Category Archives: violence

Peace and Violence in Scripture and Theology (October 2018 Conference of the Canadian-American Theological Association)

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The Canadian-American Theological Association is having their annual Fall theology conference at Wycliffe College, Toronto School of Theology, on October 20, 2018.

The conference, co-sponsored with Wycliffe College, will focus on the theme:

PEACE AND VIOLENCE IN SCRIPTURE AND THEOLOGY

Dr. Gordon K. Oeste will deliver the keynote lecture, Feasting with the Enemy: Redemptive Readings of Biblical War Texts.

Dr. Oeste, the Teaching Pastor at Cedar Creek Community Church in Cambridge, Ontario, is the author of Legitimacy, Illegitimacy, and the Right to Rule: Windows on Abimelech’s Rise and Demise in Judges 9 (Bloomsbury T & T Clark, 2013). He is currently co-authoring a book on warfare in the Bible.

A panoply of papers will be presented from all theological disciplines on subjects related to Peace and Violence in Scripture and Theology, as well as other subjects that engage culture, the church, and various academic fields.

The conference runs from 8:45 a.m. until 4:00 p.m., and twenty-six papers are scheduled for presentation.

You may download the full conference schedule here.

For online registration, please go to: https://www.wycliffecollege.ca/cata

Our Fall CATA conference promises to be a very full and enriching day that  will offer new ideas and stimulating discussion with scholars,  students, and  laity.

For more information, please email mtaylor@wycliffe.utoronto.ca

Co-sponsored by: Wycliffe College and The Canadian-American Theological Association Location: Wycliffe College, 5 Hoskin Avenue, Toronto M5S 1H7.

Walking and Driving while Black—Differences within America and between America and Jamaica

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Here are two tales of police encounters, both by black men in America.

One is by Esau McCaulley, my former colleague who taught New Testament at Northeastern Seminary (now at Wheaton College). The other is by Garnette Cadogan, a writer friend who moved from Jamaica to the USA some years ago.

Driving while Black

In “Driving while Black,” Esau describes his experiences with the police as a black man driving in Alabama, his home state. He then contrasts this with his later (quite different) experiences in New England.

Esau’s piece was published in July 2016 on an Anglican website called Covenant.

Walking while Black

In “Walking while Black,” Garnette describes his love of walking, which began on the streets of Kingston, Jamaica, when he was a schoolboy. He then describes his very different experience walking the streets of New Orleans, and later New York.

Garnette’s piece was originally published in October 2015 in the inaugural issue of Freeman’s (an anthology of writings collected by John Freeman); the theme of this issue was Arrival. The piece was re-published in July 2016 on the website of Literary Hub.and also in The Fire This Time: A New Generation Speaks About Race (Scribner, 2016), ed. Jesmyn Ward.

Each of these is well worth reading.

You can access them on the web—Esau’s here, Garnette’s here.

Or you can download them as PDFs—Esau’s here, Garnette’s here.

I’d be interested in your thoughts; and I’m sure the authors would be too.

You can hear a PRI interview with Garnette Cadogan about his walking experiences here.

And you can watch his TEDx talk on walking here.

The Church as Witness and Protest: A Call to a Faithful Response to Charlottesville

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My friend and colleague at Northeastern Seminary, Esau McCaulley, has posted a reflection (based on Romans 12) on the American church’s way forward after the upsurge of white supremacist violence in Charlottesville.

It is a powerful exhortation and well worth reading: The Church as Witness and Protest: A Call to a Faithful Response to Charlottesville