Christianity and the Life of the mind 2021: Talks

Welcome, DCM conference participants!

Please find our speakers’ pre-recorded talks below, produced especially for this year’s conference.

We’ve provided discussion question prompts for each of the three talks. We recommend you take notes as you watch to prepare for Saturday’s discipline-based discussion groups. We also strongly encourage you to read the short six page paper that accompanies Stephen Tuck and John Coffey’s talk before watching their video.

Enjoy!
The DCM Team


"Difficult histories: Christian memory and historic injustice”
Stephen Tuck (History, Pembroke College) and John Coffey (History, Leicester)
Short Paper (please read BEFORE watching the discussion)


Discussion questions:

  1. What were some of the main points in this talk? 

  2. Historians deal with memory. And sin impacts memory. Professor Tuck and Coffey have illustrated what we can learn from the Bible about how we can remember more faithfully. What does your discipline deal with primarily in a single word (i.e. if not memory, what? observation? experience? reflection?). How does sin impact that singular idea/activity and what can we learn from scripture about how to engage in the activity more faithfully?

  3. Nearly every Christian learns to read scripture from within some tradition of interpretation (whether Evangelical, Catholic, Pentecostal, Othodox, etc.). In what tradition did you learn to read scripture? How open was your tradition to “Reading scripture from below” (or rather from the perspective of the oppressed or disenfranchised) see subtitle on page 3. 

  4. Page 6 highlights the passage, “If we care about truth and justice and the interracial promise of the gospel, we must develop a less selective, and more biblical, memory.” What might it look like to develop “a less selective, and more biblical, memory” in your discipline?

    • Does your discipline reflect on its own history? If not, why not? What might be missed by not so reflecting? 

‘Surprised by the God of hope’
Rev. Professor N. T. Wright (Theology, Wycliffe Hall)
Talk Scripture Texts

Discussion questions:

  1. What were some of the main points in this talk? 

  2. Wright describes the Christian hope as being not that we might go to heaven to live with God, but that God is coming down to the renewed earth to dwell with redeemed humanity. How does this account fit with your own understanding of the Christian hope? 

    1. What difference would adopting Wright’s account of Christian hope make to the mission of the Church? To the work of the university? To your discipline? 

  3. Wright suggests that to develop a Christian mind we need “a refreshed Biblical theology”. What are the chief barriers for you in approaching your work and scholarship through a biblically informed imagination?

  4. Wright argues that what one believes about the ultimate future, and how that future was realized in advance in Jesus, radically affects how one understands the present time and one’s responsibilities within it, including one's political responsibility. How have your beliefs about Christ and God’s future shaped your engagement with the world politically? Academically? 

  5. How might embracing the “multicultural unity of the worshipping Church” as integral to God’s renewal of all creation reshape our understanding of the Church’s mission? 

    1. How might our work as Christian scholars contribute to the fulfillment of that mission?

‘Explanations & Questions; Mechanism & Meaning’
Katherine Blundell (Astrophysics, St John's College)

Discussion Questions:

  1. What were some of the main points in this talk? 

  2. What aspects of the doctrine of creation are most relevant to your discipline?

  3. The doctrine of creation explains why we expect the universe to exhibit properties like uniformity, rationality, and intelligibility. What might be the significance of this for your discipline?

  4. How does the doctrine of creation relate to disciplines outside the natural sciences, like the humanities and the social sciences? 

  5. How does it help to see the world from within the Christian faith?

  6. How might being a worshiper of Christ change the way in which you experience the world? How might that shape your approach to your discipline?