2010 Faith, Reason & World Affairs Symposium

2010 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. Tolkien’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.

The symposium will explore the role of wonder in today’s world by asking such questions as:

  • What role does wonder play in popular culture, including literature, movies, and games, and what is the significance of the current attention to wonder and mystery in these areas?
  • What place does wonder have within the intellectual vocation of making sense of the world?
  • Can reason and wonder coexist, or are they in serious conflict with one another?
  • How and why is the place of religion changing in the contemporary world?
  • Do such changes in religion involve changes in our sense of the world as a locus of wonder?
  • What are the experiences writers in a wide range of fields of study have in mind when they speak of re-enchantment?
  • 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, or explore solutions to problems they have in common?
For more information contact George Connell (Symposium Co-chair), Jan Pranger (Symposium Co-chair) or Eric Runestad (Cultural Events). 

2010 Symposium Planning Committee Members
George Connell, co-chair, professor, philosophy
Jan Pranger, co-chair, assistant professor, religion
Ahmed Afzaal, assistant professor, religion
Mark Gealy, interim chair, professor, physics
Kayla Goetz '11
Jay Hershberger, professor, music
Mona Ibrahim, associate professor, psychology
Matthew Lindholm, assistant professor, sociology
Tessa Moon Leiseth, campus pastor
Tracey Moorhead, senior associate to the president
Carol Pratt, associate professor, biology
Eric Runestad, director, Cultural Events and Music Organizations
Erika Swenson '11





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