Forum on Religion and Society
Patrick Miller's 2009 Lecture Now Online
Patrick D. Miller has published an essay that began as his 2009 James Luther Adams Forum on Religion and Society. Read "James Luther Adams as Biblical Theologian," Theology Today 66 (2010): 430-444 [pdf].
2011-2012 Lecturer: George Kimmich Beach.
The James Luther Adams Foundation announces the sixteenth annual James Luther Adams Forum on Religion and Society. The Rev. Dr. George Kimmich Beach, one of Adams's leading interpreters, will speak on the topic "'What's Past Is Prologue': James Luther Adams and the Unitarian Universalists."
Beach, a student and friend of Adams, has edited three collections of Adams's essays: The Prophethood of All Believers, An Examined Faith, and The Essential James Luther Adams. He has interpreted Adams's thought in various publications, including Transforming Liberalism: The Theology of James Luther Adams (2003). A graduate of Oberlin College (AB), Harvard Divinity School (STB, Th.M.), and Wesley Theological Seminary (D.Min.), he was awarded an honorary doctorate from Meadville Lombard Theological School in 1987. He served Unitarian Universalist churches in New York, Massachusetts, Texas, and Virginia, and an urban ministry in Cleveland, Ohio.
Adams, a self-described "come-outer" from fundamentalism, was drawn to Unitarianism during his undergraduate years at the University of Minnesota. He was a parish minister, social activist, denominational leader, and professor of theology and social ethics at Meadville Lombard, Harvard, and Andover Newton theological schools; he profoundly influenced his adopted faith.
The lecture will address three questions: What drew Adams to the Unitarian community and, despite sharp critiques, sustained his commitment to the liberal church? What was his impact on the Unitarian and Unitarian Universalist movement, institutionally, interpersonally, and intellectually? And what distinctive themes of Adams's thought should we develop to continue his creative ferment among religious liberals?
Responding to Beach's lecture will be the Rev. Thomas R. Schade, senior minister of First Unitarian Church of Worcester, Massachusetts, and Michael S. Hogue, associate professor of theology at Meadville Lombard Theological School in Chicago.
The forum will be November 10, 2011, at 7:00 p.m. at Wilson Chapel, Andover Newton Theological School, 210 Herrick Rd., Newton, Massachusetts.
2010-2011 Lecturer: John R. Wilcox
The James Luther Adams Foundation announces the fifteenth annual James Luther Adams Forum on Religion and Society. Dr. John R. Wilcox, vice president for mission at Manhattan College, will speak on the topic "Together and by Association: The Legacy of James Luther Adams and the Future of Religious Colleges and Universities."
Dr. Wilcox, a former Marist brother, joined the religious studies faculty of Manhattan College in 1974 and chaired the department for eight years. As vice president for mission, Wilcox organizes events that celebrate the college's Lasallian heritage. Wilcox is most familiar to Adams scholars through Taking Time Seriously: James Luther Adams (1978). He is the author or coauthor of several books about religious higher education, including Enhancing Religious Identity: Best Practices from Catholic Campuses (2000) and The Leadership Compass: Values and Ethics in Higher Education (1994).
The Rev. Dr. Gary Dorrien, Reinhold Niebuhr Professor of Social Ethics at Union Theological Seminary and Professor of Religion at Columbia University, will deliver a response. Dorrien is the author of the trilogy The Making of American Liberal Theology, Social Ethics in the Making: Interpreting an American Tradition, and many other books.
The forum will be March 31, 2011, at 4:00 p.m. at Manhattan College in Riverdale, in the Bronx, New York. (Directions)
2009-2010 Lecturer: Don Browning
The James Luther Adams Foundation announces the fourteenth annual James Luther Adams Forum on Religion and Society. The lecture will be given this year by the well-known Christian ethicist Don S. Browning, the Alexander Campbell Professor Emeritus of Ethics and the Social Sciences at the University of Chicago Divinity School. The title of his lecture is, "Religion and Civil Society in James Luther Adams, Reformed Theology, and Catholicism." Professor Browning was a long-time friend of Adams going back to his Chicago and Harvard days. He is also well-known for his relating Christian ethics to pastoral counseling. The Rev. Ian Evison, Congregational Services Director for the Central Midwest District of the Unitarian Universalist Association, will be the respondent.
The forum will be Thursday, October 15, 2009, at 4:00 p.m. in Swift Hall of the University of Chicago Divinity School. A reception will follow in the Common Room.
2009 Lecturer: Patrick Miller
The 2009 James Luther Adams Forum on Religion and Society will be held Monday, January 12, at Princeton Theological Seminary in Princeton, N.J. The forum will take place at 1:15 p.m. in the Erdman Center.
The speaker is Dr. Patrick D. Miller, Charles T. Haley Professor of Old Testament Theology Emeritus at Princeton Theological Seminary, who will address Adams's use of the Bible.
2007-2008 Lecturer: Michelle Campagnolo Bouvier
The 2007-2008 James Luther Adams Foundation Forum on Religion and Society will be held on April 6, 2008, at 7:00 p.m. at the Emerson Unitarian Universalist Church in Houston, Texas.
The lecture will be given by Michelle Campagnolo Bouvier, Secretary General of the Société Européenne de Culture in Venice, Italy. She will discuss her own contacts with Adams as well as his significant relationships with her father, André Bouvier, and her husband, Umberto Campagnolo.
She will be setting her reflections in the wider context of Adams's collaboration with her father in the ecumenical field and will be looking for traces of the influence of Harvard Divinity School, where Adams taught, on them. She is pleased to be drawing particular attention to Adams's ecumenical interests, a topic that the Forum has not yet treated at length. She will discuss Adams's influence on the ecumenical movement and particularly upon the development of the Société Européenne de Culture.
Harvey Cox's 2007 Lecture Now Online
The text of Professor Harvey Cox's lecture, delivered March 15 as the 2006-2007 James Luther Adams Forum on Religion and Society, is now available online as a PDF. In his address, Cox examines the rise of evangelical and Pentecostal churches in Brazil — known as crentes — which illustrate many of Adams's ideas about voluntary associations. Cox asks what crentes are doing in Latin America to nurture the rise of genuine democracy and how they are beginning to influence public policy.
2006-2007 Lecturer: Harvey Cox
This year's James Luther Adams Forum on Religion and Society will be held on Tuesday, March 13, 2007, at 5:15 p.m. in the Sperry Lecture Hall of Harvard Divinity School in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
The lecture will be given this year by Dr. Harvey G. Cox, Jr., Hollis Professor of Divinity, at the Divinity School. His topic will be "James Luther Adams: Evangelical Unitarian or Unitarian Evangelical?" Professor Cox is eminently qualified to speak on this topic as a doctoral student and former colleague of Adams on one hand. On the other hand he has an active knowledge of Evangelicalism from his own background, including InterVarsity in college, and from team teaching courses at Harvard with outstanding Evangelical and Pentecostal scholars. This interest has also been reflected in his writings.
A reception will follow.