Fresh Thinking Issue 5

ISSUE 5 FALL 2020

FreshThinking MAGAZINE OF THE CENTER OF THEOLOGICAL INQUIRY

Life Together What does community mean now?

By William Storrar

ISSUE 5 FALL 2020

FreshThinking M AGA Z I N E O F T H E C E N T E R O F T H EO LO G I C A L I N Q U I RY

DIRECTOR William Storrar ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR Joshua Mauldin EDITOR Karin Morse CONSULTING EDITOR Linda Arntzenius DESIGNER Debra Trisler CONTRIBUTORS Fred Anderson Linda Arntzenius Andrew Davison Liz Grant Joshua Mauldin Erin Raffety Elisabet le Roux Frederick Simmons EDITORIAL ASSISTANTS Louis-Clarence Hammond Jade Talag

MAGAZINE SPONSORS Gayle Robinson Jay & Harriet Vawter

OUR MISSION We convene leading thinkers in an interdisciplinary research environment where theology makes an impact on global concerns, and we share those discoveries to change the way people think and act.

OUR PROGRAM Inquiry on Religion & the Built Environment 2020-2021 2

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CONTENTS

Life Together

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What does community mean now?

Research Report on Theology & Economic Inequality

“I believe Bonhoeffer’s theme has taken on a new salience at this moment in the world’s history, when the vulnerability of our life together as a human species on this planet has been exposed by the pandemic.”

CTI’s new series for Fresh Thinking, distilling the theological insights gained from dialogue with colleagues in other fields in our interdisciplinary inquiries.

—William Storrar

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Honoring Our Friends CTI gratefully and proudly acknowledges our donors for the 2019-20 fiscal year.

Meet Erin Raffety CTI’s New Research Fellow in Machine Intelligence & Pastoral Care

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Can artificial intelligence enhance our spiritual lives? CTI’s Spiritual Loop Project aims to assess the potential of machine learning in video gaming as a creative new element in the spiritual loop of pastoral care for families and congregations with members with disability.

Why I Give and Why to the Center of Theological Inquiry

By Board Chair Fred Anderson

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Leading in a Pandemic World

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What does it mean to be a healthy community now?

Religion & the Built Environment

In the first new webinar series with CTI in partnership with Religions for Peace, religious leaders and CTI scholars discussed Planetary Health, Gender-Based Violence, and the Role of Religious Ethics in the New Normal.

Developing Global Perspectives Meet the theologians and architects in this year’s research workshop as they convene digitally around the world.

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Theology: A Great Connector of Disciplines Colloquy with Director William Storrar and CTI Member Andrew Davison

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Member Books Spotlight on our Members’ recent published works

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Theology Matters Podcast An insider’s view on creating the podcast with host, Associate Director Josh Mauldin

PHOTOGRAPHS: COVER–ELIZABETH AARDEMA/SHUTTERSTOCK.COM; THIS PAGE–KALAFOTO/ADOBESTOCK.COM

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n Friday, March 13, CTI staff took laptops, a few files, and headed home. Like everyone across the globe, we soon came to realize our “new normal” was evolving into something quite different.

As we started planning this edition of Fresh Thinking, I thought back on those first days and weeks. What stood out?

The relevance and need for CTI’s work. We pivoted instantly and completely online. We reached greater audiences, sharing the benefit of what CTI offers: the relevance of theology to the world’s concerns. That is what CTI does and remains steadfast in doing —bringing people together. A cornerstone of CTI is its “art of gathering.” From our yearly inquiries gathering theologians and scholars, we share the knowledge gained from their collaborative work with policymakers and the public.

The pandemic did not change this. It changed our location, but not our mission. Because our goal is that important.

What else has “stood out” at CTI? The amount of activity.

CTI is constantly engaged in a series of investigations, some just beginning, others reaping the fruit of earlier work, and then thinking ahead to future topics. The pandemic may have changed our timeline, but not our delivery. While conducting this year’s Research Program for the Year on Religion & the Built Environment (see the article on page 8), CTI is reflecting on what was learned from last year’s study on Religion & the Economic Inequality (page 15). In his article on “Life Together,” Director William Storrar shares with us the theme for our research program and response to the pandemic (page 4).

In-person or remote. Local and global. CTI embodies the founder James McCord’s belief, “Humanity’s spiritual quest is no longer national and denominational, but global and ecumenical.” The endurance of CTI since its founding speaks to its relevance today.

—Karin Morse

FROM THE EDITOR

“Our endurance speaks to our relevance.”

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Center of Theological Inquiry An independent nonprofit with an international program of interdisciplinary research DIRECTOR William Storrar ACADEMIC ADVISORY PANEL John Bowlin Peter Casarella Francis Clooney Angela Creager David Fergusson Agustín Fuentes Michael H. Hecht Jan-Olav Henrikson Cathleen Kaveny Nico Koopman Robin Lovin Friederike Nüssel Peter Ochs Peter Paris Jeremy Waldron

BOARD OF TRUSTEES Fred Anderson, Chair Roy Lennox, Vice Chair Jon Pott, Secretary Gayle Robinson, Treasurer Brian Fix Robert Gunn Robert Hendrickson Dale Irvin Carter Karins Douglas Leonard David Markus Judith McCartin Scheide William Storrar Jay Vawter Charles Wall Robert Wedeking

HONORARY TRUSTEES Craig Barnes Robin Lovin Richard Mouw Krista Tippett EMERITUS/EMERITA TRUSTEES James Armstrong Judy Wornat Ralph Wyman

Henry R. Luce Hall, 50 Stockton Street, Princeton, NJ 08540 609.683.4797 • cti@ctinquiry.org ctinquiry.org

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FROM THE DIRECTOR

Life Together

What does it mean to be a community now?

Life Together in a Pandemic I believe Bonhoeffer’s theme has taken on a new salience at this moment in the world’s history, when the vulnerability of our life together as a human species on this planet has been exposed by the pandemic. Just as Bonhoeffer wrestled theologically with the meaning of community for the church in the 1930s, so we must wrestle theologically and across disciplines with what it means to be a global community in and beyond this pandemic. The new critical edition of Bonhoeffer’s works notes that he wrote Life Together in 1938 “against the clock” of looming war. We are now living against the clock of looming climate change and its impact on our built and natural environment, CTI’s research topics over the next two years. In dialogue with colleagues in other disciplines, what do theologians and scholars of world religions have to say about our life together on a global scale? And how can our life together at CTI as a research community adapt to working safely and well in this pandemic?

“How good and pleasant it is when kindred live together in unity.”

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his wisdom from the Psalms begins one of the most influential works of theology in the 20th century, Life Together by Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German pastor executed by the Nazis in the last days of the Second World War. In resisting Hitler’s encroachment on the church, Bonhoeffer ran an illegal seminary to train pastors in a common life of worship and study. When the Gestapo closed Finkenwalde in 1937, Bonhoeffer reluctantly decided it was time to write up this theological experiment on life together in the hope it would sustain his scattered seminarians and influence the church as a community of faith. Life Together has become a theological classic, always to be read in the shadow of the Shoah. It continues to influence those in ministry and theological education, as it did my own pastoral and academic life in Scotland, first as a parish minister and then as a university teacher. What of its relevance for me now in setting CTI’s direction as a research community?

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Life Together in the Built Environment We have made a good start in addressing both questions with the launch of our now digital research workshop on religion and the built environment this Fall. As you can read in Linda Arntzenius’ fascinating article in this issue of Fresh Thinking, our international research team on this topic is studying our life together in the built environment from Pole to Pole—everything from the design of mosques in the Canadian Arctic according to Islamic principles to the design of housing in Aotearoa/New Zealand according to Maori principles. In between these poles, we are considering the design of cities across Africa according to African principles of urbanism and the theologies of faith-based housing initiatives. Our scholars are thinking critically about the theological and architectural meaning of the city as a place of redemption or new gods. They are studying built environments as both racially constructed places of exclusion and atmospheres conducive to human dignity. We are also exploring the architectural design and religious experience of sacred buildings in cyberspace, as religion goes virtual during the pandemic. Our scholars and practitioners’ digital collaboration will generate fresh thinking on the design and meaning of our built life together. We look forward to sharing their distilled insights with you through the year.

GOING GLOBAL & LOCAL

Life Together in the Natural Environment When we launched our current Inquiry on Religion & Global Issues in 2017, we saw the year on religion and the natural environment as an opportunity to connect its environmental concerns with our earlier work on migration, violence, and economic inequality. Under this theme of “climate connections,” we shall invite scholars to apply for our workshop in the 2021-22 academic year with research proposals that study the links between environmental concerns and the global issues of migration, conflict, and inequality that are inseparable from climate change (see inside back cover). Yet we are now doing so in a context where our life together with the natural world has taken on a heightened significance in a continuing pandemic and accelerating climate change.

I am therefore pleased to announce CTI’s creative response to running our research workshop on climate connections in this challenging context. We have developed a new model of collaboration among theologians, environmental researchers, and policymakers that takes account of our ethical responsibilities for both global health and global warming. We shall run a digital and local research workshop on religion and the natural environment in the Fall of 2021 and the Spring of 2022.

Interested theologians and religion scholars will be invited to include in their digital workshop application the names of two colleagues in their home locality who will be their local dialogue partners for their proposed research project: a researcher in the environmental sciences or humanities in a

local Higher Education institution and a practitioner or policymaker on environmental issues at the local, regional, or global level. In this way, our digital research workshop and its weekly global seminar will be informed by the workshop members’ local conversations with academic and civic colleagues on these climate connections. This ‘digital and local’ model of collaboration will enhance our research life together while reducing our carbon footprint in air travel and risk to infection.

Life Together in Theological Inquiry Life in a pandemic is a strange mixture of digital community and physical solitude. In her insightful study of Dietrich Bonhoeffer as a theologian of resistance, CTI Member Christiane Tietz concludes her account of Life Together by noting its litmus test of a healthy community: The person can tell whether the experience of community and solitude was good if she or he emerges from it with courage, free and strengthened for the day’s work.

May we emerge from this challenging time in our life together as a research community with courage, free and strengthened for our daily work of interdisciplinary exchange for the global good.

—William Storrar FALL 2020

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HIGHLIGHTING NEW RESEARCH

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an artificial intelligence enhance our spiritual lives? That was the question put to CTI when we were invited to submit a grant application to the Templeton World Charity Foundation’s Diverse Intelligences research initiative. Our response was the Spiritual Loop Project. It aims to assess the potential of machine learning in video gaming as a creative new element in the spiritual loop of pastoral care for families and congregations with members with disabilities.

This pioneering study calls for a rare combination of research skills in the person appointed to conduct our two-year, fieldwork-based study. “With gratitude to the Templeton World Charity Foundation for its funding support, we have been so fortunate to find that well qualified researcher in Erin Raffety,” announced CTI’s Director William Storrar in July: “Dr. Raffety is uniquely placed to conduct this pilot project and write the baseline report which will guide future research in this interdisciplinary field of pastoral care, disability studies, and technology.”

In a conversation with the Director, Dr. Raffety reflected on her work in the Spiritual Loop Project.

Meet Erin Raffety CTI’s Research Fellow in Machine Intelligence & Pastoral Care

William Storrar: Erin, what was it in your own research background that made you interested in the Spiritual Loop Project?

Erin Raffety: As a cultural anthropologist, a Presbyterian pastor, and a parent of a child with disabilities, I’m motivated to reform theologies and practices of ministry with people with disabilities. I’d done previous research where we discovered that families who have nonverbal, disabled children develop novel communication that sparks joy. But that joy was often invisible to outsiders and congregations, because they either assumed these individuals lacked communication or couldn’t recognize it because it didn’t look like typical, verbal communication. More extensive research with disabled persons and congregations has convinced me that ableism—internalized prejudice toward people with disabilities—is a huge obstacle in ministry. So this project seemed like a natural extension of that work, but also a creative opportunity to really do something to help pastors better communicate and connect with disabled congregants.

WS: How would you describe the research project you are conducting in your own words?

ER: I would say that we’re studying how video games and machine learning can be tools for enhanced pastoral

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care and enriched spiritual connection for congregations and people with disabilities. There’s been a good deal of research on disability and technology and some on video gaming and spirituality, but congregations have yet to really consider how video gaming and machine intelligence might expand their pastoral connections and communication, so that intersection is where we’re making some innovation. We know that people with disabilities experience a lot of social isolation and that poses a challenge to congregations particularly given the global pandemic, so I think this kind of out of the box thinking with respect to video games could be really insightful for human, spiritual communication.

WS: What are the theological questions you see at the heart of the project?

ER: Because the way many disabled people communicate, think, or live often doesn’t conform to routinized modes of worship and ministry, their spirituality and their relationships with God and others have often been diminished or demeaned. But by using new and diverse technology, can we strip away some of that need to conform and find new opportunities for spiritual communication and connection?

Of course, technology is also not a translator: it doesn’t give people a voice; in fact, that kind of thinking can reproduce existing prejudices. So the theological heart of the project is to learn from and with people with disabilities so that they can help develop new opportunities for spiritual communication and connection.

WS: What are the first steps you are taking in developing this project and conducting your fieldwork?

ER: The first step in doing the fieldwork is to find the right families and congregations to learn with—we’re keeping this small so it will be about three of them. Then, I’m focusing on listening deeply to how people with disabilities, their families, and their congregations and pastors already make use of technology and video gaming in their daily lives. This is an interesting moment to do this research, because now nearly all congregations are “online,” but the question is, of course, what does that actually look like for people? Are video games a form of escape for persons with disabilities because other technology doesn’t work for them? What kinds of existing connection do people make through technology at church? How do pastors use technology to connect with congregants?

WS: What are the biggest challenges you foresee in your fieldwork?

ER: At first I thought doing most of the fieldwork online due to the pandemic would be a challenge, but I’m hoping it may be an unexpected gift—because people are craving connection and video games already offer that instant playfulness, they seem poised to shake up pastoral care! I’m always anxious though when I begin a new research project: things are wonderfully open-ended in ethnographic research, but that also means you have to let go of a lot of control in order to really receive the knowledge your informants offer. There’s a double challenge for me in this project, because it involves working not just with ethnographic informants, but with technology partners, and I’m really committed to making sure people with disabilities get to have a say in this research.

That involves a lot of listening and collaboration, so that’s a big, but worthwhile challenge.

WS: And what will give you the biggest personal satisfaction in this project?

ER: I’ll be thrilled if playing this game opens up spiritual conversation and connection for people that wasn’t there before. Watching people really get opened up to who God is through beholding one another’s gifts is why I do what I do!

I’ll be fulfilled just to spend time with people with disabilities, their families, and congregations, because I know I’ll learn so much. But my research doesn’t always get to give something away, as tangibly as this project offers, so to think that people may get enjoyment and fellowship out of playing a game as a deeper form of spiritual growth is truly intriguing and worthwhile—I’d be blessed to be a part of that.

WS: Finally, what do you see as distinctive about the research you are conducting in the Spiritual Loop Project?

ER: Every time I describe this project to people, their eyes bug out of their heads at first, but then they kind of perk up and go, “Wow, that’s really cool!” I give you, Dr. Storrar, and CTI a lot of credit, because I think imagination is really half the battle in our downtrodden world right now. Yet, CTI has the audacity to not only take on such dynamic, interdisciplinary research, but also to recognize that theology needs to be in these conversations about artificial intelligence, technology, and disability, and I think that’s vital. This is a small scale project, but it’s the type of project that hopefully sparks more interdisciplinary research that imagines new possibilities for congregations, ministry, and technology.

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RELIGION & THE BUILT ENVIRONMENT Developing Global Perspectives If we are to have peace on earth, our loyalties must become ecumenical rather than sectional. Our loyalties must transcend our race, our tribe, our class, and our nation; and this means we must develop a world perspective.

—Martin Luther King, Jr.

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n 2017, CTI began a five-year Inquiry on Religion & Global Issues, creating insight into the linked concerns of migration, violence, economic inequality, the built environment, and the natural environment. Now, in this fourth year of the Inquiry, a team of CTI scholars are looking at a subject that many of us give little thought to—the built environment—its impact on human health and well-being as well as the assumptions and values that undergird contemporary structures and cities. It’s a subject with intrinsic relation to theology that goes beyond the sacred spaces across the globe.

“Studying the relationship between religion and the built environment is a complex endeavor, calling for careful, slow scholarship across disciplines to deepen our mutual understanding,” says CTI Director Will Storrar. “This research workshop offers the rare opportunity to distill fresh thinking on the different dimensions of religion and the built environment.”

Presented with the conjuncton of architecture and religion, the layperson might think of Notre Dame and the great cathedrals of Europe, of the Hagia Sophia, the Dome of the Rock in the old city of Jerusalem, or perhaps the Mahabodhi Temple in India where Gautama Buddha attained enlightenment beneath the Bodhi Tree.

There is much more to be said on this relationship.

According to architect and historian Kyle Dugdale, the author of Babel’s Present (2016), it is a commonplace of

urban history that the cities of antiquity belonged to their gods. “It would be inconceivable to study the ancient city without paying attention to the relationship between religion and the built environment,” he says. And what applied in antiquity is equally true today, although the close relationship may not be so clear.

Architecture tells the story of who we are from Athens with its multiple gods to the great Gothic cathedrals to the one God of Christianity. And, argues Dugdale, today’s cityscapes are still filled with gods. “We just don’t see them, perhaps because we believe they are dead, but they tell us of our aspiring identities; who we want to be.”

As a participant in the workshop on Religion and the Built Environment, Dugdale—who has taught history, theory, and design at Yale School of Architecture and at Columbia Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation—argues that newer gods have replaced the old and the consequences are not always positive. His research on, “The City and its Gods” is a warning bell for the increasingly critical need “to bring a theologically-informed intelligence to bear on the challenges of the contemporary city.”

A telling example of this can be seen in the evolution, over the last century, of Auckland City in New Zealand as described by Murray Rae of the University of Otago. The city is built on a series of volcanoes with isthmuses projecting like fingers into the harbor. Each isthmus is a prominent site and what has been built there reveals what was regard-

Auckland cityscape

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MEET THE TEAM

PHOTOGRAPH, OPPOSITE PAGE: RICHARD BREW/ADOBESTOCK.COM

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ELISE EDWARDS | Creating a Just World

hen Elise Edwards first saw the announcement of CTI’s workshop on Religion and the Built Environment she was energized. “It was some years ago when I was a lecturer, not yet a tenured professor, but I went immediately to my departmental chair and colleagues and said, I don’t know what we need to do to make this happen, but we have a couple of years to get this together; I want to apply for this program and have a sabbatical in order to do it.”

Now Assistant Professor in Religion at Baylor University (and a qualified architect), her research draws upon theology, ethics, architectural theory, and urban studies to develop theological and ethical perspectives on civic engagement, cultural and artistic expression, and justice.

Her CTI project, “Acts of Creation for a Just World: Ethical Responses to Constructions of Race in Architecture and Public Space,” examines how racial injustice is expressed through the built environment and looks at the Christian doctrine of creation for insight into architecture and public space. Edwards presents a womanist interpretation of how race gets encoded into the built environment. She also addresses much-needed change in design practises— the ways in which spaces are designed to reflect social hierarchies, the classic example being the corner office, a literal physical manifestation of social structure.

“Building design is right there alongside food injustice, clothing and fair-trade, shelter; all that is necessary for life,” attests Edwards, co-editor of the forthcoming Routledge Handbook of Religion and Cities and at work on her first book Building Justice: Theological Commitments in Architectural Design. “Architecture in public spaces, raises concerns about racial justice through issues such as segregation and other practices of exclusion, environmental racism, and the symbolic narratives expressed in public buildings.”

As a prime example, she cites current controversy over the naming of towns and streets and the prominence of Confederate monuments so that “the way we navigate the built environment becomes part of a legacy that is far from inclusive or reflective of today’s reality.” As Edwards points

out, the erection of such monuments was an intentional act made decades after the Civil War, as a way of honoring a re-written history. She endorses the current intentional naming in a way that counteracts that act, citing Black Lives Matter flags and murals in Washington, D.C. as examples. In other words, today’s intentional renaming is a way to combat an earlier intentional re-writing of history. “Confederate statues belong in museums and not in public spaces. They are a part of American history, but not something to celebrate or glorify.”

Another example comes from the US Capitol building where Corinthian-style columns (which usually have a frieze of acanthus leaves at the top) sport leaves of tobacco and cotton that speak to the nation’s history. For such things it’s important that context be given, say Edwards, noting that there is much here that is problematic since the Capitol was built, in part, by slave labor, as signage now acknowledges.

“An element that was once considered purely celebratory becomes recognized as more loaded. Contextualization helps us understand what is problematic and why. The intention is not to erase, but to understand more fully.”

As a black feminist, Edwards focuses on cultural expressions by, for, and about women and marginalized communities. As such, she says there is a need to learn how to reinterpret and give “thicker” descriptions of our history, one that acknowledges struggle, that making change and progress is difficult and comes with a toll. “Progress is possible and we hope for something greater, belief in God and a more powerful creator, a sense of hope.”

Church plays an important part in Edwards’ life. “I’m a Baptist and my church is in the contemplative tradition.

That’s where I feel my spirit lies, in contemplative Christian spirituality. I’ve always been drawn to spaces that provide silence in communal settings and that guide congregants through a process that allows them to hear God in silence and stillness.”

She is thrilled to be a part of this year’s workshop and working with other CTI scholars. “This is the kind of opportunity I’ve been hoping for since I began my career.” n

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—Murray Rae

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PHOTOGRAPH: FELIX PERGANDE/ADOBESTOCK.COM

“The question for us now is how do we build cities today that give a foretaste of the biblical ‘heavenly city,’ one that serves the well-being of all.”

ed as important in its time. The first is the site of a memorial to Michael Joseph Savage, the New Zealand prime minister who introduced the Welfare State, calling it “applied Christianity.” On the next is a museum housing national treasures and a war memorial. Next is the Anglican Cathedral, then the University of Auckland, signifying the importance of religion and education.

But what has become even more dominant, says Rae, are the high-rise buildings of the commercial district, which are beginning to dwarf all others, especially the tallest: a sky-tower that rises above the casino.

“This tells us that what we value today is commercial interest and the gambling industry,” says Rae. “It’s a sad tale of evolution of the culture away from Christian values to the glorification of the commercial world. It shows a spiritual degradation, if you like. We need to be aware of and think about these things.”

Rae’s CTI project, “The City as Redeemed Sociality,” is an exploration of what makes a good city and how the built environment can contribute to that ideal. “The question for us now is how do we build cities today that give a foretaste of the biblical ‘heavenly city,’ one that serves the well-being of all.”

The International Team Rae and Dugdale are two of this year’s eight workshop participants, five men and three women, from Canada, New Zealand, South Africa, Germany, and the United States.

The others are Stephan De Beer, Elise Edwards, Tammy Gaber, Nesrine Mansour, Martin Radermacher, and Whare Timu.

The topics raised by their many interests and expertises range from Confederate monuments to Black Lives Matter; from the gods of the cities of the ancient world to the idols of today’s urban landscape; from the Western canon to more exclusive teachings that acknowledge diversity of experience and belief; from Māori Whare Nui to mosques in the sub-Arctic; from real-life projects to the emerging phenomen of digital religion and its virtual space design.

Embedded in all of these lie practical questions about the built environment and how it might serve human well-being and help us toward a more responsible habitation of our world. Here are just a few examples (for more see sidebars).

Stephan De Beer, Associate Professor of Practical Theology at the University of Pretoria, South Africa, where he directs the Centre for Faith and Community, is working on “A Faith-Based Housing Agenda: Co-Constructing Flourishing African Urban Futures,” which reimagines theological education for urban change as well as the challenges of homelessness, housing, justice, and myriad fused interests in a context lacking religious discourse and faith-based action.

It’s an ambitious and challenging project for which De Beer is well-qualified. He led an ecumenical nonprofit on inner city community development and social housing for almost two decades and is a founding member of the South African National Homeless Network on Street Homelessness, which informs national, provincial, and municipal policies. His research draws upon case studies from multiple African regions.

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MURRAY RAE | The City Redeemed

hile Murray Rae, now Professor of Theology at the University of Otago in New Zealand, started out as an architect, he was very quickly drawn to Christian ministry. Having grown up in a religious home—his father and his maternal grandfather were church ministers— you could say it was in his genes.

Shortly after setting out to study architecture, he felt strongly called. Still, he carried on through his degree, practiced for a while and then turned to theology. “The logic of that took a little explaining to my mates on the building site, who weren’t especially sympathetic to my change of direction.”

When he tells people he’s interested in theology and architecture, the common reaction is that he’s interested in church buildings. “I am, of course, but it’s much broader than that. People tend not to be aware of architecture as a discipline that is very much concerned with human well-being and what we aspire to as human beings. Architects are interested in creating environments that support visions of what it is to be human. Many of these visions, of course, have been theological. The cityscapes of the Renaissance and Medieval Europe, for example, were profoundly shaped by theological convictions about the nature of human life. Medieval cities were like theater sets for the liturgical life of the church, the processions going through the city with markers along the way indicating participation in the biblical narrative being represented. Medieval cities in Europe were explicit attempts to provide a foretaste of the ‘heavenly city,’ of the coming ‘kingdom of God’.”

Today’s cities, says Rae, exist within the tension between opposing realities—the city as a center of cultural advancement, human collaboration, and altruistic endeavor and the city as a place of deprivation, violence, and disrupted relationships among humans and between humanity and our environment.

Rae’s CTI project, “The City as a Site of Redeemed Sociality,” explores how the built environment contributes to both realities, and considers “how we might build our cities

in ways that contribute to the biblical vision of human life redeemed and brought to its true end.”

Besides theology and architecture, Rae’s research interests include Māori engagements with Christianity, Christian ethics, and the work of Søren Kierkegaard.

In Kierkegaard, Rae finds a lone voice protesting against a church that compromised the gospel for the sake of the intellectual fashion of the day, as influenced by Kant and Hegel. “Given that we are all prone to identify the gospel with our own cultural interests, it is very important to be exposed to the perspectives and the virtues of other cultures—it may help us to notice things that we tend not to see through Western eyes,” says Rae. As a child growing up in Malaysia, where his parents were missionaries, Rae was steeped in a multi-religious environment with Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, and Sikhism as part of everyday life. “That multireligious context gave me an awareness of the distinctiveness of Christian faith and of claims that needed to be thought through and investigated because of their difference with what my friends at school believed.”

As an example, he cites Western culture’s tendency to be individualistic. “Western presentations of gospel are profoundly individualistic—as can be seen right now with the COVID-19 pandemic when individual interests seem to count for far more than love of neighbor and caring for the wellbeing of the community as a whole—an appalling blindspot.”

By contrast, Rae points to Māori culture in which community is the primary reality. “One’s neighbor is a much more natural part of ordinary Māori life—just one example of the reminder we get from many indiginous culture of the relational nature of humanity, something Westerners need reminding of.”

Rae’s recent book, Architecture and Theology: The Art of Place, (Baylor University Press, 2017) serves as such a reminder. When it won the 2018 Ashton Wylie Mind Body Spirit Literary Award it was described as changing “the way we think of our built environment and how it affects us all.” n

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PHOTOGRAPH: YILMAZSAVASKANDAG/ADOBESTOCK.COM

With a doctorate in architecture and and development. a background in environmental design, The challenge of the current global Nesrine Mansour studies sacred architecpandemic “adds a sense of moral urgency ture in the context of digital religion, an to the work,” says Center Director Wilemerging phenomenon of which her work liam Storrar. With in-person meetings promotes awareness. Her CTI research no longer possible, center members are project, “Religion and the Sacred Virtu“meeting” online. Gone are the serenal Built Environment,” brings together dipitous encounters in the corridor or the digital built environment with theollounge, the felicitous informal chat that ogy and computation in a novel way—a so often ignites insight. Digital gatherdigital ethnographic inquiry in an era of ings, however, have their own advantagrapid digitalization and globalization. es. Conducted in two or three hour sesMartin Radermacher, Chair for the sions, they are highly focused, offering Study of Religion at the Center for Relidisciplined participants an opportunity gious Studies (Ruhr University Bochum, to cut right to the chase. Since one must Germany) is the author of Devotional Fitcome to the table fully prepared, there is ness: An Analysis of Contemporary Chrisan immediate step to a level of dialogue tian Dieting and Fitness Programs (2017). that often comes only after two or three His research project, “Dignity and Atface-to-face in-room sessions. mosphere: Conceptual Approaches to the “There is an intimacy and focus that the Study of Religion and the Built Environmedium requires,” says Elise Edwards of ment” investigates how built environments Baylor University. “Having too many in “My life’s work has foster and restrict the notion of dignity one day can be exhausting because of the that has deep roots in religious tradition. been researching attention you are giving, but they allow CTI’s participant selection process generfor deep connections to be fostered across mosques, which ally finds individuals who welcome opporstate and international lines.” tunities to be pulled out of their comfort Echoing Storrar’s thoughts on the sense I’ve been doing zones. Noting the remarkable breadth of of moral urgency during the pandemic, the topics gathered under the umbrella of Rae observes that COVID-19 “has conas far back as religion and the built environment, Whare centrated our minds even more acutely my bachelor’s Timu (see sidebar) says he expects to learn on questions of human well-being, the eqa lot while also bringing value to the overall uitable distribution of resources, the way thesis. ” discussion from his experience as a practiswe organize ourselves politically, the folly ing architect. “Architects like to think of of Western individualism and how costly —Tammy Gaber ourselves as crusaders for better living, qualthat is in moments such as we are experiity design, community, and sustainability,” he says. encing now. We have a great deal to learn about being our What is needed, suggests Rae is “to recover a broadly brothers and our sisters’ keeper and about what loving our shared narrative about human well-being and about how we neighbor means in these kinds of circumstances, and, unformight inhabit the world equitably, wisely, and sustainably.” tunately, it has to be said, we are not doing very well.”

Furthermore, says Rae, “our built environment has not Socially Distanced Scholarship only been damaging to our natural environment, it has very At the heart of academic life at CTI is a weekly meeting at often served the interests of the well-off as opposed to the which members present and discuss their works-in-progress. poor and the marginalized. These are the communities that After close readings of each other’s research papers, members are suffering more during the pandemic, so concentrating quickly develop the understanding that sparks new ideas and our minds on issues of justice and human well-being and innurtures relationships of trust and respect. Key questions to equity is going to be a very important part of life as we work be addressed are distributed in advance, overlapping contogether during this CTI workshop.”

—Linda Arntzenius cepts are noted, questions are flagged for future discussion

MEET THE TEAM

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RELIGION & ECONOMIC INEQUALITY

2019-20

RELIGION & THE BUILT ENVIRONMENT

2020-21

RELIGION & THE NATURAL ENVIRONMENT

2021-22

TAMMY GABER | Mosques in the Sub-Arctic

y life’s work has been researching mosques, which I’ve been doing as far back as my bachelor’s thesis,” says Tammy Gaber. During six years of studies at Waterloo University in Canada (bachelor’s degrees in environmental studies and in architecture), Gaber gained all kinds of work experiences. “Study terms alternated with time spent in the field and I was a research assistant in Carthage, Louisiana, twice, worked for the Dept. of National Defense in Ottawa, for an architect in Vancouver and then in Egypt, which is where my family comes from—I worked in their home city of Alexandria and it was quite wonderful.”

After graduating, Gaber practiced in Egypt—she lived in Cairo for 12 years— until the revolution against Mubarak in 2011, at which time she returned to Canada where she soon became one of six founding faculty of the new McEwen School of Architecture at Laurentian University.

In her teaching, Gaber emphasizes continuous dialogue between teacher and student as a creative act. Her aim is to teach in a way in which she wishes she had been taught, inclusive of traditons beyond the Western canon. Since her degrees were exclusively within the Western canon, she felt excluded and had to teach herself in aspects of architecture non-Western in origin.

Her efforts have not gone unrecognized. After being nominated by colleagues and students who described her as “an outstanding teacher,” who “inspires excellence,” Gaber was awarded Laurentian’s 2020 Teaching Excellence Award.

“It means a lot,” she says.

One of the courses she teaches at Laurentian is a foundational course on Sacred Places. “It’s basically a product of my life’s work and begins with the idea of a sacred space, not always what you might think—I begin with ritual and the primary stories of each of six faiths. Ritual comes before architecture and it’s not about edifice, buildings, arches, materials, it’s about how and why people move through space; it’s really important to understand that these spaces are about what people make of them.”

Common to every faith, says Gaber, is a deep connection to the landscape it was born in or becomes a part of. “Far

before we labeled things as green or sustainable, there was an ancient, deep reverence for the Earth that is much more than aesthetic.”

With a grant from the Federal Government of Canada’s Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, Gaber visited 53 cities and 90 mosques for her recent project and forthcoming book, Beyond the Divide: A Century of Canadian Mosque Design and Gender Allocations. “It was an incredible journey; in my travels I went 200 km above the Arctic Circle, to a community of 100 Muslims. It took six flights to get there.”

The experience led her to ponder the effects of latitude and climate on ritual. Consider, for example, Islam’s tradition of fasting from sun-up to sun-down. How does one do this in a latitude which can feature 24 hours of daylight and 24 hours of darkness? From such questions, Gaber began to investigate how new Muslim communities develop in places very different from those in which their religion was born, namely, the Middle East.

Her CTI project, “A New Cosmic Order of Orientation and Time: Designing Mosques in the Subarctic,” examines how such communites realign themselves as well as how they cope with an influx of people resulting from global crises.

As a practising Muslim fluent in Arabic as well as an academic and a professional architect, Gaber has access to both men’s and women’s spaces within mosques, “to spaces that are often not accessed and not studied. Mosques are not only sacred places, they are lifelines, hubs for new immigrants to find information, resources; spaces of transition.”

She has observed the architecture of mosques expand to encompass a variety of purposes; evolving from in-home worship to spaces dedicated solely to worship and then morphing into buildings with super flexible spaces that accommodate multipurpose rooms for exercise, celebration, training, teaching, food and clothing drives.

At CTI, she looks forward to having colleagues with different points of view with the potential to highlight paths toward deepening her project. “This is a rare chance to get the sort of feedback from a group of people interested in the sacred and who have a deep understanding of sacred space.” n

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MEET THE TEAM

RELIGION & ECONOMIC INEQUALITY

2019-20

RELIGION & THE BUILT ENVIRONMENT

2020-21

RELIGION & THE NATURAL ENVIRONMENT

2021-22

WHARE TIMU | Revisioning Tapu te Ranga Marae

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n the English language, Whare Timu’s Māori name translates to “house.” So perhaps it’s no surprise that as far as he can remember, he’s always wanted to be an architect. He grew up in Hastings, a small city on New Zealand’s North Island that was rebuilt in the early 1930s following a devastating earthquake. As a result, it’s a gem of Art Deco architecture.

It’s also renowned for the work of Māori architect John Scott who rose to local and international prominence in the 1970s and 1980s. Timu was surrounded by Scott’s influence, notably in the chapel of the Catholic high school he attended.

A fully commited Catholic, Timu spent a lot of time in Scott’s buildings and admires his fusion of Māori and European architecture. “Scott was also a Modernist, using bare geometric forms—block walls, plaster—mixed with Māori elements of timber, the strong gable form with center post and decorative carvings of the Whare Nui (big house) used for meetings and large ceremonies.”

While respectful of Scott’s legacy, Timu hopes to create his own. “Māoris have been here in New Zealand for 2,000 years, and colonized for just 200, so there is a lot of history to draw upon. There are stories to be told!” During his participation in the CTI workshop, he’s exploring the real-world project to recreate Tapu te Ranga, a unique and beloved structure that was destroyed by fire late last year.

Timu witnessed the destruction.

First built in the 1970s, the original had grown by accretion over the decades to become a nine-story complex of recycled timbers and stained glass. Its avantgarde originator Bruce Stewart fought numerous battles to expand his original edifice.

Stewart, who lived there until his death in 2017, had a close-knit family of 12 children and many grandchildren. He established Tapu te Ranga Marae (marae being a community or village) shortly after a prison term, gathering about him a “community of lost souls.” These were young Māori men also just out of prison, says Timu, adding that Māoris are

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disproportionatly represented in New Zealand prisons. “It’s a big issue.”

Timu is looking to revision rather than replicate the main Tapu te Ranga building itself, which, he notes, would be impossible given today’s regulations and building standards. The contemporary challenge, he says, is to reconnect with Stuart’s vision of a self-sufficient community based on Māori concepts. To paraphrase one Māori elder, “the marae is my kindergarten, my courthouse, my gallery, my museum, my place of worship, my church, the place where I will be born and where I will be buried.”

Besides a mandate to build eleven homes for Stewart family members and the potential to lease potential co-owners a variety of different housing types—from studio to one- and two-bed apartments suitable for mixed age families—the project calls for a plan that will integrate the natural assets of the site as well as those parts that have been urbanized. There are many stake-holders here and as many challenges, including the restoration of natural waterways that have been covered over.

Timu clearly relishes projects that he can sink his teeth into and draws upon his experiences with civic projects and lots of stakeholders with multiple needs and expectations.

His Tapu te Ranga Design Toolkit includes such concepts as Kotahitanga (cohesion and collaboration) and Kaitiakitanga (guardianship and stewardship). Here is no simple architectual challenge, but an undertaking with enormous impact for the future.

It involves exploring cultural design principles and understanding how they can be adopted in developing alternative settlement patterns, as a form for creating intentional community. The aim goes beyond the feasibility of rebuilding the ‘real-world’ project of Tapu te Ranga to a cultural and spiritual framework for urban growth strategies.

Based in Wellington, New Zealand, Timu is an advocate for simplicity, low impact, and natural solutions, to which he brings a deep understanding of the indigenous customs of the Māori peoples and his knowledge of the Māori worldview. n

RESEARCH REPORT

Theology & Economic Inequality CTI’s Associate Director Joshua Mauldin writes our first Research Report in a new series for Fresh Thinking, distilling the theological insights gained from dialogue with colleagues in other fields in our interdisciplinary inquiries, in this case with economists on economic inequality.

PHOTOGRAPH: SHUTTERSTOCK.COM

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s part of a multi-year Inquiry on Religion and Global Issues, CTI’s research workshop of 20192020 focused on the global concern of religion and economic inequality. It is a big topic, and one discussed daily in the news media and in academic circles. What is at stake with this emerging issue, and how might theology address it?

Economic inequality is sometimes conflated with the problem of poverty, but the issues are distinct, as the Princeton economist and Nobel Laureate Sir Angus Deaton highlighted in the two earlier CTI consultations that prepared the questions for our research workshop on this theme. A society with a lot of very poor people alongside a group of very rich people would provide an example of economic inequality, but even a society that had raised its base income rate to the level that poverty was minimized or even eliminated could still be characterized by extreme economic inequality, if there exist vast disparities of income and wealth.

The problem of economic inequality is thus not simply about meeting the basic survival needs of individuals.

This social issue raises a less tangible quality, regarding how people see one another and see themselves in comparison to others. To put it simply, we worry about economic inequality because of our basic commitment to equality.

It was not always the case. The idea that human beings are

one another’s equals is a modern development. In earlier epochs inequalities were accepted on the assumption that human beings possessed varying levels of value. Only once we hold a basic sense that human beings are one another’s equals deserving equal respect does vast inequality of wealth and income come to be seen as a moral problem.

As in all of our research programs, CTI’s question is always how theology is relevant for pressing social issues of the day. How might theology speak to this global concern?

It begins with a dialogue between the fields of economics and theology. With CTI’s interdisciplinary approach, theological ideas are challenged by the interaction with the field of economics. Sometimes branded the “dismal science,” economics is a scientific enterprise committed to understanding the way things are, as opposed to the way we wish things were. That can be disconcerting at times, as we learn from economists about things like the law of diminishing returns, opportunity costs, and the unintended consequences of our best laid plans. We might think some goal is worth pursuing, but we forget to factor in the opportunity cost of doing so—which means the cost of all the other things we could have done with the time and resources allocated to the task at hand. Economists also explore how our attempts to reach some goal can have unintended consequences that may either impede us from FALL 2020

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ever reaching that goal or create other harms (or “externalito basic equality, for our belief that everyone is of equal ties”) that vastly outweigh the goal we seek to realize, even if worth. This was itself an historical achievement, a belief we were to succeed. Economics challenges us to factor in all that would have been hard to find in the premodern world. of these possibilities and to remain tethered to reality.

Waldron’s focus is on what the grounds are for believing This includes the reality of human nature itself. Economthat we as human beings are one another’s equals, despite ics shares with theology an abiding interest in the question of the fact that we differ in any number of ways. He considers human nature. Theology and economics both ask the quesa range of possibilities, including the theological idea that tion “who are we?” The Christian tradition has a multilaywe are made in God’s image, as the basis for our commitered understanding of human nature, focused on creation ment to human equality. in God’s image, but also marked by Along the way, Waldron notes the the fall into sin, and oriented toward relevance of economic inequality to redemption and reconciliation with our basic commitment to equality. He God. In all of this complexity, theolsuggests that extreme levels of income ogy maintains an interest in human or wealth inequality might be corrobeings as we actually are, in the here sive to our basic commitment to huand now. Economics studies human man equality. As an idea that develnature by observing what human beoped over time in history, our basic ings actually do in their everyday lives. commitment to equality could also Of course, this often differs from what be weakened over time. If economic they think they do, or say they do, or inequality increases to the degree that hope to do. Theology reflects on huthere are groups of people whose ways man aspirations for a better world, but of life differ so radically that members it also examines the reality of human of different groups simply cannot unlife with a weathered eye. In this rederstand one another, it may become spect it is a good dialogue partner with impossible to sustain the belief that economics. we are one another’s equals even in So, what does all this mean for ecothis basic moral sense. To draw on a nomic inequality? As economist and theme from Catholic Social TeachSir Angus Deaton at CTI theologian Daniel Finn told me during ing, highlighted by theologian Robert an interview on the Theology Matters podcast, economic inGascoigne in our workshop, there is an abiding need for equality is a new problem for theology to grapple with. The solidarity among the human community, a sense that we are Christian tradition along with other religious traditions has all in this together. How high can economic inequality rise long harbored a concern for the poor as well as a concern for before our solidarity as a human community is weakened, the dangers of wealth. Theology has examined topics adjacent or even destroyed? That is an open question, which should to the issue of economic inequality, but historically has not be answered sooner rather than later. focused on inequality for its own sake. As Finn observed, the While economic inequality within a single country is a question of poverty has to do with whether or not people can vexing issue, the problem is even more intractable when meet their needs and what we can do to help them meet those one takes a global view, looking at inequality between and needs. That is an important question and one that the history among countries. Even while rates of absolute poverty have of Christianity has dealt with extensively from the time of the declined rapidly over the past few decades, overall global inearly church. But this was never cast in terms of inequality. equality has increased. What can be done at this level? There There were rich and poor, but nobody thought that it is the are no easy answers, but theology should be part of the disdifference between the two that makes it hard for the poor. Tocussion. Theology possesses centuries of reflection on the day we have reason to reflect on the moral implications of this age-old question of the nature of humankind—the question difference itself, including for those who have escaped absolute of who we are. That question is relevant to the discussion poverty. of why economic inequality is a problem. Because it is not In his 2017 book, One Another’s Equals: The Basis of merely about meeting our basic needs, but also about our Human Equality, the legal philosopher Jeremy Waldron basic sense of dignity and respect.

—Joshua Mauldin explores the philosophical grounds for our commitment

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Why I Give and Why to the Center of Theological Inquiry The Rev. Dr. Fred R. Anderson Chair, Board of Trustees give to the Seminary. It was an act of gratitude for the support we had received from Princeton as a student—I could never have gone without its financial aid—and I wanted to give back and say “Thanks!” I started that giving very modestly—$5 a month—but over the years it increased substantially, until we found ourselves giving away about 20% of our income. Along the way, I learned the truth of Jesus’ words, “It is more blessed to give than to receive.” Forty-two years of ministry in three congregations, each of which included members of extraordinary wealth as well as those just scraping by, taught me yet another truth: “enough is best.” God is faithful even when we are not, but seems even more so, when we are! Now in retirement we have all we need and much, much more. We still find delight in being able to share it.

Why do I give?

I give because my parents raised me to do so. I was taught that giving is one of the things that makes humans unique— part of what it means to have been created in God’s image— and that what God has given to us is meant to be shared not hoarded. God meets our generosity with generosity. I was first challenged to tithe when I was twelve (a long story involved in mowing lawns!). I did, off and on, into early adulthood. After college, Air Force, marriage, singing career, and seminary we tried to keep to the discipline. What we learned is, when we did not tithe, for whatever reason, there never seemed to be enough. When we did, we never lacked for anything. (I can tell some remarkable stories about that!)

The words of the prophet Malachi came alive in our lives.

(Malachi 3:10) After ordination, I began pushing beyond the ten percent we were giving to the church I was serving, in order to also

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Why do I give to CTI? As a seminarian I remember Dr. McCord sharing his dream of a place where the brightest minds in the sciences, humanities, and the arts, could be convened with leading theologians to wrestle with some of the world’s biggest, hardest and most important questions. It was his way of ensuring that theology and people of faith were not sidelined in trying to solve them.

I share that commitment and want to be a part of it.

I give to CTI because as a Pastor from the Reformed theological tradition, responsible to preach the gospel in a complex world, I have depended upon the fruit of such scholarly research. It has helped me preach the gospel in an intellectually responsible and, I trust, more faithful way. I want to help keep such resources available to the pastors who come after me.

I give to CTI because giving is one of three classic expectations of being a trustee in a nonprofit organization—often characterized as “The Three “W’s of Trusteeship”—Wisdom, Wallet and Work. But I give to CTI, not simply because it is an expectation, but because I believe in the critical nature of its mission and am grateful for the privilege of sharing in its governance and work. Without such support, CTI could not bring together leaders in the sciences, humanities, and

CONNECT with CTI! the arts to work in dialogue with some of today’s best theological thinkers from the world’s religions in order to understand, define, and speak to what our scholar-members now call the “wicked questions of today.”

I give to CTI because it is a place where even those scholars who self-identify as agnostics or atheist, and have come to CTI because of their interest and expertise in the problem being researched, inevitably speak of profound shifts that have come about to them, their work and thinking, from having been here. They not only now think differently about their work, they have discovered what theology is, and why theology must be part of a problem’s solution if it is to be effective and authentic.

Consequently, increasingly, theology is not sidelined, but understood as a partner in looking for solutions to those “big, wicked questions,” which, of course, our world is not short of.

Under Dr. Storrar’s leadership, CTI has looked at “The Social Implications of Other Life in the Universe,” “Religion and Violence,” “Religion and Economic Inequality,” “Religion and Migration,” “Religion and the Built Environment,” “Religion and the Natural Environment.” Now it is considering “Religion and Racism, Sexism, and Poverty,” as well as the implication, possibilities, and challenges of living in a “Virtual World,” that could become captive to artificial intelligence (AI).

This is to name just a few of the questions being considered. I am neither equipped nor qualified to help solve these critical issues confronting our world today, but I can be a partner in helping address them though my financial support. As I do, I find myself again expressing my gratitude for what I have been given, the satisfaction that comes with sharing it, and the comfort of knowing that in doing so, I am helping to make a difference. I am living into my call to be God’s image bearer in this world. I invite you to join me in this divine vocation and opportunity.

Research Podcasts Videos Magazine Always available on our website:

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A Great Connector of Disciplines Andrew Davison is the Starbridge Senior Lecturer in Theology and Natural Sciences at the University of Cambridge. He was a Member of CTI’s Inquiry on the Societal Implications of Astrobiology in 2016-17. Here he discusses his view of theology and its place in the university with CTI’s Director William Storrar in our new “colloquy” series.

William Storrar: Theology itself as a discipline, Andrew, in conversation with the sciences, that is our mission to bring theology into dialogue with the wider field. What is your sense intellectually today about the openings for theology in the wider research field you work in with the natural sciences?

Thomas Aquinas, 1225-1274

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Andrew Davison: Right across the university today, there’s a new interest in theology, a new openness towards it. When CTI was first founded, you were somewhat a lone voice and I think you were doing work pushing at a door that was sometimes jammed shut. Think of the contrast today, when I see so many posters across the University for interdisciplinary seminars with a religious element to them: in exchange with law, politics, literature, international development, medicine, engineering, and so on. That makes it a wonderful time to be brokering and investing in the role of theology in the wider research conversation, because there’s such an interest in talking between disciplines, and that would include the sciences. We all have a sense why these joined-up conversations are important. Think of environmental matters for instance. The science is pretty clear, but actually changing the way we live is going to take more than science. I’ve had some very fruitful conversations with engineers and scientists who recognize the absolutely vital role of religion as a conduit, or a catalyst, for interpreting these things to the public in such a way that they lead to changes in the way we live.

As another angle, I notice there’s such an interest today, across the humanities, in matter: in material culture and embodiment. And people are realizing that religion down history turns out to be completely integral to all of that.

IMAGE: COMMONS.WIKIMEDIA.ORG

COLLOQUY

THEOLOGY:

colloquy

colloquy noun plural colloquies a gathering for discussion of theological questions

Religion isn’t about some disembodied set of beliefs; it’s about things, and places, and practices: topics of great interest to the humanities and social sciences.

I’m also struck that there’s such a sense today, among colleagues across the University, of the world having problems, and of wanting to respond, wanting to make a difference in the world. People are not involved in research simply for abstract reasons. People realized there’s a bruised world and they want to make a difference. That’s also part of having theology and the study of religion in the conversation.

So, I see this new interest around the University in learning about, and working with, theologians, and religious bodies and traditions, and it’s often about this sense that religion around the world is integral to responding to human needs.

I’ll give you a nice example. Over the weekend I was involved in a symposium on nature and there was a fascinating scholar who worked on the history of environmentalism.

She stressed that the communal dimension was central to that. Environmental responsibility has to be communal. She pointed out that throughout history this had a religious angle to it, and that today, often without a sense of common purpose coming from religion, there’s a danger that we know the need, but have no consensus for acting communally. There needs to be something to bind all this together, to be more than the sum of its parts. Here was someone who would call herself an atheist saying that she needed to work with religious communities. The fact that there she was not speaking herself from a position of faith, but talking about the conversation with faith as being practically of the first importance, seemed to me to underline something important.

“Theology is the most omnivorous of disciplines.

Following Aquinas, it’s about God and all things as they relate to God.” —Andrew Davison

WS: What from your perspective does theology bring intellectually to the interdisciplinary conversation, especially those like the one you just mentioned that are concerned to make a difference for a better world at this time of turmoil?

AD: I would say that theology is the most omnivorous of all disciplines. If you follow Thomas Aquinas, it’s about theology thinking about God and all things as they relate to God: which is to say, everything. So there’s nothing the theologian isn’t interested in. If you look down the years of inquiries that you and your predecessors put together at CTI, you see that—all of human life and all of human interest are reflected there. That’s something theology brings to interdisciplinary conversation: theology is just interested in everything, has something to say about everything, has something to learn about everything. That makes it a great connector of disciplines. The theological tradition of Christianity and other religions also shows how the most practical matters bear on the most seemingly theoretical questions, and vice-versa. That means a lot to me. In that way, too, theology can witness to the connection between anything an individual scholar might work on, and the lives of communities of belief that include a billion people.

WS: This is certainly the Center’s capacious understanding of theology as an interdisciplinary and comparative field of inquiry. It is intellectually hospitable to all other fields of human inquiry, while remaining true to its own theological focus on God and all things in relation to God. You exemplify this view in your own scholarship, Andrew. Thank you for all you do to advance it in the university.

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SPOTLIGHT ON

In 2015-2018, CTI held a three-year Inquiry on the Societal Implications of Astrobiology, funded by NASA and the John Templeton Foundation. Four books have recently been published as the fruit of that inquiry. Biologist Lucas Mix provides a thorough history of philosophical and scientific understandings of life in Life Concepts from Aristotle to Darwin. In Living with Tiny Aliens, theologian Adam Pryor examines how “astrobiology is changing how we understand meaningful human existence.” Douglas Ottati’s A Theology for the Twenty-First Century is

Lucas John Mix

Adam Pryor

Life Concepts from Aristotle to Darwin

Living with Tiny Aliens

a 600-page, single-volume systematic theology, which reflects his own participation in CTI’s program on astrobiology. Edited by CTI members Zoë Lehmann Imfeld and Andreas Losch, Our Common Cosmos explores the future of “theology, human culture, and space sciences.” The volume brings together several other CTI members, including Markus Mühling, Dirk Evers, Connor Cunningham, and Erik Persson.

Leading astrobiologist Carl Pilcher, who took part in CTI’s Inquiry on the Societal Implications of Astrobiology, provides a Foreword to the volume.

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Douglas F. Ottati A Theology for the Twenty-First Century

Zoë Lehmann Imfeld, Andreas Losch Our Common Cosmos

Mark Eaton Religion and American Literature Since 1950

Hannah Strømmen, Ulrich Schmiedel The Claim to Christianity

Gijsbert Van Den Brink

N.T. Wright

Reformed Theology and Evolutionary Theory

God and the Pandemic

Wesley J. Wildman

Gunter Thomas

In Our Own Image

Gottes Lebendigkeit

Christine Schliesser, Ayse Kadayifci-Orellana, Pauline Kollontai On the Significance of Religion in Conflict and Conflict Resolution

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F

An insider’s view of creating the

podcast with host Josh Mauldin

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ive years ago CTI launched a podcast. At that time it was still common to encounter the question, “what exactly is a podcast?” Since that time, CTI’s podcast, now called Theology Matters, has been downloaded tens of thousands of times. This podcast brings together theologians and scholars from a range of disciplines to discuss CTI’s research on religion and global concerns. Looking at various academic topics, the question for the podcast is always “what is at stake here?” The name of the podcast has a double meaning, connoting both the claim that theology matters (it is a field that matters) as well as alluding to the “matters” which constitute the field of theology, the topics it examines. If theology is classically understood as “the study of God and all things in their relation to God,” the remit of theology is broad indeed. Hence a Center and a podcast that have ventured into a wide variety of topics.

Oftentimes on the podcast we are discussing projects that are still developing. The book or journal article might not appear for a year or two, but in the meantime we can discuss the ideas that are animating the research. Perhaps questions raised will even influence where the research goes. At other times we circle back to a scholar after an important book has been published, providing a venue to discuss the completed project. Sometimes I will host a conversation with two or three scholars, but just as often it is a one-on-one conversation between me and one researcher.

What’s the goal? To get CTI’s research out there, in a free and open access format, to anyone in the world in a way that anyone can understand. We cut through the jargon. If a scholar uses a technical academic term, I’ll ask them to explain what it means for a general audience. Our listener base is spread out across hundreds of countries. We have an especially high base of listeners in Silicon Valley, but also in South America, Africa, and East Asia. In ordinary times I hold podcast conversations in person in Luce Hall, the home of CTI. During the pandemic, we’ve held the conversations online, via Zoom. This allowed us to launch a special podcast series on theology and the pandemic, holding conversations with CTI scholars around the world to discuss this challenging time from their disciplinary perspectives.

If you are interested in the ideas CTI has distilled over the past few years, a good place to start is the countless hours of content available on our podcast at the click of a button. You can find the podcast on our website, ctinquiry.org. Better yet, search for the podcast on the Apple podcast app. Subscribe to the podcast so that each new episode will automatically appear on your smartphone. Thanks for listening, and I welcome your feedback at editor@ctinquiry.org. —Joshua Mauldin

SEASON 3 RELIGION & THE PANDEMIC THEOLOGY MATTERS PODCAST

Religion, Violence, and Human Interconnection

The Partnership Between Theology and Science

The Narrative Dimension of a Crisis

Neighbor and Community in a Time of Crisis

Dr. Joel Hodge, CTI Member and Senior Lecturer in Theology at Australian Catholic University, shares his work on looking at violence in the name of God and how justification for violence has shifted from the ancient world to the modern. As the current pandemic has brought suffering, we can find meaning in that as it reminds us of how interconnected we are and the call for responsibility.

Dr. Celia Deane-Drummond, CTI Member and Senior Research Fellow in Theology at Oxford, discusses viewing the pandemic through the lens of Pope Francis’ 2015 Encyclical and the mutually beneficial partnership between theology and science in sparking new public conversations.

Friederike Nussel, CTI Member and Professor of Systematic Theology at Heidelberg University, reflects on the evolving narrative of a crisis and our changing perception of humanity’s greatest threat over the centuries: the eternal impact of sin versus temporary physical and mental suffering.

N.T. Wright, CTI Member and Professor of New Testament and Early Christianity at University of St. Andrews and Oxford, shares how he came to write his newest book, God and the Pandemic: A Christian Reflection on the Pandemic and its Aftermath, discussing how reading scripture can illuminate this crisis, and how in this time of isolation we can foster community and take part in the healing work that is needed.

To hear all Theology Matters podcasts, visit ctinquiry.org/connect

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Leading in a Pandemic World: PLANETARY HEALTH As the COVID-19 pandemic spread around the world in April 2020, the Center of Theological Inquiry formed a strategic partnership with Religions for Peace, a global NGO, to launch a new joint series of webinars for religious leaders on what this local and global public health their religious and public communities. The webinars are being co-chaired by CTI’s Director, Dr. William Storrar, and the Secretary General of Religions for Peace, Professor Azza Karam.

In the first webinar, two CTI Members, sociologist Dr. Elisabet le Roux from the University of Stellenbosch, South Africa, and theologian Dr. Frederick Simmons, Princeton Theological Seminary, USA, joined global public health expert Professor Liz Grant from the University of Edinburgh in the UK to discuss “leading in the new normal of a pandemic world” with religious leaders across faiths and around the world. We are grateful to them for kind permission to publish their prepared remarks for readers of Fresh Thinking.

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T

he concept of planetary health is based on the understanding that human health and the whole of humanity in the world depend on flourishing natural and societal systems, and the wise stewardship of these global goods. But to drive the development and growth (especially the economic growth) of societal systems, natural systems have been degraded to an extent unparalleled in human history. This degradation is having a huge impact on human health.

Planetary health has at its heart an ambition to reverse this trend of unprecedented degradation of nature and the unbridled growth of inequalities, exacerbated by unfair distribution of the world’s assets. This degradation is not a single thing, but a culmination and cumulation of threats from the impact of human-made climate and environmental change, such as air pollution, loss of biodiversity, and the consequences of these, including under-nutrition, flooding, droughts, and heat stress. Planetary health aims for a better understanding of all of the needs of humanity and a balancing of these human needs with the preservation of the Earth to sustain the health and well-being of future generations.

In 2015, a Commission on Planetary Health stated that we have mortgaged the health of future generations for the development gains of the present. The shock of our time is that it is no longer the health of future generations which

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emergency means for responsible leadership in

W

d:

What Does it Mean to be a Healthy Community Now?

has been mortgaged—the pandemic shows it is our generation’s health. And the paradox of our time is that though the world is facing a pandemic of a complexity none of us have lived through before, the ongoing crises which planetary health speaks to represent an even greater existential threat to human existence.

These combined political, economic, and social drivers for development inadvertently laid the foundations of this pandemic, but until now all of us have been slow to recognize their influence and take responsibility for their impact. As the COVID-19 pandemic shocks health systems and economic systems around the world, however, it becomes clearer that the direct and indirect effects of the planetary health crises have been major drivers of the COVID-19 pandemic.

And, paradoxically, it has become clear that strategies to mitigate, contain, and manage the pandemic are effectively, though unintentionally, tackling the biodiversity and climate crises. But the cost of this shock is too great, the poor are paying with their lives. So, what we are being shown is that we know what we need to do, but we don’t know how to do it. Lock down and quarantine measures, despite flattening the curve and achieving gains for the planet, cannot be the way forward—here leadership is called for and the following key questions must be asked.

Key Questions What are the ways of achieving the same gains (these unintended environmental consequences that the mitigation and containment strategies achieved) while being proactively pro-poor?

What are the ways of stopping the drivers of pandemics —the jumping of viruses from the animal kingdom into humans—driven by poverty on the one hand, greed on the other, destruction of animal habitat, and rapid industrializations and urbanization?

What are the ways of addressing the greatest inequity question: why do we live in a world where the conditions and the systems and service to provide health for all are not utilized? We know what to do, and we know how to do it, but we simply don’t do it!

What are the ways to reimagine what a future can look like where our individual and collective living is respectful of and responsive to living within the planetary boundaries of our climate?

How can we share with world leaders the deep knowledge that faith traditions have embedded in their sacred traditions, scriptures, in their beliefs, and in their understanding of the value of humanity and of the created world?

In this time of global uncertainty, exacerbated by the fearfulness of the unknown power of the current pandemic, is it time to reimagine a future that has already been depicted in the artistry and poetry of an age gone by, when the earth’s ecosystems were interlinked and inseparably knotted together?

The United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals set out a blueprint of how this can be achieved. In essence, what is needed is the collective efforts of people worldwide to generate knowledge, and educate, advocate, enact policies, and live and work in ways that promote this balance between human health and the health of the planet.

A Leadership Opportunity Religious leaders and the faith communities they represent now have an historic opportunity and a strategic responsibility to lead in the new normal of a pandemic world, including: • To recognize the power that lies in looking at the current pandemic and the planetary crises through the eyes of faiths and traditions.

• To use the images, art, rites, and rituals of those traditions to help portray to a shocked world the intricacy of the connection between human and planetary health, between past and future, between the one and the many.

• To identify the hidden costs and unintended consequences of individual and societal actions, calling out these injustices.

• To reflect on the nature of hospitality, where the stranger, the outsider, the migrant, are brought inside, and where the sick are healed and the carer is cared for.

—Liz Grant

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Leading in a Pandemic World

M

y work around the world is on gender equality and gender-based violence in relation to religion, so this is the framing for me to reflect also more broadly on what this pandemic might mean for social norm change.

As I’m sure those of you in countries with hard lockdowns have seen, there has been a dramatic increase in violence against women. To be honest, we expected this. Research across the world has shown that, even in ‘normal’ times, a woman’s home is the most dangerous space for her; it is her intimate partner that is most likely to do her harm. So now, with lockdown, she is forced to stay in her home, which is now a setting with increasing levels of poverty, substance abuse, high levels of stress, social isolation, etc. These are all drivers of GBV—Gender-based violence.

GBV was already a worldwide pandemic before COVID-19 struck, but the combination of the two has definitely made it more dangerous for women. This will continue post-COVID-19. Our economies will not recover quickly. Poverty and fear will remain. Under these circumstances, GBV thrives, especially intimate partner violence. With our constructs of hegemonic masculinity relying on the idea of the powerful male, violence against a partner or child can become the only form of agency and power that a perpetrator has.

But this is not where my reflection on a COVID-19 world ends. Just as this pandemic is devastating for the safety of women and children, I think it also has tremendous potential for harbouring changes that can fundamentally shift how we see men and women, and the relationship between them. We know that with crises, like war or similar upheaval, there is a relaxing of the dominant social and gender norms. For people to survive, the gender roles and restrictions placed especially on women are often eased in some ways. So, this is where I think the positive potential of this pandem-

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ic lies. It allows us an opportunity to revisit how we believe people should act and society should function.

We know that unequal gender norms lie at the heart of gender-based violence. In changing these norms, we not only allow for a more gender equal society, but we also contribute to eradicating GBV. And this opportunity for norm change is wider than only gender norms. What has our existing social norms meant for peace, what has it meant for the planet? In the upheaval of COVID-19, we are confronted with what our world order of exclusion, exploitation, and discrimination has done. In this upheaval, in this ceasing of ‘the normal’—we are given the opportunity to change the normal. This is a tremendous opportunity.

But this is an opportunity, a gap, that does not last long. We have seen this in other settings of upheaval, such as war. There is this small window in which you can change things. But if you don’t put effort into it, it won’t work. The ‘old normal’ is easier to accept, there are set patterns people easily fall back into. So, a postCOVID-19 ‘new normal’ will not automatically be a better normal. It will require considerable effort.

And this is where faith leaders can play a crucial role.

We know the influence that they have on people’s ideas and beliefs. Through what they teach and explain based on religion, and through what they model as a religious leader, they can fundamentally shift social norms. Yes, this can be a shift to recognise the dignity, equality, and rights of the female ‘Other.’ They can also bring a shift in the recognition of the dignity, equality, and rights of the religious ‘Other,’ the ethnic ‘Other,’ the historical ‘Other.’

COVID-19 is devastating, yes. But, I truly believe that this global public health crisis can be turned to a force for good, too. By forcing us to stop our ‘normal’, it gives us the opportunity to start a new one. —Elisabet le Roux

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GENDER-BASED VIOLENCE IN THE PANDEMIC: A CHANCE TO CHANGE SOCIAL NORMS

THE ROLE OF RELIGIOUS ETHICS IN THE NEW NORMAL OF A PANDEMIC WORLD

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I

t is easy to miss the mark when attempting to discern the role of religious ethics in leading a pandemic world.

Political realists, economic determinists, and cynics of various stripes deny that ethics—religious or otherwise—make much difference to the forces that in fact shape the world. By contrast, religious leaders and other social activists are often presumed to insist that ethics— whether religious or simply humanitarian—are the key to redressing this pandemic and the myriad other threats that confront the contemporary global community. I’d like to suggest instead that religious ethics have an important role to play alongside other likewise indispensable domains in constituting the leadership appropriate to a pandemic world, and to indicate briefly something of what that role might be.

In basic terms, leadership amidst this pandemic involves at least three principal elements: science, governance, and ethics. Scientific expertise is necessary because leadership in a pandemic world requires knowledge of the disease, how it spreads, and how it may be treated.

Governance is likewise necessary to craft and implement policies that stem this spread, organize this treatment, and compensate for the costs incurred by these responses. These costs are enormous and affect different groups differently. And this is where ethics—religious and otherwise—may make their vital contribution, for it is ethics that determine which costs are recognized, how their relative significance is assessed, and what their just distribution requires.

To appreciate this role for ethics, ponder global public health more generally. The world community has made tremendous gains in global public health over the last century. These gains, however, have left some behind and

inadvertently harmed others. Moreover, many of these gains have come at great environmental cost, meaning that present public health has been promoted by imperiling future public health, to saying nothing of the health of all the non-human life—both present and future— with whom we share the planet. It is the role of ethics to sensitize us to the breadth of these costs, link them with these gains, and help us discern how to balance all of these competing factors properly.

This role for ethics, in turn, renders religious leadership vital to a pandemic world, for it is religious traditions that broaden the sphere of ethical concern and call us to consider displacing ourselves from the center of that broadened sphere. Likewise, it is religious traditions that teach the normative importance of accepting limitations and offer guidance for making the choices among goods that such limitations impose. And it is religious leaders that help their traditions’ adherents to recognize the relevance of these ethical resources and apply them wisely to the ever-shifting array of choices among goods that circumstances afford and inflict.

In particular, a pandemic world foregrounds choices between the fundamental goods of public health, environmental reprieve, and economic development. Ultimately, none of these goods is sustainable without the others. Yet they cannot always all be promoted at once, and pursuit of one can sometimes contravene another—as the global lockdown’s boon to public and environmental health, but simultaneous economic devastation attests. A pandemic world dramatizes the perennial need to diminish these trade-offs and allocate well those that remain. It thereby also attests to religious ethics’ pivotal role in leading in this new normal. —Frederick Simmons

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FRIENDS OF CTI Raising theology's relevance is our challenge and responsibility.

With your support, we can extend our reach globally, sharing theology's wisdom to inform the way we live now.

CTI is an independent nonprofit organization that relies on public support. What makes our research and outreach possible is you. Our funding comes primarily from philanthropic gifts and grants.

Join the Friends!

By becoming a friend of CTI, you are joining a strong tradition of support since our founding.

Friends of CTI are included in special events and programs hosted by the Director.

Below are highlights of the opportunities to interact with our CTI scholars

SPECIAL EVENTS & PROGRAMS:

and the leadership team.

Meet our Scholars Watch this monthly webinar to hear from our CTI scholars convening for this year’s workshop on Religion & the Built Environment.

Wisdom for our World Webinars Join CTI Director William Storrar in our new webinar series on wisdom for our world with experts to discuss theology’s relevance in tackling global concerns in policymaking and practice.

Director’s Dialogue Interact with CTI Director William Storrar and leading thinkers and policy makers.

DIRECTOR’S DIALOGUE

For full details on the CTI Friends program, visit ctinquiry.org/support.

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ANNOUNCING A LOCAL & GLOBAL RESEARCH WORKSHOP ON

Religion & the Natural Environment Fall Semester 2021 & Spring Semester 2022 Responding to the pandemic and climate emergency, the Center of Theological Inquiry is pleased to announce an innovative local and global model for its research workshop on religion and the natural environment in the 2021-22 academic year, connecting local and digital conversations.

Climate Connections The Center invites research proposals on religion and the natural environment from theologians and scholars of world religions or religious studies that will advance our understanding of the connections between climate change and issues of religion and migration, conflict, inequality, or related topics. Successful applicants will conduct their research in their locality while joining the global digital seminar at CTI, where work-in-progress will be exchanged with workshop members.

Transdisciplinary Connections Applicants for our Fall 2021 and Spring 2022 Research Workshops on Religion and the Natural Environment will submit both a research proposal on climate connections and the names of two dialogue partners in their home locality: a university researcher in the environmental sciences or humanities, and a policymaker on environmental issues.

Successful applicants will meet with these two colleagues locally to discuss their project during the semester and bring them into the global digital seminar when presenting their own work-in-progress to workshop members. In this hybrid model, we shall connect transdisciplinary conversations on our theme around the world.

Responsible Research & Global Health CTI looks forward to returning to its resident program when global public health conditions allow for the safe reopening of our international visiting scholar program, we hope in 2022-23 (tbc).

For more information on the research workshop for 2021-22, visit ctinquiry.org/Apply

The Application Portal on the CTI website will be open during January 2021.

Center of Theological Inquiry Henry R. Luce Hall 50 Stockton Street Princeton, NJ 08540

ANNOUNCING A LOCAL & GLOBAL RESEARCH WORKSHOP ON

Religion & the Natural Environment Fall Semester 2021 & Spring Semester 2022: Apply January 2021 (see inside back cover for details)

ctinquiry.org