Scholarships

Department Related Events

Upcoming Events:

"African Christian Initiatives: Some Lessons for the West"

Cephas Omenyo

Cephas Omenyo is currently the John A. Mackay Professor of World Christianity at Princeton Theological Seminary. He also teaches at the University of Ghana, Legon. He has published, among others, Pentecost Outside Pentecostalism: A Study of the Development of Charismatic Renewal in the Mainline Church in Ghana (Zoetermeer, 2002).

Tuesday, May 6, 2008 3:30 PM
Alumni Association Board Room
Refreshments Provided

Co-sponsored by: Byker Chair in Christian Perspectives on Economic, Social, and Political Thought; African and African Diaspora Studies; the Department of Sociology and Social Work; and the Nagel Institute

Past Events:

"The Religious Heritage of Right Talk:
A Symposium" and evening with
Nicholas Wolterstorff and John Witte, Jr.

Monday March 31, 2008 7:00 p.m. Commons Lecture Hall

Is religion opposed to rights? Does justice require curbing religious influence? Both popular and academic discussions of human rights tend to see religion as a threat. Thus 'enlightened' secularists are still given to alarmist accounts of how religious traditions squelch civil rights, or how confessional communities trample over human rights claims. On this account, only 'secular' democracy can secure justice, often precisely against the claims of religion.

But this version of the story has been called into question by recent research. On Monday, March 31, Calvin College hosts a symposium with two internationally-acclaimed scholars who have a very different story to tell. John Witte, Jr., Robitscher Professor of Law and Director of the Center for the Study of Law and Religion at Emory University, discusses the roots and origins of a modern account of human rights in early modern Calvinism. And Nicholas Wolterstorff, Noah Porter Professor of Philosophical Theology Emeritus at Yale, digs back even further, arguing that modern intuitions about rights and justice are indebted to Hebrew and Christian scriptures - and cannot be sustained by a wholly secular ethos.

Co-sponsored by:
Service-Learning Center
Department of Sociology and Social Work
Calvin Center for Christian Scholarship

"Women in Michigan Prisons:
Clemency, Human Rights and Wrongful Convictions"
Carol Jacobsen

Tuesday March 18, 2008
3:30 p.m.
Alumni Association Board Room

Carol Jacobsen, Director of the Michigan Women's Justice & Clemency Project, a nonprofit effort working to free women wrongly convicted, presents clips from her films narrated by women in Michigan prisons and discuss her role as filmmaker. Dr. Jacobsen presents the argument of women who killed their abusers in self-defense and believe they did not receive fair trials.

Carol Jacobsen is Professor of Art, Women's Studies, American Culture, and Human Rights at The University of Michigan. Her social documentary work in video and photography focuses on issues of women's criminalization and censorship and is co-sponsored by Amnesty Internation, Human Rights Watch, the ACLU and other nonprofits.

Sponsored by the Department of Sociology and Social Work

Third Annual Byker Chair Lecture

Jose Casanova: "How Immigration is Changing the Face of American Religion"

Monday, November 13, 2006
Meeter Center
3:30 p.m.

Jose Casanova, Chair and Professor of Sociology,
The New School, New York, New York

Promoted by the Byker Chair in Christian Perspectives on Political, Social, and Economic Thought. Paul Freston, Professor of Sociology, is the holder of the Gary and Henrietta Byker Chair.

Bryan Froehle Lecture: "Global Catholicism:
Reality and Prospects"

Tuesday, October 31
Meeter Center
3:30 p.m.

Bryan Froehle directs the St. Catherine of Siena Center and also serves as a member of the sociology faculty of Dominican University, River Forest, Illinois.

Promoted by the Byker Chair in Christian Perspectives on Political, Social, and Economic Thought.

Kurt Ver Beek Lecture: "Short-term Missions:
Do they make a difference?"

Wednesday, October 4, 2006
Chapel Undercroft
3:30 p.m.

Sociology Professor Kurt Ver Beek summarizes his review of quantitative studies done of short-term missions (STMs) in the last decade in order to try to answer the question of whether STMs are worth all of the time and money we are investing in them. He gives recommendations for changes that may make STMs more powerful in changing us and those we serve.

Integrating Christian Faith and Social Work Practice:
A Working Conference

	Cheryl Bransen
	Beryl Hugen

July 18-21, 2006
Calvin College, Grand Rapids, Michigan

Call for Papers

The Calvin College Social Work program, with additional support from the North American Association of Christians in Social Work (NACSW), will host a working conference from Tuesday, July 18, 2006 through Friday noon, July 21, 2006. This seminar is dedicated to exploring foundational and enduring questions in the social work profession through the lens of the Christian faith.

Participants in the seminar will be expected to present a theoretical paper or a paper focused on the application of a conceptual model that works toward integrating some aspect of social work with Christian faith. The 2004 seminar, for instance, explored the relationship of faith to foundational concepts of personhood, epistemology, research, justice, diversity, and to such questions as who should be responsible for the poor. These ideas, and others, are welcome as paper proposals. By the conclusion of the working conference, it is expected that participants' papers will be close to completion for submission to NACSW publications or professional journals of their choosing.

Participants will be expected to submit a draft of their paper to Calvin College by June 15, 2006, so that these can be shared with other participants. Failure to submit a paper by this date jeopardizes the applicant's participation in the seminar.

Participants will also be expected to read, in advance, the papers of other participants and be prepared to respond in critically helpful ways. Dr. Stephen Evans (Baylor University) and Dr. Nicholas Wolterstorff (Yale University) will serve as consultants to the group and respond to papers.