2010 Symposium
2010 Faith, Reason & World Affairs Symposium
Awakening to Wonder: Re-enchantment in a Post-Secular Age
Sept. 14-15
Conventional wisdom has long predicted that rising tides of science, technology and modernization will drown out all sense of mystery, magic and marvel, leaving us in a world stripped of meaning, denuded of wonder, and governed by mechanistic laws. Despite these predictions, we find ourselves in a time of multiple re-enchantments. From Harry Potter and Twilight to films based on J.R.R. Tolkein’s Ring Trilogy and C.S. Lewis’s Narnia, popular culture is full of magic. Ecologists call for a recovered sense of the earth as a precious, fragile, enchanted oasis of life, and scientists increasingly speak a language of wonder and awe as they widen our view of the natural world. All this occurs against the backdrop of a widespread resurgence of religion in a world that was supposed to be growing more secular by the day.This year, the Concordia community invites you to explore these diverse but parallel re-enchantments through the Faith, Reason, and World Affairs Symposium.
- What are the experiences writers in a wide range of fields of study have in mind when they speak of re-enchantment?
- What place does wonder have within the intellectual vocation of making sense of the world?
- Do shared experiences of wonder represent a common ground where people of different faiths, cultures, and academic disciplines might meet understand and appreciate each other?
