Category: McDonald Centre Annual Conference
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Conference, ‘Faithful to the Call: Renewing Theological Ethics from the Ground Up’
The 2022 McDonald Centre Annual Conference was hosted in May. The presentations featured at the conference are now available on YouTube. See the playlist for the ‘Faithful to the Call: Renewing Theological Ethics from the Ground Up’ conference event here. Alternatively, see links to the following sessions below: McDonald Distinguished Lecture SeriesProfessor Oliver O’Donovan: “Statues”Professor Nigel Biggar: ‘”Honour…
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Academic Freedom Under Threat
McDonald Centre Annual Conference, 2020 On 9-10 May 2019 the McDonald Centre for Theology, Ethics, and Public Life held a conference at Pembroke College, Oxford, to discuss the threats posed to freedom of speech and research in universities, to analyze their causes, and to begin to articulate the remedies. The fourteen speakers were drawn from…
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Is Religious Freedom Under Threat?
McDonald Centre Annual Conference (Tenth Anniversary) On 24-25 May 2018 the McDonald Centre held its Tenth Anniversary conference, “Is Religious Liberty under Threat? A Trans-Atlantic Dialogue”. Conceived with Professor John Witte, organized with the Center for the Study of Law and Religion at Emory University, generously funded by the McDonald Agape Foundation, and staged at Christ Church, Oxford, the conference drew…
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Cultivating virtue in the university
McDonald Centre Annual Conference, 2017 While moral formation has historically been one of the university’s central purposes, universities in the modern era have become shy of intentionally shaping the character of their students, even while they do it in practice. But recent scandals and ethical failures in government, politics, banking, business, journalism, and health care…
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Conference: ‘What’s Wrong with Rights?’
McDonald Centre Annual Conference, 2015 How absolute are rights? Should they always trump other moral considerations? Does it help to distinguish statutory rights from natural ones? Are rights necessarily bound up with radical individualism? Can they do justice to the proper claims of the common good? Should Christians support them or repudiate them? How do…
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Does Morality Need Religion?
2013 Annual McDonald Centre Conference, University of Oxford For centuries, atheism was suppressed because of its supposed amorality. Now, New Atheists such as A.C. Grayling and Sam Harris argue that decent, liberal morality is perfectly possible without religious belief—indeed, that it is only possible without it. Others, such as Jürgen Habermas, acknowledge that Christianity has had a…
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Conference: Is Christian Forgiveness Immoral
McDonald Center Annual Conference, 2010 The McDonald Centre’s annual spring conference in 2010 was held on 13-14 May. Entitled ‘Is Christian Forgiveness Immoral?’, it attracted 70 participants, including six speakers, one from Denmark and two from Northern Ireland, and several members of the Centre’s Advisory Council. The conference dealt with a cluster of questions: Is forgiveness ever appropriate…
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Conference: ‘Justice: Rights and Wrongs’
McDonald Centre Annual Conference, 2009 The McDonald Centre held a conference in 2009 entitled ‘Justice: Rights & Wrongs’ in the Blue Boar Lecture Theatre at Christ Church, Oxford. The conference celebrated and critiqued Nicholas Wolterstorff’s important recent book on the historical and theological foundations of the idea of human dignity. The conference considered the questions arising from Wolterstorff’s…