• Q&A with the 2019 MidWinter Lecturers
Our 2019 MidWinter lectures invite us into the thinking behind their upcoming lectures. Be sure to register for MidWinters here!
What compelled you to consider your topic for your MidWinters lectures?
Robert M. Franklin Jr.: I have been fascinated by the transformative power of moral leadership both at the world historical level (think Mandela, Gandhi, and King) and at the common everyday level (like my grandmother who infused love and justice into the mean streets of Chicago). We are all capable of acting on our deeply held moral values. But, I think most of us are also capable of moral leadership that is courageous and creative. During times of crisis, moral leaders intervene or emerge to offer hope.
Katelyn Beaty: Both of my talks will be about prophetic Christian witness in a "post-truth" political and cultural era. I want to give listeners timely wisdom based on what I have observed as a journalist, editor, and writer, and I want to help the American church regain some credibility in this crucial moment.
Why is it worth spending time thinking about?
Miroslav Volf: What we do in seminaries and divinity schools is engage in theological reflection. But what is that reflection for? Theology today is in a crisis. It has lost its audience and reputation—in the churches and in the larger world. More importantly, theology has lost its own voice. Theology is uniquely suited to explore the great questions of human life, all gathered in the vision of the purpose of human life—to discern, articulate, and commend a vision of life rooted in God's self-revelation in Jesus Christ. But theology seems incapable of taking up these questions today. As a consequence, it is failing to speak to one of great issues of our time: namely the problem of the nature of humanity and the purposes of human existence.
Franklin: We are in a complicated time in this nation’s history, a time marked by intellectual and moral chaos. During such times we need to have conversations about how we will go forward together, and guided by what kind of moral compass. In the past, people like Abraham Lincoln, Frederick Douglass, Eleanor Roosevelt, and Rosa Parks helped to invite us to choose a better path forward. Those people are around today; they don’t even realize it. But, the constellation of circumstances, visions, and impulses to lead can emerge unexpectedly and produce unpredictable results.
Who or what has influenced your thinking?
Beaty: My thoughts are informed by two groups, broadly speaking: good journalists and good leaders in the church. I am grateful for writers who commit themselves to telling the truth, as complex and uncomfortable as it might be. And I am grateful for church leaders who do the same, in the face of personal and professional cost.
Volf: I am a student of Jürgen Moltmann, and he was and remains a significant influence on my thinking. His theology is very "theological," and, at the same time, very close to life. As a theologian, he is neither just seeking to remove the negative nor just to replicate life and thought of what is deemed to be an "ideal past"; he is sketching a vision of life for the world rooted in Christ for today. This is what I seek to do as well.
How do you hope your listeners will be challenged / changed by this conversation?
Franklin: I hope that people will examine the social and moral crises that face us right now (partisan division, racial, gender and class tensions, the future of guns, immigration policy, etc.) and think about what might be the most courageous and impactful course of action that their ethical and religious values can underwrite.
Volf: I hope for us all—as individuals, as churches, and as cultures—to orient, and keep re-orienting, our lives around Jesus Christ as the key to our humanity and it this way to "take hold of the life that really is life" (1 Timothy 6:19)
Beaty: 20th-century theologian Karl Barth said that Christians are to read with the newspaper in one hand and the Bible in the other. I hope listeners will be challenged to become better readers of both texts, discerning how the Word of God speaks to the events and trends of our world.
• Two professors receive 2019 Louisville Institute grants
It is highly unusual for two members of the same faculty to receive grants from the Louisville Insitute in the same year. However, Austin Seminary is pleased to announce that Professors David Jensen and Gregory Cuéllar have both received 2019 Project Grants for Researchers from the Louisville Institute. Jensen, academic dean and professor in the Clarence N. and Betty B. Frierson Distinguished Chair of Reformed Theology, received a grant for a project that will help mainline seminaries learn from Jewish and Catholic communities. The grant given Dr. Gregory Cuéllar, associate professor of Old Testament, will enable him to research and write a book on the current immigrant detention crisis along the southern US border.
Dean Jensen has taught at Austin Seminary since 2001; he has been academic dean since 2014. He is the author or editor of eleven books, the most recent, Christian Understandings of Christ: The Historical Trajectory, is due out in April from Fortress Press. Professor Cuéllar has been working especially with children of asylum-seekers at the Texas/Mexico border since 2014. He led a group of Austin Seminary students to McAllen, Texas, before the Christmas break (see a student's reflection on the trip below).
Read more here!
• Confession and assurance at the border
Student Jonathan Freeman writes in the Presbyterian Outlook about his experience traveling with Professor Gregory Cuéllar to the U.S. / Mexico border in December.
Read more here!
• Re-accreditation: Public Notice of Evaluation Visit
In mid-March 2019, Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary will receive an evaluation committee from the Association of Theological Schools(ATS) Commission on Accrediting. The visit is part of the peer-review process to reaffirm the accreditation of Austin Seminary. Austin Seminary invites comments in writing concerning its qualifications for accreditation. Interested parties may email comments to Dr. TD Lincoln, accreditation liaison, Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary. The Commission on Accrediting invites third-party comments, especially remarks regarding the General Institutional Standards, the Educational Standard, and Degree Program Standards. Please email comments to the director, commission information services. All comments received will be available to the evaluation committee,
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