2024 Mahle Lecture for Progressive Christian Thought at Hamline

We all want peace. Why not try reasoning?

The Stephen and Kathi Austin Mahle Endowed Fund for Progressive Christian Thought supports the efforts of Hamline University to move forward in exploring and articulating contemporary forms of Christian theology while providing students opportunities to learn its relevance to personal, social, political, and economic life.

Through the annual series called  Mahle Lecture in Progressive Christian Thought at the Wesley Center at Hamline, lectures and workshops explore Christian Theology through the lens of Lived Theology. Well-respected and influential activists, scholars, community, and faith leaders who are actively working to transform society are invited to share their perspectives. The fruit of each lecture series is an articulation of spiritual visions aimed at inspiring moral imagination and civil courage as we face stark inequalities and work together to take the lead in building a more just world!

This year’s lecture will center on the practice of Scriptural Reasoning. The focus on interreligious dialogue through study is a way to bring diverse views together through respectful, rich, and non-reductive thought, practice, and pedagogy. Originally developed by theologians and religious philosophers as a means of fostering post-critical and post-liberal corrections to patterns of modern reasoning, it has now spread beyond academic circles. Scriptural Reasoning involves participants from multiple religious traditions meeting together, very often in small groups, to read and discuss passages from their sacred texts and oral traditions. The texts will often relate to a common topic or figure, or consideration of legal and moral issues of property-holding. Participants discuss the content of the texts, and will often explore the variety of ways in which their religious communities have worked with them and continue to work with them, and how those texts might shape their understanding of and engagement with a range of contemporary issues

Dr. Peter Ochs and Dr. David Ford, founders of Scriptural Reasoning, will lead a workshop and discuss how this practice helps people of different faith traditions understand each other better. Dr. Ford will also deliver a keynote address titled “The Promise of Scriptural Reasoning.”

April 16th at Kay Fredricks Ballroom, Klas Center, Hamile University

Doors open at 5pm, 5:30pm Workshop, 6:45pm Dinner Break, 7:30pm Keynote Address

You can register for free for the event HERE