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The World and Christian Imagination

Lilly Fellows Program National Research Conference
Thursday, November 9—Saturday, November 11, 2006

• Program Description
• About the Lilly Fellows Program National Research Conference
• Featured Speakers
• Schedule

Program Description

The Christian mind, insofar as it appropriates the fullness of its imaginative possibilities, constitutes a resource of indispensable import for interpreting, understanding, and engaging the world in all of the diverse ways in which we encounter it. As such, the Christian imagination—far from sequestration as a term of trade for the conventionally regarded arts such as drama, literature, music, or painting—is much better regarded as a form of life whereby we live out, according to our diverse callings, faithfulness to the claims of Christ's good news.

The sources of the well-formed Christian imagination are many and sundry. Grounded in the affinity of human minds for truth, guided by the scriptural narratives wherein human meaning and purpose may be discerned, formed by the virtue-forming community of grace called the Church, challenged by the joys and the hopes, the griefs and the anxieties of human experience, and attentive to the manifold witness of Christian culture through the ages—by all of these means, the Christian imagination is roused, by God's grace, to discern the world as it truly is and ought to be. Thus is it that the art, communities, dramas, economics, ethics, music, philosophies, politics, science, texts, and traditions to which Christians give expression fundamentally represent their imaginative obedience to "the vision from heaven," an obedience which prompted the Apostle to "take every thought captive to Christ."

St. Paul's charge to take every thought captive to Christ is a tall order for any person in any age. Especially in the modern and postmodern eras, however, the widespread confinement of religion to an affective, private realm has made fidelity to this command virtually impossible, for Christians in the contemporary world find themselves almost ineluctably shaped by forms of life, habits of mind, and orders of knowledge which are functionally atheistic, and hence not readily amenable to enchantment by the Christian imagination.

Fidelity to the Pauline injunction requires the recovery of a deeply Christian imagination, the capacity to envision all of reality as intrinsically related to God. While the challenges that stand in the way of fully realizing this capacity must not be dismissed, a reinvigorated culture, particularly expressed in the work of Christians in the academy, has astonishingly emerged in recent decades, bearing promise for animating anew the Christian imagination. Moreover, as postmodernism has shown imaginative judgments to be intrinsic to every social formation, Christian cultural renewal has shown signs of gathering force, and now, in a wide range of academic and professional disciplines, draws on Christian ideas to criticize and re-imagine spheres of life thought to be off-limits in a post-Enlightenment world to religious and theological conceptualization.

In this complex context, the 2006 LFP National Research Conference derives thematic coherence from a single, central, organizing question: How might the Christian imagination be brought to bear on all aspects of contemporary life? The World and Christian Imagination thus will assemble an interdisciplinary group of scholars for a national conference addressing the fecundity of the Christian imagination for scholarly understanding and interpretation of the world.

About the Lilly Fellows Program National Research Conference

The Lilly Fellows Program in Humanities and the Arts at Valparaiso University seeks to renew and enhance the connections between Christianity and the academic vocation at church-related colleges and universities. As one of its initiatives serving this aim, the annual LFP National Research Conference provides a forum for research and scholarship among faculty at institutions that are members of the LFP's National Network of Church-Related Colleges and Universities. The conference fosters and promotes research that addresses issues of faith and learning, Christian practices of teaching, the relationship of religion and the academic disciplines, the relationship of the sacred and the secular, or other aspects of church-related higher education.

Featured Speakers

• Stephen M. Barr, Professor of Physics and Astronomy, University of Delaware
• John Betz, Assistant Professor of Theology, Loyola College in Maryland
• Oliva Blanchette, Professor of Philosophy, Boston College
• Nicholas Boyle, Professor of German Literary and Intellectual History, University of Cambridge
• Michael J. Buckley, S.J., Augustin Cardinal Bea, S.J. Professor of Theology, Santa Clara University
• David Burrell, C.S.C., Theodore M. Hesburgh, C.S.C., Professor in Philosophy and Theology, University of Notre Dame
• J. Kameron Carter, Assistant Professor in Theology and Black Church Studies, Duke Divinity School
• William Desmond, Visiting David R. Cook Endowed Chair in Philosophy, Villanova University
• Susan Felch, Professor of English, Calvin College
• Amy Laura Hall, Assistant Professor of Theological Ethics, Duke Divinity School
• Michael Hanby, Assistant Professor of Theology in the Honors College, Baylor University
• David Bentley Hart, The Robert K. Randall Distinguished Chair in Christian Culture, Providence College
• Kevin Hart, Notre Dame Chair of Philosophy and Literature, University of Notre Dame
• Carlo Lancellotti, Assistant Professor of Mathematics, City University of New York College of Staten Island
• D. Stephen Long, Associate Professor of Systematic Theology, Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary
• Eugene McCarraher, Assistant Professor, Department of Humanities and Augustinian Traditions, Villanova University
• Alison Milbank, Lecturer in Humanities, University of Nottingham
• John Milbank, Professor in Religion, Politics and Ethics, University of Nottingham
• Robert C. Miner, Associate Professor of Philosophy in the Honors College, Baylor University
• Stephen Prickett, Director of the Armstrong Browning Library and Margaret Root Brown Professor for Browning Studies and Victorian Poetry, Baylor University
• Tracey Rowland, Dean and Permanent Fellow, John Paul II Institute for Marriage & Family – Melbourne
• David C. Schindler, Assistant Professor, Department of Humanities and Augustinian Traditions, Villanova University
• David L. Schindler, Academic Dean and Edouard Cardinal Gagnon Professor of Fundamental Theology, John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage and Family
• Jeanne Heffernan Schindler, Assistant Professor, Department of Humanities and Augustinian Traditions, Villanova University
• Merold Westphal, Distinguished Professor of Philosophy, Fordham University

Schedule

All sessions will be held in the Armstrong Browning Library (ABL) except for the meals and evening plenary sessions, which are being held in the Banquet Room on the Fifth Floor of the Cashion Building at the Hankamer School of Business. The registration and information table will be in the Main Entrance Foyer of ABL, refreshments will be in the Cox Reception Hall, and exhibitors will be located in both the Main Entrance Foyer and Cox Reception Hall.

Thursday, November 9

12:00 to 1:30 p.m.

Registration/Check In (Entrance Foyer)

1:30 to 3:00 p.m.

President's Welcome (Foyer of Meditation)
John M. Lilley

Opening Remarks
Michael Hanby, Baylor University

Plenary Session

Beauty and the Christian Imagination
• David Lyle Jeffrey, Baylor University: session chair
• Kevin Hart, University of Notre Dame
• John Betz, Loyola College in Maryland

3:00 to 3:30 p.m.

Break

3:30 to 5:00 p.m.

Concurrent Sessions

Obedience, Authority, and Prudence (Foyer of Meditation)
• Margaret Tate, Baylor University: session chair
• Benjamin J. Bruxvoort Lipscomb, Houghton College: Absolutism, Obedience, and Hope
• Gabriel Alkon, Baruch College/Yale University: Civil Disobedience vs. Ecclesial Obedience
• Bryan T. McGraw, Pepperdine University: A Vain Purity? Prudential Judgments and the Dangers of Political Disengagement

Knowing and the Poetic Imagination (Browning Salon)
• Cynthia Nielsen, University of Dallas: session chair
• Curtis Gruenler, Hope College: The Medieval Poetics of Enigma and Christian Imagination
• Barry Harvey, Baylor University: Lovers, Madmen, and Pilgrim Poets: Memory and Scriptural Reasoning
• Adam Green, Saint Louis University: Rime of the Ancient of Days: Coleridge, Shared Attention, and Poetic Faith

Christian Influence upon Schools and the Academy (Research Hall)
• Albert Smith, Baylor University: session chair
• Jens Zimmerman, Trinity Western University: Recapitulating Humanism: Incarnational Theology, Imago Dei, and the Humanities
• Anjan K. Ganguly, University of Notre Dame: Social Theory in the Christian Imagination: The Neglected Tradition of Christian Social Thought
• Perry Glanzer, Baylor University: Imagining a More Human Education: Freeing Educational Theory from Captivity to Liberal Democracy

Athens and Jerusalem: Leo Strauss and the Christian Imagination (Treasure Room)
• Jonathon McIntosh, University of Dallas: session chair
• Dwight D. Allman, Baylor University: Strauss and the Great Books: What Christians Might Learn
• Michael P. Foley, Baylor University: Christianity and the Three Waves of Modernity
• Elizabeth C. Corey, Baylor University: Voeglin and Strauss on Reason and Revelation

Intimacy Lost and Gained: Reflections on Marriage (Seminar Room)
• Andrew Nam, Baylor University: session chair
• David Weber: Valparaiso University: From Resentment to Repetition: On Re-imagining the End-s of Marriage
• Jane Beal, Wheaton College: Sponsa Christi: Imagining Spiritual Marriage in the Middle Ages
• Jessica Lynice Hooten, Baylor University: Only a Century Ago: How Austen and Tolstoy Record What We Have Lost

Art, Music, and Culture (Lecture Hall)
• Robert Darden, Baylor University: session chair
• Gregory Schreck, Wheaton College: Sebastiao Salgado, Robert Mapplethorpe and the Bronze Serpent
• Louis T. Albarran, University of Dayton: Lyrics Captive to Christ: Bono’s Christian Imagination Conveyed in Non-linear Language
• Lisa DeBoer, Westmont College: Worshipping with U2

5:00 to 6:00 p.m.

Break

6:00 to 7:30 p.m.

Dinner (Banquet Room)

7:30 to 9:00 p.m.

Plenary Presentation (Banquet Room)

Introduction by Peter Candler, Baylor University

John Milbank, University of Nottingham: Recovering the Christian Imagination

Friday, November 10

8:30 to 10:00 a.m.

Concurrent Sessions

Imagination & Nature (Lecture Hall)
• John Wolfe, Baylor University: session chair
• Teri Merrick, Azusa Pacific University: Can Naturalism Capture the Wonder of it All?
• Susan Bruxvoort Lipscomb, Houghton College: Victorian Natural History and a Christian Natural Imagination
• Daniel E. Ritchie, Bethel University: Foreign Languages or Dialects of a Single Tongue? Re-thinking the Divorce between Physics and Poetry for Postmodern Times

Collective Action among Christians (Seminar Room)
• Taryn Whittington, Baylor University: session chair
• Sara L. H. Shady and Christian T. Collins Winn, Bethel University: “Behold, I Make All Things New": Eschatological Imagination, Socialism and the Hope for the Kingdom of God
• Scott P. Waalkes, Malone College: Liturgy and Globalization: How Observing the Church Seasons Can Form the Christian Imagination and Put Global Integration in Perspective

Beauty and Reality in Theology, Knowledge and Language (Treasure Room)
• Lewis Pearson, Baylor University: session chair
• Francis J. Caponi, Villanova University: Is Hell Beautiful? Aquinas, Dante, and Balthasar on the Aesthetic of Eternal Punishment
• Laura Smit, Calvin College: Iconoclastic Beauty
• James Matthew Wilson, University of Notre Dame: Poetry, Prayer and the Post-modern

Protestant Indebtedness to Catholic Imagination (Research Hall)
• Brad J. Kallenberg, University of Dayton: session chair
• Aaron James, University of Dayton: Re-imagining Real Presence: Baptists, Catholics, and the Grammar of Transubstantiation
• Timothy Furry, University of Dayton: Karl Barth and a Christian Analogical Imagination
• Coleman Fannin, University of Dayton: Aquinas, Wittgentstein, and Social Ethics: A Descriptive Understanding of Natural Law

Imagination and History (Foyer of Meditation)
• Thomas Kidd, Baylor University: session chair
• Damian Costello, University of Dayton: The Burden of History: Colonialism, Las Casas, and Christian Imagination
• Timothy E. W. Gloege, University of Notre Dame: Imagining Old Time Religion: Reuben A. Torrey, Consumer Capitalism and the Construction of Corporate Fundamentalism, 1880-1910
• Harold K. Bush, Jr., Saint Louis University: Mark Twain’s ‘Invisible Domains’: The Christian Imagination of America’s Most Famous Author

Transcending Limitations of Vision: Literature and the Christian Imagination (Browning Salon)
• Mikeal Parsons, Baylor University: session chair
• Rebecca Munro, Belmont Abbey College: With Wash’d Eyes: King Lear and Epistemological Change
• Melissa B. Schubert, Biola University: Giving Onions: The Economic Vision of Dostevsky’s Brothers Karamazov
• Phillip J. Donnelly, Baylor University: Biblical Convocation in Wendell Berry’s Remembering

10:00 to 10:30 a.m.

Break

10:30 a.m. to 12:00 p.m.

Invited Sessions

Truth and the Christian Imagination (Foyer of Meditation)
• Michael Beaty, Baylor University: session chair
• Robert C. Miner, Baylor University
• David C. Schindler, Villanova University

Biology and the Christian Imagination (Treasure Room)
• Jonathan Tran, Baylor University: session chair
• Michael Hanby, Baylor University
• Amy Laura Hall, Duke Divinity School

12:00 to 1:30 p.m.

Lunch (Banquet Room)

Provost's Welcome — Randall O'Brien

1:30 to 3:00 p.m.

Concurrent Sessions

Film: Culture, Prophecy and Redemption (Lecture Hall)
• Christopher Hansen, Baylor University: session chair
• Brian Clayton, Gonzaga University: Walker Percy Goes to the Movies (or, A Christian Reading of Some Popular Films) (or, "What Has Hollywood to Do with Jerusalem. . . or Covington, Louisiana, for that Matter?"
• Carrie Peirce, Azusa Pacific University: Movies as Prophetic Texts: Rehabilitating the Christian Imagination
• Travis E. Ables, Vanderbilt University: In Search of Lost Time: Providence as Aesthetic Vision in Andrei Rublev and Augustine

Science and the Christian Cosmos (Treasure Room)
• Jonathan Tran, Baylor University: session chair
• John C. Gatta, Sewanee: The University of the South: The Transfiguration of Christ and Cosmos
• Paul I. Kim, Baylor University: The Cosmology of Orthodoxy: Aquinas and Chesterton on Grace, Freedom, and Science
• David Toole, Duke Divinity School: The Trinitarian Order of Things: Toward a Theology of the Biological Sciences

New Perspectives on Law (Seminar Room)
• Robert Kruschwitz, Baylor University: session chair
• David Opderbeck, Baruch College, City University of New York: A Virtue Ethics Approach to Biotechnology Commons Management
• Joel A. Nichols, Pepperdine University School of Law: The American ‘Experiment’ and Experience in Religious Liberty: Imagining the Future and Reimagining the Past

Christian Ethics and the Grammar of "Imagination" (Research Hall)
• Brad J. Kallenberg, University of Dayton: session chair
• Wes Arblaster, University of Dayton: The War of the Lamb: William Stringfellow and the Apocalyptic Imagination
• Ethan Smith, University of Dayton: Imagining Christian Action: Elizabeth Anscombe and Maurice Blondel
• Nikki Coffey Tousley, University of Dayton: Patience in the Christian Imagination: Receptivity and Discernment

The Christian Imagination of Dante and Chaucer (Browning Salon)
• Jonathan Sands-Wise, Baylor University: session chair
• Mignon Sass, University of Dallas: The Trouble with Virgil: Hope and the Christian Imagination in Dante’s Commedia
• Deborah Bates, Wheaton College: Chaucer and Dante: Finding the Truth beyond Words and Fiction
• Luke Culley, University of Dallas: The End of Persuasion: Chaucer’s Disabusing Education in Literary Criticism

Faith & Fantasy (Foyer of Meditation)
• Ralph C. Wood, Baylor University: session chair
• Alesha D. Seroczynski & Scott P. Johnson: Bethel College (Indiana): The Modern Evangelical Christian Fear of Imagination
• Jonathan S. McIntosh, University of Dallas/Eastfield Community College: “I Have Kindled You with the Flame Imperishable": J.R.R. Tolkien’s Thomistic Metaphysics of Faërie
• Lee R. Cerling, University of Southern California: Imagining the Decline of the West: The Achievement of J.R.R. Tolkien

3:00 to 3:30 p.m.

Break

3:30 to 5:00 p.m.

Invited Sessions

Cosmos and the Christian Imagination (Foyer of Meditation)
• Michael Hanby, Baylor University: session chair
• Stephen M. Barr, University of Delaware
• Carlo Lancellotti, City University of New York College of Staten Island
• David L. Schindler, John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage and the Family

Economy and the Christian Imagination (Treasure Room)
• Scott Moore, Baylor University: session chair
• D. Stephen Long, Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary
• Eugene McCarraher, Villanova University

Concurrent Session

Poetic Engagement with Faith (Research Hall)
• Rebecca Munro, Belmont Abbey College: session chair
• Stephen E. Lewis, Franciscan University of Steubenville: A Fitting Receptacle: Paul Claudel’s Witness to Christ’s Transformation of the Senses
• Thomas Gardner, Virginia Tech: Elizabeth Bishop and the Gospel of John: How Poets Read
• Tiffany Eberle Kriner, Wheaton College: The Ladder and the Linebreak: Denise Levertov Looks for Hope

5:00 to 6:00 p.m.

Break

6:00 to 7:30 p.m.

Dinner (Banquet Room)

7:30 to 9:00 p.m.

Invited Sessions

Suffering and the Christian Imagination (Banquet Room)
• Barry Harvey, Baylor University: session chair
• J. Kameron Carter, Duke Divinity School
• David Bentley Hart, Providence College

Atheism and the Christian Imagination (Blume)
• C. Stephen Evans, Baylor University: session chair
• Merold Westphal, Fordham University
• Michael J. Buckley, S.J., Santa Clara University

Saturday, November 11

8:30 to 10:00 a.m.

Concurrent Sessions

Imagination and Understanding Scripture (Foyer of Meditation)
• J. Bradley Creed, Samford University: session chair
• Ira J. Jolivet, Jr., Pepperdine University: Imagination as a Means of Motivation in Hebrews
• Brent Driggers, Pfeiffer University: Mark’s Challenge to the Christian Imagination: Exegetical and Hermeneutic Reflections on the Second Gospel
• Susan VanZanten Gallagher, Seattle Pacific University: Imagining Jesus: Theology, Novels, and the Scriptural Imagination

Youth Culture and the Christian Imagination (Research Hall)
• Todd Ream, Indiana Wesleyan University: session chair
• Melody Green, Illinois State University: The Legacy of Christian Fantasy for Children
• Elizabeth Gillhouse, Illinois State University: “Folly is bound up in the heart of a child”: The Problem of Adapting Biblical Narratives for Adolescents
• Karen Coats, Illinois State University: Children’s Gothic and the Christian Imagination

The Polis and Imagined Communities (Seminar Room)
• Anthony Baker, Episcopal Theological Seminary of the Southwest: session chair
• Jeffrey Polet, Hope College: Taking Men As They Are: Imagination, the Self and Others
• Dorian Llywelyn, Loyola Marymount University: Imagined Communities, Christian and National
• Mark Charlton, Trinity Western University: Building on the Waste Places: The New Monasticism and the Re-imagining of Christian Community

Faith, Economics and the Marketplace (Treasure Room)
• Darin Davis, Baylor University: session chair
• Samuel Seaman and David Smith, Pepperdine University: Why Business Needs the Humanity of Christian Imagination
• Timothy A. Beach-Verhey, Davidson College: Re-imagining Vocation: Unlocking the Iron Cage of Contemporary Work and Economics
• David J. Dunn, Vanderbilt University: The High, the Holy, and the Huckstered

The Art of the Written and Spoken Word (Browning Salon)
• Phillip J. Donnelly, Baylor University: session chair
• Chris Willerton, Abilene Christian University: Dorothy L. Sayers, the Trinity and the Reader’s Imagination
• Brenda J. Powell, University of St. Thomas (Minnesota): Storytelling and Ritual: Mythos and Logos in Marele Day’s Lambs of God
• Trygve Johnson, Hope College: The Preacher as Liturgical Artist: Metaphor, Identity and the Homiletic Imagination

The Christian Imagination of C. S. Lewis (Lecture Hall)
• Douglas V. Henry, Baylor University: session chair
• Adam Barkman, Institute for Christian Studies: “Trickling Down to Irrigate the Dust-bowl of Modern Economic Statecraft": C. S. Lewis, Monarchy and the Imagination
• Sarah B. Thurow: The ‘Baptized Imagination’ of C. S. Lewis: An Evaluation of the Chronicles of Narnia
• Christopher Miller, Judson College: Imaging Transpositions: Sacred, Abundant, and Blissful Uncertainty

10:00 to 10:30 a.m.

Break

10:30 a.m. to 12:00 p.m.

Invited Sessions

Being and the Christian Imagination (Foyer of Meditation)
• Todd Buras, Baylor University: session chair
• William Desmond, Villanova University
• Oliva Blanchette, Boston College

Culture and the Christian Imagination (Treasure Room)
• Andrew Wisely, Baylor University: session chair
• Nicholas Boyle, University of Cambridge
• Tracey Rowland, John Paul II Institute for Marriage & Family — Melbourne

12:00 to 1:30 p.m.

Lunch (Banquet Room)

1:30 to 3:00 p.m.

Concurrent Sessions

The Human Person and the Embodied Believer (Seminar Room)
• Anthony Baker, Episcopal Theological Seminary of the Southwest: session chair
• Justyna Braun: Franciscan University of Steubenville: “Before the food can grow": Human Body and Sacramental Imagination in Sigrid Undset’s Kristin Lavransdatter
• Brian Gregor, Boston College: Mimesis, Human Being, and Imitatio Christi: Kierkegaardian Resources for Thinking about the Christian Imagination
• Brent Waters, Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary: Posthumanism and Christianity as Competing Religions

Christian Transformation of History through Imagination (Browning Salon)
• Christina Hemati, Baylor University: session chair
• Michael G. Ditmore, Pepperdine University: “What God Speaks through the Events of Our Lives": Memory, Wisdom, and Imagination in the Memoirs of Frederick Buechner
• Martha Greene Eads, Eastern Mennonite University: Lives and Liberties: Case Studies in Contemporary Fiction
• William Van Arragon, Calvin College: Narration against Time: Johann Baptist Metz’s Theology of Dangerous Memory and Christian Historical Imagination

Musical Imagination: Theory, Composition and Christian Narratives (Lecture Hall)
• Robin Wallace, Baylor University: session chair
• Janet Henshaw Danielson, Simon Fraser University/Regent College: The Exploitation and Subversion of Isochronic Time in the Music of J.S. Bach
• Lucinda Sloan, Midland Lutheran College: Beethoven and MacMillan: The Language of the Divine
• Cynthia R. Nielsen, University of Dallas: The Anti-Enlightenment Nature of Jazz: Embracing Particularity and Universality, Freedom and Form, Tension and Resolution

Justice, Natural Law, and the Common Good (Foyer of Meditation)
• Francis J. Beckwith, Baylor University: session chair
• Jeremy Neill, Saint Louis University: Commensurable Values, Distributive Justice, and the Christian Juridical Tradition
• Jonathan J. Sanford, Franciscan University of Steubenville: Christianity, Liberalism and Some Contemporary Confusions about Social Justice
• John C. Médaille, University of Dallas: Equity and Equilibrium: Distributive Justice and the Market

The Christian Imagination of Flannery O’Connor (Treasure Room)
• Jonathon McIntosh, University of Dallas: session chair
• Jane Kelly Rodeheffer, Saint Mary’s University of Minnesota: “I have eaten it like Ezekial": Images of Exile, Lamentation, and Redemption in Flannery O’Connor’s The Lame Shall Enter First
• Dianne Zandstra, Calvin College: Grace and the Grotesque in Flannery O’Connor and Griselda Gambaro
• Stephen D. Barnes, University of Dallas / College of the Ozarks: The Agony of Achievement, the Agony of Defeat: Struggling for Hope in the Careers of Flannery O’Connor and William Faulkner

Christian Perspectives on Society and Culture (Research Hall)
• Benjamin J. Bruxvoort Lipscomb, Houghton College: session chair
• Virginia La Grand, Trinity Christian College: The Christian Castaway Builds the City: J.R.R. Tolkien, Alasdair MacIntyre, and St. Augustine
• David VanDrunen, Westminster Seminary California: The Christological Turn in 20th Century Reformed Cultural Thought: Kuyper and Barth on the Natural Law and Two Kingdoms Traditions
• Daniel P. Payne, Baylor University: The Christian Hellenism of Fr.