Call for Papers: TST 40th Anniversary Conference

Ecumenism and the Challenge of Pluralism: An Interdisciplinary Dialogue

May 7-8, 2010

In May, 2010, North America’s largest ecumenical consortium of theological colleges will be hosting a conference celebrating 40 years of preparing people for ministry and academic theology around the world.  The general theme of this conference is to reflect on the ecumenical calling of the Toronto School of Theology and its calling to train and equip men and women in Christian leadership within a world of almost innumerable and often competing claims.  The Christian faith itself is also comprised of numerous and dissonant communities, each claiming to be participants in the one Church.

A keynote address will be delivered by Dr. John McGukin, a professor at Union Theological Seminary who was installed as the first Ane Marie and Bent Emil Nielsen Professor in Late Antique and Byzantine Christian History in 2008. He is a Stavrophore priest of the Orthodox Church (Patriarchate of Romania) who came to New York from England in 1997 where he was formerly a Reader in Patristic and Byzantine Theology at the University of Leeds.  He has authored numerous books, including St. Gregory of Nazianzus: An Intellectual Biography (2000; Nominated for the 2002 Pollock Biography Prize).  In 2005, Prof. McGuckin was invited onto BBC Radio Belfast for a Public Radio discussion on the meaning of salvation in contemporary thought and life. He is also currently working with Co-Director Norris Chumley on a feature film about monastic prayer life, entitled: ‘Sophia Secret Wisdom.’ In 2007 he was on site filming extensively in Sinai, the Egyptian desert, and the monasteries of Transylvania.

We seek proposals from a wide variety of fields that can speak to this issue and its relation to Christianity, including but not limited to systematic theology, philosophy, biblical studies, history, ethics and pastoral theology.

Proposals should be 300 – 500 words and include your name, the title of the paper and your college/university affiliation.  Proposals are due October 30, 2009.  Please send to conference@adsa.ca.

Free Book: The Sacraments: An Interdisciplinary and Interactive Study

Joseph Martos, author of Doors to the Sacred: A History of Sacraments in the Catholic Church, invites all members of the CTS with a professional interest in sacraments or liturgy, to write to him for a complimentary copy of his forthcoming book, The Sacraments: An Interdisciplinary and Interactive Study, which will be published by Liturgical Press this summer. Please write to him at JMartos@Bellarmine.edu and put the words “Free book” in the subject line.

Announcing the Annual Jay Newman Memorial Lecture in the Philosophy of Religion

Professor Jay Newman

Professor Jay Newman

Jay Newman was a former president and long time member of CTS. He was a prominent Canadian scholar with a keen interest in the philosophy of religion. He authored eleven books, seven relating to religion or the religious life. He was a member of the Department of Philosophy at the University of Guelph from 1971 until his death on June 17, 2007. Professor Newman left a bequest to CTS for the purpose of endowing an annual lecture in the Philosophy of Religion. It is his generosity that enables us to launch this annual lecture this year.

We welcome Professor John Schellenberg to give the 2009 inaugural lecture. John Schellenberg holds an Oxford D.Phil. His first book is the well known Divine Hiddenness and Human Reason. He has just finished a trilogy on the philosophy of religion: Prolegomena to a Philosophy of Religion (2005), The Wisdom to Doubt: a Justification of Religious Skepticism (2007), The Will to Imagine: A Justification of Skeptical Religion (2009).

Dr. Schellenberg’s lecture, entitled “Philosophy of Religion: A State of the Subject Report“, will address 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. The lecture will be given as part of the Annual Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences on Tuesday, May 26th at 11:25 am in the Herzberg Building, room 4351, at Carleton University. For further details, see the complete CTS 2009 program.

2008 Note from the CTS President

Dear Members of CTS:

Welcome to new members, and greetings to all.

Next year’s meeting of the CTS is June 2-4 in Vancouver. The theme of the 2008 Congress is

Thinking Beyond Borders: Global Ideas; Global Values
Penser sans Frontières: Idées Mondiales; Valeurs Mondiales.

Please post the attached Call for Papers and consider papers and or panels which you would like to propose on the theme or other areas of interest. Although the deadline for proposals is January 11, 2008, I would encourage the membership to begin consideration of possible panels now. I would particularly encourage creative formats for proposals, which may require extra time to prepare. Might we explore together alternative pedagogical styles and theories? Joint sessions with our partner societies, such as CSSR, CSBS, CSCH, and CSPS are also strongly encouraged.

The CTS Executive would like to decide on a speaker for our joint lecture in 2010 as the Congress meets at Concordia. We invite you to consider possible speakers that will appeal to our partner members of the Canadian Society for the Study of Religion, the Canadian Society of Biblical Studies, the Canadian Society of Church History and the Canadian Society of Patristic Studies. In the past we have hosted such renowned scholars as Larry Rasmusssen and Ada Maria Isasi-Diaz. Please send suggested names to us by the end of August so that we may begin initial contact and confirm the speaker’s availability.

I’m looking forward to serving you this year as President of the CTS.

Shalom,
Loraine MacKenzie Shepherd