[Discussion] CFP: Christianity's Encounter with Other Cultures (11/4/05; 3/10/06-3/11/06)

[gpultar@cstgroup.org]

From: "Marshall, Donald" <Donald.Marshall@pepperdine.edu>

Please post
CALL FOR PROPOSALS

Western Regional Conference for Christianity and Literature
Pepperdine University, Malibu, CA
March 10-11, 2006

The Word in the World: Christianity's Encounter with Other Cultures

Keynote speaker:
Alan Jacobs, Wheaton College, "Nietzsche or St. Basil: Paganism and Literature"

Poetry reading:
Brigit Pegeen Kelly, author of The Orchard, Song, and To the Place of Trumpets

>From the beginning, Christians have encountered cultures whose values they found
alien or even hostile. Yet such cultures are precisely the ones in need of
redemptive evangelization. Whether insisting that Jerusalem has nothing to do
with Athens or that truth is from God wherever it is found and that Christians
could claim the gold of the Egyptians, Christians cannot escape tension with the
cultures they encounter, because Christianity both asserts a particular truth
and makes a universal claim. This tension increased as Christians carried
witness to their message to cultures throughout the world. Christians have
sometimes condemned alien cultures wholesale; but they have sometimes found
"intimations of the Gospel" in them or even absorbed some elements of other
cultures into Christian practice and imagery. Writers as varied as Chinua
Achebe, Shusaku Endo, Matteo Ricci, and Sor Juana Inez de la Cruz have addressed
these issues.  Within Western cultures, cultural traditions alien to
Christianity have waxed and waned over the centuries, from Dante's use of Vergil
to Renaissance and Baroque syntheses of classical and Christian culture. 
Enlightenment critique of religion aimed to establish a purely secular culture,
and much modern art, high and low, seems deliberately offensive or brutally
indifferent to Christian values.  Yet many writers (such as Dostoevsky, T. S.
Eliot, Evelyn Waugh, Flannery O'Connor, Marilynne Robinson, among many others)
have brought a Christian perspective to modern culture, and John Paul II
asserted that Christians have much to learn from studying the dark literature of
the 20th century. What does it mean that non- or even anti-Christian theorists
like Slavoj Zizek, Alain Badiou, and Antonio Negri and Michael Hardt have drawn
on Christian ideas in their analyses of contemporary culture? We invite papers
that probe Christianity's response to the challenge of alien or antagonistic
cultures and values from the beginning of Christianity to the present day, in
European and American culture and across the globe.

One-page proposals for papers of about 15 minutes length are due November 4,
2005. Proposals to read creative writing are also acceptable for consideration. 
We also welcome proposals for roundtable discussions, workshops, or readings
with three or more presenters. Participants must be CCL members or agree to join
at the conference. Send proposals to Donald G. Marshall, Humanities and Teacher
Education Division, Pepperdine University, 24255 Pacific Coast Highway, Malibu,
CA 90263-4225. Inquiries to <mailto:donald.marshall@pepperdine.edu>.




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