After a long, complicated set of negotiations and near-misses, I’ve scheduled a first seminar at the local progressive campus ministry. Initially, we had talked about something focusing on William B. Greene in his role as Christian minister, but the pastor has asked me if I would do something with a broad, ecumenical appeal—while still drawing largely from my work on religion and liberty. In the end, we came up with “Models of Christian Charity,” a seminar starting with Winthrop’s “Modell” and working forward. I’ll post details as I get them worked out, but this is a potentially very interesting line to follow, and I’m excited about the possibilities. Serious discussions of charity very often seem to juggle, more or less comfortably, a strong emphasis on self-help with an equally strong emphasis on unconditional love and radical forgiveness. It will be fun to see where the discussions take us.
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Although not a Christian myself, I have to admit that sounds fqascinating.
Thanks, Brad. It will be interesting to see how the explicitly religious setting influences what gets said. These are already issues that I discuss regularly with my Great Ideas students, and, of course, with fellow anarchists and libertarians. I’ll be using a number of libertarian writings in the seminar as well. I’ve been a “churchless” Christian long enough that I’m not certain which of the radical Christian voices will even be recognizably Christian to my audience. We shall see…