Friday, March 5, 2010

The lecture begins at 12:30 p.m.
Bring a light lunch at 12:15 p.m. Coffee will be provided.

Dr. Jesudas M. Athyal

Edinburgh to Athens: The Rough and Tumble
of Ecumenical Missiology

At the first centenary of the Edinburgh Mission Conference, focus naturally falls on the legacy of this historic event. A significant development since Edinburgh 1910 has been the end of colonialism and the shift ofChristianity’s center of gravity from the North to the South.Despite itscolonial and missionary baggage, Edinburgh 1910 attempted to redefine the meaning of Christian mission for a world coming of age. When we review the momentum created by Edinburgh, what needs to be noted is not so much the grandiosity of the event or triumphalistic slogans such as “the evangelization of the world in this generation,” but the critical voices raised against a crusading spirit and the strong call for unity that rang out at the conference. The challenge today is to recapture this vision for our time.

Dr. Jesudas M. Athyal is a fellow at the Center for Global Christianity and Mission of the Boston University School of Theology. He was associate professor of social analysis and philosophy at the Gurukul Lutheran Theological College, Chennai, India. Dr. Athyal’s books include Mission Today: Subaltern Perspectives (2001) and The Community We Seek: Perspectives on Mission (2003).

Friday, March 19, 2010

The lecture begins at 12:30 p.m.
Bring a light lunch at 12:15 p.m. Coffee will be provided.

Dr. Chloë Starr

Sino-Christian Theology: The Origins
and Development of a Movement

The term “Sino-Christian theology” refers primarily to a movement that began around 1993 and was developed in the mid-1990s by the “church fathers” Liu Xiaofeng and He Guanghu. One of the prime identifying marks of Sino-Christian theology is its adamantly academic nature, with its agenda to have Christian theology recognized as an academic discipline in China and to generate a body of public intellectuals in China who are versed in theological thinking. This theology is not “of the church for the church,” but “from Chinese academia for Chinese academia, facing the church and society.” What effects has Sino-Christian theology had on church beliefs and on the wider society in China? Has the movement now run its course?

Dr. Chloë Starr is assistant professor of Asian Christianity and theology at Yale Divinity School. Her academic interests span Qing dynasty fiction and Chinese Christianity. She has published a monograph and two edited volumes; recent articles include “The Prayer Book in Nineteenth-Century China” and a survey of Chinese para-scriptural texts. She spent the 2008–09 academic year in China and Hong Kong and is currently translating and editing a reader in Chinese theology with materials gathered in that period. She holds honorary research positions at the Institute for Sino-Christian Studies in Hong Kong and in Beijing.

Tuesday, March 23, 2010

The lecture begins at 7:30 p.m.

Dr. Mary C. Nebelsick

“You Visited Me in Prison”: The Philippines,
the Church, and Repression

Political oppression is something that governments can use to silence their opponents. It has been used in the Philippines to intimidate the United Church of Christ in the Philippines—including six members of the Union Theological Seminary community—which opposes the way that the Philippine government is treating the poor. But does a professor of Bible have a choice? Authentically following the mandates of Matthew 25 calls one into potentially dangerous aspects of ministry. This lecture will look at the question of political oppression through the lens of Mary Nebelsick’s experience with her students and with fellow Christians who have been abducted, imprisoned, tortured, and murdered.

Dr. Mary C. Nebelsick is the daughter of Presbyterian missionaries and stands in the tradition of seeing active engagement in the world as mandated by biblical faith. She was born in Berlin, Germany, and grew up in Beirut, Lebanon, and Louisville, Kentucky. She studied at Wellesley College, Princeton Theological Seminary, Heidelberg University, and Philippine Christian University, from which she holds a Ph.D. She and her husband, Paul D. Matheny, are Presbyterian mission coworkers with the United Church of Christ in the Philippines. Since 2001, she has taught biblical studies at Union Theological Seminary and the Graduate School of Philosophy of Religion at Philippine Christian University.

Wednesday, April 7, 2010

The lecture begins at 7:30 p.m.

Dr. Elias Kesrouani

The New Science, Musimedialogy: A Reading of the Ancient Maps of the Middle-Eastern and Eastern Churches and Civilizations

Professor Elias Kesrouani has earned an international reputation for musical compositions in Syriac and Arabic. He has participated in many international conferences, concerts, and colloquia, among them a concert at Royaumont Research Center in France in 2007 and in the scientific colloquium of the Arab Academy of Music in Cairo, annually since 1996. He represented Lebanon at a meeting of experts in New Delhi organized by UNESCO, which discussed the “Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage.” Dr. Kesrouani’s academic activities have taken him to Italy, Algeria, Greece, Morocco, Oman, Jordan, the Netherlands, Bahrain, Tunisia, Syria, Turkey, Kuwait, United Kingdom, and Spain. In addition to being a member of several scientific committees with UNESCO and the Arab Academy of Music, part of the Arab League,

Dr. Kesrouani is founder and research professor in the Department of Music and Musicology at Notre Dame University, Zouk Mosbeh, Lebanon, where he created the university’s discipline called “musimedialogy.” Previously he was dean of the Jordan Academy of Music, and professor at the University of the Holy Spirit, Kaslik, Lebanon, and at the National Higher Conservatory of Music, Beirut. He is also codirector of Ph.D. research at the Sorbonne Paris IV University for Oriental Ethnomusicology.

Friday, April 16, 2010

The lecture begins at 12:30 p.m.
Bring a light lunch at 12:15 p.m. Coffee will be provided.

Dr. Philomena Njeri Mwaura

Christian Identity and Ethnicity in Africa:
Reflections on the Gospel of
Reconciliation

In this lecture Dr. Philomena Njeri Mwaura explores the issue of ethnocentrism. Despite the church’s tremendous growth in Africa during the past century, this problem challenges Christian identity and the authenticity of the church in Africa. Tracing the New Testament markers of Christian identity as transformation in Christ, love, unity, and embrace of the other, Dr. Mwaura argues that only a people who are secure in their Christian identity are able to be authentic witnesses to the Gospel. Paul’s teaching on the ministry of reconciliation is an imperative in diverse contexts where ethnic, national, and religious identities are in conflict and competition. The church must be equipped for this ministry by being prophetic, vigilant, intentionally present and active, and in solidarity with the marginalized.

An OMSC senior mission scholar for the spring semester, Dr. Mwaura is senior lecturer in the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies at Kenyatta University, Nairobi, Kenya. She teaches courses in the areas of African Christian history, new religious movements, African-instituted churches, world Christianity, and gender. She has also been a consultant on gender mainstreaming in education, theology, and HIV/AIDS vaccine clinical trials. She serves on the editorial board of the Journal of World Christianity and is a contributing editor of Mission Studies.

Tuesday, April 20, 2010

The lecture begins at 7:30 p.m.

Mr. Christopher E. George

The U.S. Government Refugee Resettlement
Program: The Challenges of Resettling
Iraqi Refugees

Chris George is executive director of IRIS, Integrated Refugee and Immigrant Services, a New Haven–based refugee resettlement agency. Previously he worked part time at the Connecticut Commission on Children in Hartford and advocated for better government and citizen’s rights by writing several articles on the legislative process, transparency, and voter registration. George began his international career as a Peace Corps volunteer in Muscat, Oman, and spent most of his professional life living in or working on matters relating to the Middle East. Before returning to Connecticut in 2004, he worked seven years in the West Bank and Gaza Strip directing contracts with the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).

Working for the Vermont-based international consulting firm ARD Inc., he directed a project for strengthening the first democratically elected Palestinian parliament and later established an emergency assistance program that gave grants to nonprofit organizations. From 1994 to 1996, George was executive director of Human Rights Watch—Middle East, based in New York City, and he continues to serve on its advisory panel. Prior to that, he worked nine years with Save the Children, mostly in the Middle East, and three years with American Friends Service Committee, mostly in Lebanon.

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