GFCF Speakers for 2024-25 Academic Year: The purpose of the Forum is dialogue across disciplines, ideologies or philosophical persuasions, engaging key issues in scholarship and society with orthodox Christian faith. We explore new ideas, insights and paradigms, featuring inspiring new research, publications, and critical thought. We cooperate financially with other agencies such as Canadian Scientific and Christian Affiliation. The philosophical foundations of the Forum include a broadly-based discursive, open-minded Christian theism, respecting the long history of tradition within the context of our pluralistic society. Our target audience is the senior members of the UBC research community: faculty, postgraduate students and postdoctoral fellows. All speakers below are confirmed to participate next year. Our proposal coincides with former UBC President Ono’s emphasis on ecumenical cooperation among Christian institutions and agencies—creating space for discussions about faith and culture in an open and creative environment.
1.Wednesday, September 24, 2024 @ 4:00 PM William T. Cavanaugh, The Uses of Idolatry.
Abstract In this talk, our heavily researched speaker offers a sustained and interdisciplinary argument that worship has not waned in our supposedly “secular” world. Rather, the target of worship has changed, migrating from the explicit worship of God to the implicit worship of things. Cavanaugh examines modern idolatries and the ways in which humans become dominated and harmed by their own creations. While Cavanaugh is critical of modern idolatries, his argument is also sympathetic, seeing in idolatry a deep longing in the human heart for the transformation of our lives. Ranging widely across the fields of history, philosophy, political science, sociology, and cultural studies, Cavanaugh develops an account of modernity as not the condition of being disenchanted but the condition of having learned to describe the world as disenchanted.
Biography William T. Cavanaugh, PhD from Duke University, is Professor of Catholic Studies and director for the Centre for World Catholicism and Intercultural Theology at DePaul University. He is the author of The Myth of Religious Violence, Oxford University Press, 2009; and The Uses of Idols, Oxford University Press, 2024. His specialty is political theology, economic ethics, and ecclesiology.
2.November 7, 2024 @ 12:00 PM Denis Alexander. Finding God Through Dawkins: a Dramatic Irony
Abstract The so-called ‘New Atheism’ movement that came to prominence in the earlier part of this century has now declined. However, it has left in its wake an intriguing residue of religious and cultural consequences. One of the most prominent spokespersons for the movement has been Professor Richard Dawkins from Oxford University. The 2023 Kregel book, co-edited by Alister McGrath and Denis Alexander, Coming to Faith Through Dawkins, comprises twelve essays written by twelve different authors from five different countries and describes how the works of Dawkins and other New Atheist writers were influential in leading them from atheism or agnosticism to Christian faith. This lecture will review the roots of the New Atheism movement, and why it has led some former skeptics to Christian faith.
Biography Denis Alexander, a noted geneticist, biochemist, and cancer researcher is the Founding Director (Emeritus) of The Faraday Institute for Science and Religion, Cambridge, where he is Emeritus Fellow of St. Edmund’s College. He is past Chair of the Molecular Immunology Programme and Head of the Laboratory of Lymphocyte Signalling and Development at The Babraham Institute, Cambridge. Dr. Alexander’s latest books are: Is There Purpose in Biology? Oxford: Lion, 2018; and Are We Slaves to Our Genes? Cambridge University Press, 2020. He gave the 2012 Gifford Lectures at St. Andrew’s University.
3.Thursday, January 30, 2025 @ 4 PM Jeremy Begbie, Professor of Theology and Music, Duke University C. S. Lewis and Unfulfilled Longing: An Exploration through Music
Abstract C. S. Lewis famously spoke of fleeting experiences of joy he had early in life, a longing for something this world cannot satisfy. Dr. Begbie will creatively explore this through music, comparing this pre-Christian unfulfilled desire with Christian hope.
Biography Jeremy Begbie is the Thomas A. Langford Distinguished Research Professor of Theology at Duke Divinity School, and McDonald Agape Director of Duke Initiatives in Theology and the Arts. He teaches systematic theology, and specializes in the interface between theology and the arts. He is Senior Member at Wolfson College, Cambridge, and an Affiliated Lecturer in the Faculty of Music at the University of Cambridge. His books include Theology, Music and Time (Cambridge University Press); Resounding Truth: Christian Wisdom in the World of Music (Baker/SPCK); and Music, Modernity, and God (Oxford University Press); and Abundantly More (Baker). He is a very engaging speaker who has taught widely in the UK and North America, and delivered multimedia performance-lectures in many parts of the world.
4. Tuesday, March 4 @ 12:00 PM Quentin Genuis Rethinking Medical Ethics in Light of the Good.
Abstract What features define human life and the value of the individual? How do individuals and communities understand and withstand suffering and pain? What is good dying? In our time, the essential human questions are often viewed primarily as bioethics issues. In reality, these are not exclusively medical or bioethical inquiries. Rather they are complicated and challenging ethical questions with which all human beings and societies must grapple. How does Christian philosophy and theology inform these life and death questions at deeper, more foundational levels?
Biography Dr. Quentin Genuis MD is an Emergency Physician at St. Paul’s Hospital in Vancouver, and the Physician Ethicist for Providence Health Care. He holds a Master of Letters in Ethics from the University of St. Andrews, Scotland. He teaches in academic, clinical, professional, and lay settings on a variety of issues related to bioethics. His research and writing interests include the autonomy debates, end-of-life care, compassion, human dignity, addictions, and theological anthropology.