JE 2011

	Matthew Bar­rett is the Exec­u­tive Edi­tor of Credo Mag­a­zine. He has con­tributed book reviews and arti­cles to var­i­ous aca­d­e­mic jour­nals. He is a mem­ber of Clifton Bap­tist Church, Louisville, KY. (abstract)
	John J. Bom­baro is the Sr. Priest at Grace Lutheran Church, San Diego, and a fac­ulty mem­ber of The Wit­ten­berg Insti­tute and the Uni­ver­sity of San Diego’s The­ol­ogy and Reli­gious Stud­ies Depart­ment. He is the author of the forth­com­ing “Jonathan Edwards’s Vision of Real­ity: The Rela­tion­ship of God to the World, Redemp­tion His­tory, and the Repro­bate” (Wipf and Stock). (abstract)
	Chris Chun is an Asso­ciate Pro­fes­sor of Church His­tory at Golden Gate Bap­tist The­o­log­i­cal Sem­i­nary near San Fran­cisco, CA. and serves on the Steer­ing Com­mit­tee, ETS World Chris­tian­ity Con­sul­ta­tion. (abstract)
	S. Mark Hamil­ton is a PhD stu­dent at the Uni­ver­sity of Bris­tol, UK. His the­sis is enti­tled, Jonathan Edwards on Christ and Sal­va­tion. (abstract)
	Collin Hansen is Edi­to­r­ial Direc­tor at The Gospel Coali­tion, and for­merly an asso­ciate edi­tor for Chris­tian­ity Today mag­a­zine. He is the author of “Young, Rest­less, Reformed: A Journalist’s Jour­ney With the New Calvin­ists” (Cross­way 2008) and co-​​author with John Wood­bridge of “A God-​​Sized Vision: Revival Sto­ries That Stretch and Stir” (Zon­der­van 2010). (abstract)
	Joseph Har­rod lives in Louisville, Ken­tucky, where he serves as Direc­tor of Insti­tu­tional Assess­ment for The South­ern Bap­tist The­o­log­i­cal Sem­i­nary. (abstract)
	Rev. Jonathan Hug­gins serves as Interim Col­lege Chap­lain and Adjunct Instruc­tor of Reli­gion at Berry Col­lege. (abstract)
	Jeff Olm­sted is a Yale alum and native of Northamp­ton. He will be pre­sent­ing songs from his chamber-​​opera-​​in-​​progress, The Sur­priz­ing Work of God.
	Wes Pas­tor is the Founder and Pres­i­dent of The NETS Insti­tute for Church Plant­ing, and serves as the Found­ing Pas­tor and Senior Min­is­ter at Christ Memo­r­ial Church in Willis­ton, Ver­mont. (abstract)
	Wal­ter J. Schultz is Pro­fes­sor of Philosophy/​Scholar-​​in-​​Residence at North­west­ern Col­lege in St. Paul, MN. His inter­ests are cen­tered in the philo­soph­i­cal impli­ca­tions of Jonathan Edwards’ the­o­log­i­cal phi­los­o­phy. He has taught a Sem­i­nar on Edwards’ End of Cre­ation in under­grad­u­ate, grad­u­ate and church set­tings since 1998. His pub­lished work includes The Moral Con­di­tions of Eco­nomic Effi­ciency (Cam­bridge, 2001). He is cur­rently work­ing on a new kind of for­mal seman­tics for sys­tems of logic and a cor­re­spond­ing alter­na­tive modal meta­physics. All of these are inspired by Edwards’ efforts and inti­ma­tions. (abstract)
	Owen Stra­chan is an Instruc­tor of Chris­t­ian The­ol­ogy and Church His­tory at Boyce Col­lege, for­merly the Man­ag­ing Direc­tor of the Carl F. H. Henry Cen­ter for The­o­log­i­cal Under­stand­ing at Trin­ity Evan­gel­i­cal Divin­ity School and the found­ing Asso­ciate Direc­tor of the Jonathan Edwards Cen­ter at TEDS. He and Doug Sweeney pub­lished the 5 vol­ume “Essen­tial Edwards Col­lec­tion” (Moody 2010). (abstract)

Sub­mit Abstracts /​ Papers here. Dead­line is Sep. 1, 2011.

Jonathan Edwards and World Chris­tian­ity: Ecu­menism, Inter­faith Dia­logue, and Reli­gious Awakening

Octo­ber 6^th –  8^th , 2011 at The First Churches, Northamp­ton, Mass­a­chu­setts

Jonathan Edwards, at the hands of his com­men­ta­tors over the past three cen­turies or so, has under­gone a grad­ual expan­sion of his appeal and sig­nif­i­cance.  Ini­tially he was mainly the sub­ject of highly polem­i­cal in-​​house dis­putes between the men of the New Divin­ity and their oppo­nents who took sides over issues like his treat­ment of free will. George Ban­croft neatly summed up Edwards’ parochial sta­tus in the mid-​​eighteenth cen­tury (and the first half of the next cen­tury) when he coun­seled, “he that will know the work­ings of the mind of New Eng­land in the mid­dle of the last cen­tury, and the throb­bings of its heart, must give his days and nights to the study of Jonathan Edwards.”  In that period Edwards was lit­tle more than the key to under­stand­ing a regional men­tal­ity.  In the sec­ond half of the nine­teenth cen­tury, how­ever, a more cos­mopoli­tan Edwards was revealed who could right­fully take his place on the inter­na­tional stage as a philoso­pher brook­ing com­par­i­son with his famous con­tem­po­raries Berke­ley and Hume.  Until recently, Edwards has been mainly the study of lib­eral human­ists, among whom Perry Miller is par­a­dig­matic.  Now, though, Edwards has been dis­cov­ered by evan­gel­i­cal Chris­tians, and not merely as a fig­ure of his­tor­i­cal and aca­d­e­mic inter­est, but as a liv­ing pres­ence and a con­tin­u­ing source of inspi­ra­tion and instruc­tion.  His celebrity sta­tus among this group is sym­bol­ized by a pop­u­lar t-​​shirt embla­zoned with the device, “Jonathan Edwards is My HomeBoy”—incidentally, a curi­ous trib­ute to one who called no man mas­ter!  But the scope of Edwards’ sig­nif­i­cance has widened even fur­ther.  Michael McClymond and Gerry McDer­mott (ple­nary speak­ers at JES 2010) have dubbed Edwards the “Global The­olo­gian for Twenty-​​First-​​Century Chris­tian­ity,” the theme of their forth­com­ing mono­graph, The The­ol­ogy of Jonathan Edwards, from Oxford Uni­ver­sity Press.  They regard Edwards as noth­ing less than the via media “between West­ern (Latin) Chris­tian­ity and the Chris­t­ian East, between Protes­tantism and Roman Catholi­cism, between the­o­log­i­cal con­ser­vatism and lib­er­al­ism, and between non-​​Charismatic and Charis­matic Chris­tian­ity.” There is a par­al­lel here between Edwards and his older con­tem­po­rary, Johann Sebas­t­ian Bach.  For most of his life Bach, who never trav­eled more than two hun­dred miles from his birth­place, wrote music for the Lutheran Church. His con­tem­po­rary rep­u­ta­tion was as a provin­cial church can­tor, vir­tu­oso organ­ist, and teacher, but lit­tle more.  Now he is justly regarded as the uni­ver­sal musi­cian par excel­lence, the alpha and omega of music.  The same may be said of Edwards as the uni­ver­sal theologian.

–Richard A. S. Hall, Director

Require­ments:

• Abstracts: 200-​​word maximum
• Papers: 3,000-word max­i­mum (designed for a read­ing time of 20 minutes)

Please include the fol­low­ing information:

• Name
• Aca­d­e­mic sta­tus and insti­tu­tional affil­i­a­tion (if any)
• Mail­ing address, e-​​mail address, tele­phone number

Please e-​​mail your abstracts or papers (Microsoft-​​Word For­mat) by Sep­tem­ber 1^st, 2011 to: rhall@​uncfsu.​edu.

You may also sub­mit your abstract, paper, and infor­ma­tion via our Sub­mis­sions page.

The con­fer­ence reg­is­tra­tion fee is $50.00 for adults, $25.00 for col­lege stu­dents, and $10.00 for high school stu­dents. Please make your check payable to The Jonathan Edwards Soci­ety and mail it to the address below.

Richard Hall
Dept. of Gov­ern­ment & His­tory
Fayet­teville State Uni­ver­sity
1200 Murchi­son Road
Fayet­teville, NC 28301