Seminar
“Secularization, Enchantment, and the Divine”
The Lutheran Academy of Scholars Summer Seminar
Currier House, Harvard University
July 12-25, 2009
Faculty from all fields of study are invited to consider the social, intellectual and spiritual phenomenon of secularization during our annual summer seminar.
While many have argued that the upsurge in public religion worldwide has thoroughly discredited theories of secularization, Charles Taylor in his recent opus “A Secular Age” has offered a new sophisticated account of secularity. In today’s world, God no longer functions as an explanatory hypothesis in scholarly fields, and yet elements of enchantment and mystery seem increasingly important to intellectual inquiry.
How do enchantment and methodological atheism coexist in the academy? What roles do faith, imagination and intimations of transcendence play in our intellectual lives? How might secularity and enchantment play out differently in diverse cultural settings? Of particular interest to the seminar will be the place of the Protestant Reformation in the historical development of secularization as well as the Lutheran theological perspective on this process. The academy encourages project proposals tracing the implications and tensions within secularization from a wide variety of disciplinary perspectives.
Seminar Leader:
Ronald F. Thiemann
Benjamin Bussey Professor of Theology, Harvard Divinity School
Faculty Associate, Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, Harvard University
Coordinator:
Jacqueline Bussie
Associate Professor of Religion, Capital University