Upcoming events
Goodspeed Conference
Time: Wednesday, February 13 2019 – Saturday, February 16 2019
Location: Denison University, Ohio
Compassion, love, wisdom, and liberation. How can we embody these values in our globalized world where the cries of sentient beings have become more widespread? Millions of refugees have fled their homelands due to life-threatening violence. Dire socio-economic conditions bar many people from living decent life. The global ecological crisis only adds more suffering on Earth. On of many causes of suffering on Earth is religion. In tracing the roots of suffering, Buddhists and Christians point to Mara and Mammon. Mara is the Buddhist personification of the Three Poisons―greed, ill-will, and ignorance―and Mammon the Christian personification of material greed, which also breeds ill-will and ignorance. Many name neo-liberalism or the global free-market economy as the institutionalized form of Mara and Mammon, which prioritizes competition over cooperation, private wealth over public welfare and ecological wellbeing, and the possessive individual over community. The system spreads greed to have more and is fed by the collective fear to not have or lose. The values and human attitudes that breed Mara and Mammon might constitute the most powerful religion. This religion knows no borders and boundaries; it is omnipresent. Since Mara and Mammon concerns both structural and spiritual matters, this conference calls for socio-spiritual resistance by first bringing socially engaged Buddhists and Christian liberationists to the dialogue table. The renowned religious scholars and activists in Buddhism and Christianity cultivate interfaith and transnational solidarity that is strong enough to dismantle Mara and Mammon, both within ourselves as well as in social institutions. You are invited to be present in this exciting dialogue for social transformation through compassion, love, and wisdom.
Past events
Post-Secular Perspectives on the Sacred
CRGC Director Ulrich Rosenhagen gave a talk titled “The Numinous in a Post-Secular World” for the Post-Secular Perspectives on the Sacred conference at the Van Leer Institute in Jerusalem, January 7-9, 2019.
Water is life
Time: Friday, April 27 2018, 6-7:30pm,
Location: St. Francis House – 1011 University Ave
There will be presentation followed by a question and answer session.
Theology, Politics, and the Academy
Time: Wednesday, April 18, 6-7:30pm,
Location: University Club Room 212 (organized by the CRGC Interdisciplinary Religion Group)
Please enter the University Club from the West Entrance (= the door that is facing the Humanities building).
What are the promises and perils of broaching “religious” topics in the contemporary academy? Is there a place for confessional theology in academic research? Is the academy itself “secular” or somehow “religious”? Are these questions simply the product of false dichotomies or peculiar modern sensibilities? Join the Interdisciplinary Religion Group as we welcome Sam Rocha, Assistant Professor of Philosophy of Education at the University of British Columbia, for a seminar discussion on the place of theology and research about religion in academia. Prof. Rocha’s work encompasses meditations on religion and education, philosophical interventions in theology, political theology, and the aesthetics of education. His A Primer for Philosophy of Education (Cascade, 2014) won the American Educational Studies Association Critics Choice Book Award. In addition to his scholarly work, Rocha is an accomplished jazz musician. He comes to UW-Madison this spring as a WCER Carl Grant Lecture Scholar.
For more on Prof. Rocha’s work, visit: https://www.samrocha.com/
Bridging the Gap: The Sacred and Secular in Evangelical Christian Zionism
Time: Wednesday, April 4, 6-7:30pm,
Location: University Club Room 312 (organized by the CRGC Interdisciplinary Religion Group)
Please enter the University Club from the West Entrance (= the door that is facing the Humanities building).
This is a talk by Dan Hummel, Kingdon Fellow at the Institute for the Research in the Humanities, UW-Madison.
The talk comes out of Dan’s work for his first book: A Covenant of the Mind: American Evangelicals, Israel, and the Construction of a Special Relationship. In this project, Dan is focusing on the ideological role of Holy Land tourism in politicizing American evangelicals after 1967.