John Rawls, Sovereignty, and the Suspension of Anathema

– Kathleen Roberts Skerrett, Grinnell College

In an unpublished note, “On My Religion,” John Rawls recalled the reasons for his de-conversion from Christianity. He recounted that his experiences as a soldier in World War II created within him a terrible aversion to theological justifications of violence. He became convinced that the “great curse of Christianity” was the persecution of dissenters as heretics. We have grown accustomed to reading Rawls as a “contractarian” political theorist and a philosopher of public reasonableness. Yet the word “contract” very rarely appears in the hundreds of pages of Political Liberalism, and the phrase “public reasonableness” was very strictly defined. Rawls was more openly concerned with the problem of political legitimacy — the proper exercise of sovereign power through legitimate force. In this, he opposed Carl Schmitt who argued that legitimacy depends upon the sovereign decision to distinguish citizen from foe. This decision sanctifies a democracy by anathematizing the “providential foes” that pose an existential threat to its existence. The state can therefore legitimately demand from its citizens the readiness to die and to kill its foes in exchange for peace within its territory. As Miguel Vatter has observed, this is the “original position” of citizens in Schmitt’s account. But here the enemy has the status of heretic. Rawls found this deeply immoral. His own account of the “original position” made persecution of dissenters as heretics unthinkable. Yet Rawls’s famous “proviso” holds that religious citizens will at some undetermined time frame their arguments in terms of a reasonable conception of justice. I argue that this should not be read as an I.O.U. to put one’s case in secular or contractual terms. Rather, it is a commitment to suspend anathema as a legitimate exercise of sovereign power.

Panel: Strangers in a Strange Land: Engaging Religious Pluralism in Canadian Contexts

– Robert Mundle, University of St. Michael’s College (Chair)

With diversity a defining characteristic of Canadian culture, this workshop will address the public roles of religion and theology in a multi-faith and intercultural society. For example, it will question what theologians may contribute to Canadian workplaces, including business environments and healthcare systems, which seek a productive “values consensus.” And it will respond to the institutionalist charge that theological “contracting” for behavioural ethics is now inefficient and ineffective. (Wagner-Tsukamato, 2008).

This workshop will engage these questions with reference to specific Canadian contexts of workplace ethics, hospital chaplaincy, immigration policy analysis, missiology and right relations with First Nations.

In the course of the workshop, brief case scenarios will be presented for discussion; arguments for and against the leading theological approaches and paradigms for inter-religious dialogue will be reviewed; and participants will be engaged in focused discussion and debate. A respondent will summarize and critique the details of the workshop.

The four presenters include a business ethicist/theologian, a board certified hospital chaplain, an Anglican Priest from India, and a Roman Catholic Priest from Ghana. Each will thus bring to this presentation a unique perspective and valuable insights gained from professional experience.

Participants in this workshop will gain front-line data on a variety of theological challenges from various representative Canadian contexts, and will share creative strategies for approaching inter-religious dialogue.

Summaries of various theological approaches, an annotated bibliography of recent publications, and links to online resources on the topic of religious pluralism as theological challenge will be provided.

Presenters

• John Dalla Costa, PhD candidate, Regis College, University of Toronto

• Robert Mundle, PhD candidate, University of St. Michael’s College, University of Toronto; Chaplain, Toronto Rehabilitation Institute

• Rev. Manoj M. Zacharia, PhD candidate, Trinity College, University of Toronto

• Rev. Jerome Damst, PhD candidate, Regis College, University of Toronto

Connecting Cities, Engaging Politics: An Examination of Contemporary Augustinian Mappings of the Public

– Stephen W. Martin, The King’s University College

While his appeal has historically extended across the theological spectrum, Augustine has recently gained an innovative reading among younger political theologians seeking a way beyond tired liberal and conservative polarities. This paper engages the work of two such writers: William T. Cavanaugh and Charles T. Mathewes. Both writers eschew a model of “public theology” that professes to mediate Christian “particularity” and “the naked public square.” The ekklesia is for each the primary locus for Christian political action.

In contrast to Cavanaugh, Mathewes develops a theology of citizenship which claims involvement in the civitas terrena can provide a site of training for membership of the City of God. Cavanaugh’s relation of the two cities is more radically disjunctive, assuming an apocalyptic understanding of their respective times (saeculum and eschaton), while suggesting each contests the same space. Because of its narrow mapping of the world into territorially defined “nations” and restrictive and exclusive “citizenships,” the nation-state represents cupiditas, love turned in on itself. The nation-state therefore represents a rival soteriology to that of the ekklesia, in contrast to the latter’s genuinely cosmopolitan caritas.

However, Cavanaugh leaves open the question of how to engage in a politics in situations where the breakdown of the nation-state coincides with near “apocalyptic” social crises such as HIV-Aids, refugees, and desperate poverty. Mathewes offers another Augustinian way of enacting citizenship, where constructive engagement with state actors can both prevent the church from morphing into a substitute state, thus loosening eschatological tension, while limiting evil in that part of the world.

Lord of Two Cities: Christological or Political Realism in Augustine’s City of God?

– Jane Barter Moulaison, University of Winnipeg

Perhaps more than any other theologian, Augustine of Hippo has been marshalled to champion a broad range of causes, both theological and secular. One of the surprising areas in which Augustine has been appropriated is in political theory, as his City of God is often read as a treatise on the nature of politics rather than a work of theology. This is even true within certain liberal Protestant theologies, in which doctrine is often eclipsed by polity. Specifically, several liberal Protestants concerned with maintaining the church’s prominent position within the public square have found within Augustine’s City of God not only a salutary description of the vexed nature of political striving within a fallen world, but also a justification for the abiding status of the City of God’s ministers within the earthly city. Yet, a strong case for the relevance of an ecclesial voice within politics demands apologetic moves which either neglect or water down the particular status ascribed to Christ as Lord of both cities by Augustine in the City of God. One of the most influential retrievals of Augustine for the purposes of political theory is that of Reinhold Niebuhr. Reinhold Niebuhr considered Augustine the father of Christian realism–a chastened and unidealized account of the nature of the fallen political world and Christians’ rueful yet necessary reconciliation to it. In Niebuhr’s hands, Augustine assists in underwriting Christian participation within liberal democracy, viewed not merely as a necessary concession within the earthly city, but a positive Christian duty. However, the profound influence of Niebuhr’s reading of Augustine has had the effect of obscuring several significant differences between his political theology and that of Augustine. Most significantly, in my view, a Niebuhrian reading of the City of God obscures the role that Christ as Lord of the two cities plays in these respective theologians’ accounts of Christian responsibility and possibility.

Desire, Discipline, and the Political Body

– Nathan Colborne, Nipissing University

This paper is an attempt to develop an Augustinian response to political problems diagnosed by Michel Foucault’s analysis of modern political power. Foucault argues that the primary acts of power in the modern age are not repressive acts but creative ones. Instead of prohibiting acts, political power disciplines, rehabilitates and normalizes. The result of this is a disciplined and docile subject within which relations of power are so deeply embedded that ‘liberation’ can only bring about their entrenchment and the absorption of all aspects of life into the political structures they represent. Foucault’s alternative consists in practices of aesthetic self-creation not linked to transcendent or natural construals of order. I argue, however, that within Augustine’s account of the purposive nature of love and desire within the subject lies an implicit critique of Foucault’s ethic of aesthetic self-creation. The articulation of a non-immanent eudaimonism allows Augustine to resist the process of a totalizing normalization without collapsing into incoherence. I will then attempt to outline the significant characteristics of a political posture formed by the practice of the Eucharist. These characteristics provide an alternative to both modern political practice and Foucauldian practice and address Foucault’s concerns more adequately than his own attempt at aesthetic self-creation can.

The Imago Dei and Charles Darwin: Understanding the Human as Co-creator in an Evolving and Globalized World

– Simon Watson, Emmanuel College

Traditionally the imago Dei has been defined using specific traits inherent to “man.” These traits distinguish and privilege men over both women and the natural world. Theologians like Augustine, Aquinas, Irenaeus, Athanasius, and Clement of Alexandria conceived of the imago Dei as man’s powers of reason and free will, engraved on man’s soul like a seal. However, with Darwin’s publication of The Origin of the Species in 1859 and The Descent of Man in 1871, this distinction of human beings over the natural world became far less clear. How does one understand the imago Dei in the face of the gradualism which is inherent to natural selection? When did the first “man” step forth in the incremental process, which is Darwinian evolution, to receive the imago Dei? How does one understand humanity’s significance despite a scientific revolution in which human beings are pushed from the centre, in which Copernicus proclaimed a universe heliocentric not geocentric? Moreover, how is the imago Dei qualified considering the example of Christ, who is understood by Christians as God’s perfect image? Is it necessary to restrict the imago Dei to the human race? In exploring these questions, and approaching humans as co-creators with God, the phenomenon of cultural evolution will be considered. Unlike other animals who are dependent on genetic mutations for adaptation, humans use language, learning, and their “collective intelligence” to adapt their environment to suit their needs. Emphasized in this discussion will be the contextuality of theology and the importance of being self-critical.

Re-Imagining Christians and Public Space: Building Intercultural Communities

– Marilyn Legge, Emmanuel College

Recent demographics from Statistics Canada estimate that by the year 2017 people who are “visible minorities” will be one-fifth of the nation and more than half of the population of Toronto. A salient moral challenge of the matrix of communities and networks in a globalized, violent, and exquisitely created world, therefore, is the intercultural–mutually reciprocal relationships among and between cultures. In this context, moral life can be understood as a search to navigate and relate religious life, various publics and everyday life in mutually and publically beneficial ways. This task deeply depends on images whereby we try to interpret our own sufferings, problems and joys in relation to the experiences of concrete others and their social worlds. The hearty notion of Christian ethics as a performative “art-science” relies on imagination. It is the power to sort, shape and connect disparate elements of social worlds using images, symbols, stories, theories and rituals. Imagination evokes ‘passion for the possible.’ Theologically, passion of and for God and God’s beloved community is the basis of noninstrumental relations with and for others. Embracing the Spirit’s gift of life and passing it along moves people beyond fixed character, social roles, and institutional arrangements. One intercultural church project has envisioned its task of ecclesial negotiation as being inseparable from racial justice. This paper will explore how imagination functions as the creative capacity necessary for the inherently practical, interdisciplinary and evaluative character of Christian praxis and then inquire into the adequacy of theo-ethical criteria–for example, interstitial integrity, ‘world-travelling’, accountability and inclusion–as fitting this moral vision.

Anticipatio et Recapitulatio: Christology and Time in Karl Barth

– Adrian Langdon, McGill University

The relation of eternity and time is a constant theme in Karl Barth’s Church Dogmatics. But it is also one of more complex themes. Central to the eternity-time relation is christology and time.

Barth, for example, makes some of the following claims: “The raison d’être of all time, both past and future, is that there should be this fulfillment at this particular time” (III/2, 459); Jesus Christ is the “Contemporary of all men” (III/2, 440); and past, present, and future are not “an absolute barrier” but “for Him in His time a gateway” (III/2, 464). Though it is quite clear that Christology is central for Barth’s view, it is less clear whether or not it can be coherently understood. Examining the pertinent sections of CD III and IV, this paper suggests that the coherency of Barth’s view may be understood using the categories of anticipation and recapitulation. The anticipation of the Christological fulfillment of time occurs in pretemporal election, created time, and the history of Israel. While recapitulation refers both to Christ’s retrieving and redirecting of time. Jesus-history retrieves the original intent of created time — that is, proper covenantal relations – and in so doing heals fallen time. But his filling of time is not static; Jesus-history continues in the flow of time and history on the way to the eschaton
— redirecting all subsequent history.

Karl Barth and the Emergence of New Religious Movements

– Jeffrey A. McPherson, Taylor University College

In section 17 of the Church Dogmatics, Karl Barth engages the question of the nature of religion and more particularly the question of Christianity’s status as religion. In the midst of a discussion of “Religion as Unbelief” Barth enters into an analysis of religion that moves beyond theology into a phenomenological account of the function and ultimate failure of religion. In the context of this discussion Barth considers a rationale for the emergence of New Religious Movements (NRMs) and the role that they play with respect to religion and culture, generally speaking. This paper will examine the justification that Barth provides for the emergence of NRMs and place his reasoning in dialogue with more familiar accounts of the emergence of NRMs from theorists such as Peter Berger, or Rodney Stark and William Sims Bainbridge.

This paper will engage the following questions: Does Barth’s phenomenological account of religion add anything to our understanding of the emergence and function of NRMs? How does Barth’s theological account of the nature and function of religion compare to his phenomenological account? This paper will argue that Barth’s account of the function of religion, both theologically and phenomenologically, offers challenging yet ultimately helpful ways of understanding NRMs from a Christian perspective.

Memory and Place: Rethinking Theological Contextuality in a Global Era

– Thomas Reynolds, Emmanuel College

The reality of globalization and the recognition of a robust and diverse World Christianity make the matter of “context” an increasingly important criterion in theological reflection. While liberation theologies have underscored the contextual nature of theology in socially embedded praxis orientations, further nuances may be added by attending to theology as a performance in particular relational and bodily matrixes that involve collective memories and a sense place with others. The proposed paper suggests that globalization has a dramatic affect on this process by disembedding and homogenizing communal memories and dislocating and deterritorializing ways of dwelling in places with others. In this light, drawing on the work of authors like Anthony Giddens, Paul Ricoeur, Alister MacIntyre, Kwok Pui-lan, Lamin Sanneh, and Orlando Espín, a theology of tradition is proposed that rethinks “context” and affirms diverse ways of dwelling together in the shared memory of God’s redemptive work in Jesus Christ. The key claim is that theology is a transformative performance that enacts the hybridic and differentiating nature of Christian formation, having a temporal depth whose sense of place is porous and unstable. This has the double advantage of affirming certain aspects of globalization (i.e., pluralism and intercultural engagement) and critiquing others (i.e., dislocation, marginalization, and homogenization).

Spirituality and the Question of Intellectual Sustainability in the Contemporary University

– Sara Terreault, Concordia University

Spirituality has emerged within the last generation as a distinct interdisciplinary metafield of scholarly study within the academy. It has been received with enthusiasm and appreciation (and significant registration numbers) by college and university students across the disciplines, even while many academics both outside and –  interestingly — within the disciplines of theology and religious studies have responded with contention, bewilderment, even dismissal. Meanwhile, spirituality scholars continue to refine definition and delineation of the field, professional associations and journals multiply, and a widening variety of other fields increasingly seek out and draw upon their research.

This paper reflects on elements of my doctoral research, in which “spirituality” shall not only be defended as a legitimate area of scholarly study but indeed proposed as the very locus in and from which academia might recover an expanded notion of intellect, releasing it from corrosively reductive cultural biases found in modern epistemological, social and political tendencies. Spirituality emerges as a field uniquely equipped to bear the freight of both secular and religious insight, and thus as genuinely prepared to recognise and serve our irreducibly pluralist, arguably post-secular society. It is this field that best offers a scholarly gathering place for authentically comprehensive yet critical interdisciplinary inquiry, provoking in the process a radical reassessment of the tasks and missions of the contemporary university itself. It is exactly the resources of a robust discipline of spirituality studies that can best foster the university as place for the production, transmission, and practice not only of knowledge but of wisdom.

Thorstein Veblen and the Social Gospel Critique of Capitalism

– Rob Fennell, Atlantic School of Theology

The first paper (presented by a member of the United Church of Canada teaching in an ecumenical theological college) will trace the connection between economist Thorstein Veblen and the Chicago and New York schools of Social Gospel thought to illuminate the ways in which some Social Gospel thinkers, perhaps including J. S. Woodsworth, approached their critique of the theory, practice, and effects of contemporary capitalism. The paper will conclude with reflections on the current global economic “crisis” and renewed criticisms of the “free market” and the greed principle of capitalism.

The Canadian Social Gospel: Historical Review and Present Prospects

– Bob McKeon, St. Joseph’s College, University of Alberta

The second paper (presented by a Roman Catholic teaching in a Catholic college) will review the different moments of the Canadian Social Gospel — the “classic” Social Gospel movement of the early twentieth century and the renewed ecumenical social justice collaboration of the late 1960s through the early 1990s — and review the Canadian Social Gospel in terms of the challenges of a new social and ecclesial context at the start of the twenty-first century, with attention to the nature of church social engagement and the theological method and foundations underlying that engagement.

Re-imagining Social Christianity

– Wendy Fletcher, Vancouver School of Theology

The third paper (presented by an Anglican teaching in an ecumenical theological college) will offer a critical examination of the Social Gospel movement through the lens of what happened next — namely, the decline of mainline Protestantism and the work of re-imagining a social Christianity in the decades after the Social Gospel experience.

Church, Pleroma and Parousia: The Spatial Eschatology of Thomas F. Torrance

– Stanley MacLean, Concordia University

Theologians have tended to define eschatology largely in terms of time. This paper demonstrates that Thomas F. Torrance (1913- 2007) is one theologian who thinks about eschatology both in terms of time and physical space. This makes it an eschatology that is of special relevance today, when there is concern about the loss of physical space and the identities that are bound up with it.

The key to Torrance’s eschatology is his Christology and his understanding of time and space. The Church is the Body of Christ in the world, but the Church looks forward to the second advent of Christ in time. Yet as the Body of Christ it also grows extensively in created space. However, this growth must not be understood as organic or institutional. It is a growth towards pleroma (fullness) in space in correlation and response to the ascended Christ’s mission to fill all things. The Church’s growth is really the growth of the new humanity, which is essentially a communion of love. The Church grows as it carries out its mission to the world. This is a mission patterned after the Suffering Servant. The Church grows, then, by denying itself and by becoming a reconciling, peacemaking community in the world.

Further, Torrance believes the new scientific understanding of time (i.e., time-space) confirms his theological insights. The interrelation between space and time dictates that we cannot separate the time of the Church from the space of the Church. Moreover, the time of the parousia (presence, coming) of Christ cannot be understood apart from the Church’s movement towards pleroma.

American Empire? How Hardt and Negri Challenge Conventional Political and Theological Assumptions of Space

– Jeff Nowers, Emmanuel College

Within the last number of years, especially in the wake of 9/11, language of “American
empire” has become commonplace. The idea that the United States presently constitutes
an empire with classic imperialist intentions has been embraced by a range of popular
writers and academics. In 2000, however, Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri published
their collaborative work titled Empire, a dense book which offers a new, unprecedented
understanding of contemporary political reality, one which contradicts the idea of
“American empire.”

Though Hardt and Negri have provoked numerous critical (even condemnatory)
responses from political philosophers, their work has generally received only cursory
attention from theologians and biblical scholars interested in the relation of Christian
faith to empire. One possible explanation for this meager theological reception is the
density and nuanced complexity of Hardt and Negri’s arguments, which require time to
ponder and digest. My chief aim, then, in this paper is to lay out with concision the
defining features of Hardt and Negri’s project. Chief among these features are the notion
of empire as “decentered” and “deterritorializing,” and the emphasis on “immanence” as
that which conceives of the powers of creation as not consigned to some sort of “heaven”
but resident in the earth itself. In the concluding half of the paper, I discuss how these
features offer a way forward for theologians to think in new and constructive ways about
the present significance of the United States. I also discuss how Hardt and Negri can
help prompt a “decentered” ecclesiology that avoids the trap of nationalism, and a
doctrine of God that is more grounded in “relational transcendence” than a distinct
otherness.

Micro-missional Ecclesial Identity

– Frank Emanuel, Saint Paul University

My paper will discuss the influence of small liturgical space on the self-identity of evangelicals in the missional/emerging church movements of North America. There is a growing popularity amongst North American evangelicals to celebrate liturgies in small group settings. This shift is a rejection of the mega-church model by the disparate movements identifying with the missional and emerging church. The dissatisfaction with the mega-church model has called into question, for these individuals, what it means to be a faith community. My paper considers that these movements represent an exploration of ecclesial identity for such faith communities. I will explore some of the emerging theological innovations and assertions that result from attempting to construct a sense of self-identity, as a faith community. I will focus my attention primarily on the smaller liturgical settings that are emerging within the North American evangelical context. This paper represents a continuation of my research into the theology of the North American Evangelical emerging church.

Following the thinking of James Cochrane on incipient theology, this paper will look at the theology that develops through the liturgical life of a micro-missional faith community, hopefully giving us tools, as theologians, to enter into a discourse with what is the actual theological life of these communities.

Student Essay Contest Winner

From Integrative Multiculturalism to Interculturalism: The United Church of Canada’s Vision for Becoming an Intercultural Church

– Hyuk Cho, Emmanuel College (Th.D. student)

in Herzberg, room 4351

Recently the Canadian Heritage Department of the federal government expressed its concern about religious radicalization in Canada. The Heritage department defines one problem facing Canada today as a clash of cultures and suggests the government take action to combat religious extremism by fostering multicultural integration. However, there is a danger in this approach because “integrative multiculturalism,” rather than being a solution for religious radicalization, may instead promote further cultural and religious conflict. This paper explores the problems of integrative multiculturalism and suggests difference be appreciated as a resource for the development of creative and dynamic community. The purpose of this paper is to develop a theory of becoming an intercultural church in the context of the United Church of Canada.

The Inaugural Jay Newman Lecture in the Philosophy of Religion:

Philosophy of Religion: A State of the Subject Report

– John Schellenberg, Professor of Philosophy at Mount Saint Vincent University and Adjunct Professor at Dalhousie University

in Herzberg Laboratories, room 4351

Why philosophy of religion today is so often theologically conservative — the resulting demarcation problem — how both religious and philosophical assumptions are hindering insight in contemporary philosophy of religion — how the resolution of these problems is likely to favour non-conservative rather than conservative theology.

Book Panel

Feminist Theology with a Canadian Accent: Canadian Perspectives on Contextual Feminist Theology (Ottawa: Novalis, 2008)

– Ellen Leonard, St. Michael’s College (Chair)

A discussion of this book is related to the theme of the 2009 Congress, Capital Connections: Nation, Terroir, Territoire. The book is an exploration of Canadian identity. Contextual feminist theology has been subsumed under the rubric of “North American contextual theology.” The nineteen essays in this volume offer feminist theological reflection that is grounded in Canadian contexts and social realities. The work is an important contribution to Canadian theological studies. It has not yet received the attention of the theological community. This panel will provide the opportunity to explore Canadian contextual theologies from a variety of Canadian perspectives.

The following persons have agreed to participate:

• Mary Ann Beavis (St. Thomas More College) as editor will provide an overview of the book

• Denise Nadeau (Interfaith Summer Institute for Justice, Peace and Social Movements; Vancouver School of Theology) will consider the political and social justice issue of reparations to Canadian First Peoples

• Heather Eaton (St. Paul University) will explore nature and identity within Canadian feminist theologies

• Lee Cormie (St. Michael’s College) will respond to the book and to the presenters

Whatever Happened to the New Earth? The Ambiguous Destiny of Creation in Christian Eschatology

– J. Richard Middleton, Roberts Wesleyan College

In the history of Christian eschatology the final state of the righteous has typically been portrayed as transferal from an earthly, historical existence to a transcendent, immaterial real, often termed “heaven.” Although the Hebrew Scriptures, Second Temple Judaism and the New Testament all affirm the goodness of the material creation and even its redemption, the influence of Platonism — with its suspicion of materiality and positing of a superior supersensory realm –began to manifest itself in Christian eschatological ideas, perhaps as early as the second century. The impetus to construe the final state of the righteous as otherworldly has, however, always stood in some tension with the biblical emphasis on the redemption of the world (a new heaven and a new earth). The result has been that often complex and even contradictory ideas have been held together in the same eschatological scheme.

This paper will examine selected theologians from the patristic through the modern period for tensions in their eschatological views. In the case of each theologian, two critical questions will be explored: 1) In what ways does the theologian honour the Hebrew/ Jewish/ early Christian affirmation of the goodness of creation, including the body and the material world, in their eschatology? 2) In what ways does their eschatology show the influence of the Platonic impetus to transcend the material world? The paper will examine ways in which a particular conception of Christian ethics/vocation/mission might be related to a distinctive eschatological vision.

Work in Progress

Taking the Trickster Seriously: Theological Engagement with Aboriginal Trickster Stories

– Chris Wells, University of Winnipeg

The ‘terroir’ of all regions of Canada are flavoured powerfully by the very long presence of Aboriginal peoples. John Ralston Saul discerns these flavours so tangibly that he suggests Canadians would understand themselves better if they identified themselves as métis people. The wine of Canadian theologies would be much closer to vintage if they enjoyed robust, local flavouring as part of their blend. Canadian theologies have been strongly flavoured by grapes grown in a different geography (Europe, for example). Canadian theological winemaking could find some special flavours if the current terroir was boosted.

This paper argues that improving the terroir of Canadian theologies could involve engagement with aboriginal spiritualities and the figure central to them — the Trickster. To not take Tricksters seriously is akin to someone saying they wanted to learn about Christianity, but not Jesus Christ. The mythic power of Trickster humour and playful zest for life could help enrich the flavour of Canadian contextual theology and provide helpful tools for living well together in this part of God’s vineyard. Being rooted in our actual place could provide more vital resources in growing towards Ecological harmony and balance (as in oikos, the whole household).

Faith and Reason and the Catholic Catechism

– Ryan Topping, University of Oxford

In popular and academic discussion faith and reason are often seen as antagonistic or at least indifferent to the claims of each other. Richard Dawkins’ 2006 best seller, The God Delusion, for example, as well as a host of recent books by prominent atheists, has drawn attention to the way that faith is seen by many as destructive to the common good. In our age of religious pluralism, the question of how conflicting claims to revelation can be mediated has become a crucial concern to religious believers and non-believers alike. Through the lens of the recently promulgated Catechism this paper seeks to articulate how one major Christian confession, the Roman Catholic Church, attempts to demonstrate the compatibility of faith and reason. With reference to two alternative secular accounts of the conflict between faith and reason, this paper considers, in particular, by what method theological claims may, if not be demonstrated, at least be presented to those outside of a particular confession in a way that allows for rational scrutiny and evaluation.

Seeking the Common Good Through the Good we have in Common

– Marie Campbell, Concordia University

The theme of this year’s Congress calls us to a moment of critical reflection on who we are — ‘we’ in the context of this paper being the products of Western culture and the Christendom that has shaped it. In this time and in this place, such reflection requires a new process of self-understanding, one that goes beyond the Western hegemony embedded in the ‘forms of capital’ as developed by theorists such as Pierre Bourdieu or Robert Putnam. Rather, the wider lens of the conference theme opens us to the global reality in a way that seeks the inclusion of the other on a new chain of capital connections. Central to the achievement of this goal is an acknowledgement of the human capacity for transcendence, for to enter into the true spirit of the conversation demands no less than the transformation of self, and ultimately of community.

Such engagement, I will argue, should be undertaken on two fronts — sociological and theological. In the first instance, the analytical framework of interculturalism would serve well. With its insistence on interaction, interculturalism is better suited to true engagement than the near-passivity of multi-culturalism. From a theological perspective, this method can be correlated to the larger framework developed by David Hollenbach, which, in moving towards the goal of seeking out “the good we have in common,” calls for our respectful and sustained conversation with the other, a process he describes as “intellectual solidarity.” A “lazy tolerance” that masks indifference in a strategy of non-interference is rejected, and tolerance itself is transformed, becoming the tool that opens minds to intellectual solidarity, and to the achievement of a common vision of the good.

One’s Right Relationship with God: The Theological Dimensions of Sallie McFague’s Call for Ecological Praxis

– Jessica Fraser, Saint Paul’s University

Ecotheologian Sallie McFague calls for a Christian praxis of consumption reduction in response to the ecological crisis. While it has been recognized that the need to change human behaviour in order to mitigate global warming, loss of biodiversity, species extinction, and other aspects of ecological degradation is an ethical need, attending to its priority in theological terms is new. McFague is, to my knowledge, the first theologian to develop the theological implications and demand for such a praxis. For McFague, the need for an ecological praxis of consumption reduction is a matter of one’s right relationship with God.

McFague has developed a systematic ecotheology, and is one of the foremost ecotheologians writing today.2 Interestingly, McFague’s understanding of ecological praxis shifts gradually throughout her work, reflecting a deepening comprehension of praxis, and more nuanced insights into its specifically theological dimensions. By tracking the changes in her understanding of praxis, I explore the foundations of McFague’s call for a Christian ecological praxis of consumption reduction as they are located in the contextual, cosmological, christological, soteriological, and epistemological aspects of her ecotheology.

Gardasil, Girls, and God: When Church, Sexuality and Pharmaceuticals Converge

– Doris M. Kieser, University of Alberta

In 2006 the Government of Canada budgeted $300 million for the administration of Gardasil, a controversial vaccine for Human Papillomavirus (HPV), to girls aged 9-15 across Canada. Each provincial health ministry has been charged with orchestrating the vaccinations, which have taken place primarily within school systems, including Catholic schools. The vaccine has incited controversy on a number of levels. In this paper I will address the Gardasil debate as it pertains to the diverse Roman Catholic responses (theological and otherwise) to the government-initiated administration of the vaccine in Catholic Schools. I will also address the variety of responses to the Church’s involvement in what some commentators deem a strictly public health issue. I will further consider some competing interests that frame the controversy in which Gardasil sits. In particular, I will critically explore the role played by the pharmaceutical industry in baptizing biotechnology as the current focus of worship in the ethical examination of female adolescent sexuality. Finally, regarding ethical sexual activity, I will juxtapose the method and substance of the claims to authority of the Roman Catholic Church (i.e., Christian truths) with those of the pharmaceutical industry (i.e., objective science). The sexual bodies of adolescent females constitute the point of convergence of the claims of these two powerful social institutions. My primary concern in this paper is to explore how these claims affect the sexual flourishing of the adolescent females at the heart of the conversation.