Archived Events
Fall 2010
World Christianity in the Early Church
The CCCS invites the Calvin community to a public lecture by renowned historian of Christianity, Andrew F. Walls. To learn more about Andrew F. Walls click here.
Friday
November 5
3:30pm
Meeter Center Lecture Hall
Cosponsored by: The Nagel Institute for World Christianity, CCCS, Seminars@Calvin, Calvin Seminary, and the History Department at Calvin College
Spring 2010
Love and the Desert: Medieval Mystical Themes and Two Continental Philosophers of Religion
The CCCS invites the Calvin community to a public lecture by Robert Sweetman, H. Evan Runner Chair in the History of Philosophy and Acting President of the Institute for Christian Studies in Toronto, Canada. Read more about Robert Sweetman »
April 29
3:30pm
Meeter Center Lecture Hall
Paradoxes and Taboos: Gender, Culture, and Physicality
The CCCS invites the Calvin community to a reception where Helen Sterk (CAS) and Annelies Knoppers will discuss their recently published book: Gender, Culture, and Physicality: Paradoxes and Taboos (Lexington Books, 2009).
March 16
3:30pm
Meeter Center Lecture Hall
Cosponsored by the Calvin Center for Christian Scholarship and Gender Studies
Duty or Delight? Labor and Prayer in the Middle Ages
The CCCS invites you to a presentation by John Van Engen, Andrew V. Tackes Professor of History at Notre Dame University.
Professor Van Engen is a historian of religious and intellectual life during the European middle ages. Within those thousand years his work has focused especially upon three large areas: renewal during the twelfth century, “Christianization” in Medieval European history broadly, and religious movements in the later middle ages, especially the Devotio Moderna. His books and essays have dealt with monasticism, women’s writing, schools and universities, inquisition, canon law, notions of reform, and medieval religious culture generally. Beyond editing scholarly symposia, he is actively translating medieval texts from Latin and Middle Dutch, and has underway a large edition of core historical materials for the movement called the Devotio Moderna. Learn more about Professor John Van Engen »
Watch the video of Professor Van Engen's lecture
March 4
3:30pm
Meeter Center Lecture Hall
Cosponsored by the Calvin Center for Christian Scholarship, the H. Henry Meeter Center for Calvin Studies, Medieval Studies, and the Calvin Center of Christian Worship
FALL 2009
Enhancing a Global Perspective on Campus
Please join us for a presentation by Larry Braskamp, Ph.D., Professor Emeritus of Education at Loyola University Chicago and Senior Fellow at the American Association of Colleges and Universities. Larry will be speaking on "Enhancing a Global Perspective on Campus," drawing from his extensive work surveying American college and university students with the Global Perspectives Inventory.
November 9
3:30 PM
Commons Lecture Hall
Vices, Sins, Worship and Worldview Reception
Join Baker Publishing Group, The Kuyers Institute for Christian Teaching and Learning, Seminars in Christian Scholarship, The Calvin Center for Christian Scholarship, and The Calvin Campus Store for a reception in honor of Glittering Vices by Rebecca Konyndyk DeYoung and Desiring the Kingdom: Worship, Worldview and Cultural Formation by James K. A. Smith.
Thursday, October 29th
3:30pm - 5:30pm
Willow Room of the Prince Conference Center
SPRING 2009
Book Launch @ Schuler Books
The Emmaus Readers: More Listening for God in Contemporary Fiction
Edited by Susan M. Felch and Gary D. Schmidt
Paraclete Press, April 2009
Meet the Emmaus Readers—an eclectic multi-disciplinary group of book-lovers from Calvin College—who set out to find what is implicitly and explicitly spiritual in the fiction that frequents the bestsellers lists.
Date, Time, & Location
May 14, 2009
7:00 PM
Schuler Books & Music
John Calvin: Myth & Reality
The 2009 Calvin Studies Society Confernce, April 16-18, 2009
To mark the Reformer John Calvin's 500th birthday, the Meeter Center for Calvin Studies at Calvin College and Calvin Theological Seminary in Grand Rapids, MI, will host the 2009 Calvin Studies Society conference from Thursday, April 16 to Saturday, April 18, 2009. Join us for three days of stimulating presentations and discussions on topics that go from Calvin's attitude on a range of topics including images, women, and church discipline to Calvin's world-wide impact, including in early America, Southeast Asia, the Netherlands, Germany, and Korea. This conference will bring together Calvin experts from around the world, and provides an outstanding opportunity for everyone from faculty and students at all levels to pastors and interested lay-people to join in the discussion on Calvin and his impact and reputation, both in the past and today.
Date and Location:
April 16-18, 2009
Calvin Theological Seminary
Grand Rapids, MIHosted by:
The Meeter Center for Calvin Studies
Cosponsored by:
The Calvin Center for Christian Scholarship, Calvin Theological Seminary, and the Meeter Center for Calvin Studies
For more information contact:
The Meeter Center for Calvin Studies
Phone: 616-526-7081
Fax: 616-526-7687
meeter@calvin.edu
Trouble on the Supreme Court:
Constitutional Interpretation and the Capabilities
Approach
The CCCS Working Group--Cosmopolitanism in a World of Clashing Faiths--led by professors Ruth Groenhout (Philosophy) and Darren Walhof (Political Science, GVSU) bring The University of Chicago's Ernst Freund Distinguished Service Professor of Law and Ethics, Martha Nussbaum to Grand Rapids for this special lecture on constitutional interpretation and the capabilities approach.
Recent article on the topic:
Martha Nussbaum, "Foreward: Constitutions and Capabilities: "Perception" Against Lofty Formalism." Harvard Law Review 121.4 (2007): 5-97.To learn more about Martha Nussbaum visit her website at The Law School of The University of Chicago »
Date, Time, and Location:
April 3, 2009
4:00 PM
Grand Valley State University
215 L.V. Eberhard Center
FALL 2008
The Bible, Rocks and Time:
An Hour with Davis Young & Ralph Stearley
The CCCS invites you to celebrate with Davis Young and Ralph Stearley on the publication of their new book: The Bible, Rocks and Time (IVP Academic, 2008). Come hear a conversation with Susan Felch and the authors as they talk about the impact of this book in science classrooms among the general public.
Friday, November 14
3:30 PM
Science Building 010
Conversation--audio
(Note: file size is 23.8MB)"History of Geology at Calvin College"
A lecture by Clarence Menninga, presented April 10, 2001
Cosponsored by: Calvin Center for Christian Scholarship and Calvin College's GEO Department.
2008 FALL LECTURES
1) Reformation Understandings of the Church
Through History
Euan Cameron
Henry Luce III Professor of Reformation History
Union Theological Seminary
Dr. Cameron is the author of The European Reformation (Oxford, 1991); Waldenses: Rejections of Holy Church in Medieval Europe (Oxford, 2000); and Interpreting Christian History: The Challenge of the Churches’ Past (Oxford, 2005).
Wednesday,
October 15
3:30 PM
Meeter Center
Lecture Hall
Download the lecture (.pdf) »
2) 
Writing the
History of the Church in the Renaissance:
Tradition and Innovation
Anthony Grafton
Henry Putnam University Professor of History
Princeton University
Anthony Grafton is one of the foremost authors and teachers of Renaissance cultural and intellectual history in the United States. His numerous books on Renaissance history and the history of scholarship include: What Was History?: The Art of History in Early Modern Europe; Christianity and the Transformation of the Book; The Footnote: A Curious History; Forgers and Critics: Creativity and Duplicity in Western Scholarship; and Bring Out Your Dead: The Past as Revelation.
Thursday, October 16
8:00 PM
Meeter Center
Lecture Hall
Listen to the lecture 
Lectures cosponsored by: Calvin Center for Christian Scholarship, Calvin Seminary, and the departments of History, Classics, Religion, and English.
2008 SPRING SYMPOSIUM
The Religious Heritage of Rights Talk
March 31, 2008
The CCCS, Service-Learning Center, and Sociology & Social Work Department hosted a symposium with two internationally-acclaimed scholars who have a very different story to tell about religion and human rights.
John Witte, Jr.
Robitscher Professor of Law and Director of the Center for the Study of Law and Religion at Emory University,
will discuss
the roots and origins of a modern account of human rights in early modern Calvinism.
Nicholas Wolterstorff
Noah Porter Professor of Philosophical Theology Emeritus at Yale, will dig back even further, arguing that modern intuitions about rights and justice are indebted to the Hebrew and Christian scriptures--and cannot be sustained by a wholly secular ethos.
2008 Spring Symposium -- Quicktime Movie »
Fall 2007
Assessing the Past, Facing the Future - the CRC at 150
September 13-17, 2007
The CCCS is cosponsoring this significant event in the CRC’s 150th anniversary celebration--a three-day conference at Calvin College. This denominational event will feature both plenary and break-out group presentations on various aspects of the historical heritage of the CRC and the challenges of the present and future of the denomination’s ministry. For more information »
Spring 2007
Jeff Sharlet Spoke at Calvin on April 11, 2007
Fundamentalist History, Secular Myth, and the Media's God Problem
Sharlet offered the reflections of a journalist who's been exploring the spiritual geography of the nation in the post 9/11 era. Read Sharlet's abstract and bio »
March 2007 - CCCS Hour
The Good Life in Theory and Practice:
Aquinas’s Ethics and the Process of Co-Authoring a Manuscript
Speakers: Christina VanDyke and Rebecca DeYoung (philosophy)
At this CCCS Hour, Rebecca DeYoung and Christina VanDyke will share the vision that got their book project off the ground, and the practical realities of sending off the manuscript to the University of Notre Dame Press, where it is currently under consideration.
February 2007 - CCCS Hour: Book Reception
Book reception for: Divided by a Common Heritage: The Christian Reformed Church and the Reformed Church in America at the Beginning of the New Millennium (Eerdmans, 2006). Authors Corwin Smidt and James Penning of Calvin's Paul Henry Institute and Political Science Department, will discuss their extensive research to chart the current positions of both the CRC and RCA.
February 2007 - ARIHE Lectures
Dr. Charles Adams, Dean of the Natural Sciences Division and Professor of Engineering at Dordt College in Sioux Center and the ARIHE (Association of Reformed Institutions of Higher Education) lecturer for 2006-2007, will give the following lectures:
- "Naturalism, Nanotechnology, and Our 'Post-human' Future: A Reformed Perspective."
- "Teaching 'Technical Courses' from a Christian Perspective: A Reformed Approach to Pedagogy."
Fall 2006
Fall 2006 - Slavoj Žižek at Calvin College
Dubbed "the Elvis of cultural theory" by The Chronicle of Higher Education, Žižek's current work interrogates the Christian tradition and argues that it is, in fact, worth saving. In keeping with this thematic, the title of Žižek's lecture for Calvin is "Why Only an Atheist Can Believe." While his lecture will certainly propose a reading of Christianity that is both decidedly non-western and non-orthodox, Žižek's perspective on Christianity as a intellectual from Eastern Europe and an atheist philosopher is sure to bring ideas that will be both provocative and stimulating for the Calvin College community. Streaming video is available in Real Audio format here.
