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.
]]>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.
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.
]]>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.
]]>The films are available in DVD or VHS format. See below for details.
Order all three films on DVD for a donation of $45. Write to Jim Stillman, 270 Arborway, Boston MA 02130, email , or call (617) 524-2387.
Order all three films on VHS videocassette for a donation of $100. Write to JLA Foundation, c/o Stephen Mott, 11 Miller Road, Beverly MA 01915, email , or call (978) 927-0216.
]]>In tribute to JLA at the Society of Christian Ethics, Foundation President Stephen Mott said:
"Adams' theology was closely related to his actions. It shaped and he was shaped by his vital role in a labor strike as a young pastor and by his participation in the resisting underground church in Nazi Germany. He founded and was a major participant in scores of voluntary associations, including the presidency of [the Society of Christian Ethics]. During his Chicago years on the Federated Theological Faculty of the University of Chicago in the early forties and fifties, he was heavily involved in Chicago politics and in resisting racism. At Harvard from the mid-fifties through the sixties, he continued to implement his conception that the theological school must be in the midst of the university and that Christian ethics should be taught and worked out in the context of other spheres of life, especially law, business, and the arts."
Since the death of James Luther Adams in 1994, the JLA Foundation has concentrated its work on two objectives.
The first is the preservation and distribution of The Adams Tapes, which are available on videotape and DVD.
The second objective is to maintain his intellectual heritage. Our main channel for that is the annual James Luther Adams Forum on Religion and Society. The purpose is to sponsor lectures on Adams or on topics associated with his particular concerns for relating Christian faith to society. For maximum exposure, they are moved around the country, such as New York City, Chicago, Berkeley, Detroit, St. Paul, Atlanta, Cambridge, Dallas, Washington, Claremont. The topics have included the arts, regional democracy, civil religion, racism, natural law, international order, worship, ecofeminist theology, and Catholic social thought in relationship to Adams’ contributions.
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