A Presbyterian Scholars Conference will be held April 24-25 at the Harbor House at Wheaton College, in Wheaton, Ill.
The conference lectures will discuss the past, present and renewal in the Presbyterian Church (USA).
Conference speakers include:
- Dr. Richard Ray, Interim President of King University (TN)
- Dr. Randall Working, Pastor of the Lompoc Presbyterian Church (CA) and Adjunct Professor of Theology at Fuller Theological Seminary
- Dr. Dale Soden, Professor of History, Whitworth University (WA)
- Dr. James Goodloe IV, President of the Foundation for Reformed Theology (VA)
- Dr. Jeff McDonald, Pastor of the Avery Presbyterian Church (NE), Adjunct Professor of Church History, Sioux Falls Seminary
- Dr. David Bebbington, Professor of History, the University of Stirling, Scotland,
- Dr. A. Donald MacLeod, President of the Canadian Society of Presbyterian History and Research Professor of Church History, Tyndale Seminary (Toronto)
- Dr. Richard Burnett, Professor of Theology, Erskine Seminary (SC), Visiting Professor of Theology, Union Presbyterian Seminary
- Dr. Bradley J. Longfield, Dean and Professor of Church History, University of Dubuque Theological Seminary (IA)
- Dr. Randall Otto, President of Theology Matters, Pastor of the Green Hill Presbyterian Church (DE), Adjunct Professor-University of Phoenix.
- Rev. Paul Detterman, The Fellowship Community
The conference begins at 9 a.m. April 24 and will end with a panel discussion on PCUSA renewal at 10:30 on April 25.
For more information, call 402-682-1439. The conference agenda can be downloaded here.
4 Comments. Leave new
As I looked at the list of speakers it dawned on me that these aren’t the folks leaving the PCUSA in droves. Maybe bettered served by having some average members and former members mixed in to give their thoughts.
Renewal? Maybe even Revival? I can only hope.
If Catholics hosted a renewal conference in 1560, would they have invited Luther? The point is that institutions in crises and death spirals, check PCUSA in both those boxes, look to the past and the establishment as a means to lead into the future. As if renewal, rebirth, re-generation of the institution will happen if only we could get the same polity and theology right, using the same assumptions and leadership that drove the church into the ground to start with.
The PCUSA will indeed have a day renewal and rebirth, but it will not be called PCUSA. It will be whatever the imalgimation of the declining older mainline liberal groups UCC/PCUSA/ECUSA/CC (DC) choose to call themselves post mergers. But do it call it reformed or historical in any sense.
In 1560, Luther had been dead for fourteen years, so the point of whether they would have invited him would is moot.