by Early Christian and Medieval Commentators (Eerdmans, 2007); The Spirit of Early Christian Thought (Yale, 2003); On the Cosmic Mystery of Jesus Christ: selected writings of St. Maximus the Confessor (St. Vladimir's Press, 2003); Remembering the Christian Past (Eerdmans, 1995); The Land Called Holy (Yale, 1992); and Christians as the Romans Saw Them (Yale, 1984). Prof. Wilken presently is the Rev. Robert J. Randall Professor in Christian Culture at Providence College and he also serves as chairman of the board of the Institute on Religion and Public Life.
In his public lecture, Prof. Wilken clarified that the roots of modern ideas of religious freedom are as much religious as they are political and philosophical. In fact, the American political leaders who first championed these ideas were well aware of the religious--indeed deeply Catholic--sources supporting their views. The greatest of these champions James Madison--who ended state support for Virginia's churches and drafted the Bill of Rights--not only recommended that a long list of these intellectual sources be included in the University of Virginia Library, but he openly spoke about “the duty which we owe to our Creator” and that religion can only be governed “by reason and conviction, not by force or violence.” Prof. Wilken's lecture explored how early Christian thinkers developed a theological understanding of religious freedom. See the full video of this lecture: here.
2011-12: Lecture III (Joas/Secularization)
Prof. Hans Joas University of Chicago/Committee on Social Thought
Waves of Secularization:
An Alternative Explanation of "Religious Decline"
Over the last two decades, a virtual mountain of empirical evidence has convinced social scientists that the longstanding secularization thesis is untenable--i.e., the presumption that economic modernization and scientific progress leads automatically to religious decline. Abandonment of this conventional theoretical frame should make questions concerning the causes and consequences of secularization even more acute. Studies of the rise of a secular option remain important for understanding the preconditions for secularization, but they cannot explain the observable variations of this option for social organization. University of Chicago Professor Hans Joas offered a reevaluation that demonstrates that secularization is not a unitary, linear, continuous process at all.Rather, three
2011-12: Friday Night at the Movies: The Tree of Life
The St. Anselm Institute and UVA Catholic Student Ministry invite you to join us at Friday Night at the Movies on October 21 at 7:30pm in Nau Auditorium, located on the new South Lawn of the University of Virginia. This event is free and open to all, so bring a friend or family member to see the 2011 Cannes Film Festival Palme D'or Award winner: The Tree of Life (2011). Written and directed by Terrence Malik, this critically acclaimed, unconventional, and visually rich narrative of a 1950s Catholic family in Waco, TX offers us an opportunity to reconsider the cosmic significance of the Act of Creation and our place within this larger, Grace filled Divine Narrative.
Nau Auditorium is part of the new South Lawn at the University of Virginia. Free evening parking is available in a Brandon Ave parking lot adjacent to Nau and Gibson Halls. For a map and directions, click here.
On Thursday, April 19, the St. Anselm Institute for Catholic Thought hosted University of Notre Dame History Professor Brad Gregory for its third Annual Robert Louis Wilken Lecture. Before a lively and inquisitive audience, Prof. Gregory discussed his newest book The Unintended Reformation: How a Religious Revolution Secularized Society (Harvard).
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