Jeff Hocking at the AAR in San Francisco

Junior Member Jeffrey Hocking will be presenting material related to his dissertation research at the American Academy of Religion's annual meeting in San Francisco. The presentation will take place Saturday, November 19th from 9:00-11:00 in the morning as a part of the first convening of the AAR/SBL Theopoetics working group. The title of his paper is "Liberating Language: Rubem Alves, Theopoetics, and the Democratization of God-Talk". Jeff will also be attending a special session prior to the conference celebrating Clark Pinnock's life and work.

John Suk in Toronto on November 5 and Grand Rapids on November 17

Former ICS president John Suk has just published a book titled Not Sure: A Pastor's Journey from Faith to Doubt. Published by Eerdmans, the book chronicles both the history of faith and Suk's struggle with doubt. An article about the book in Northumberland Today can be found at: http://www.northumberlandtoday.com/ArticleDisplay.aspx?e=3320660.

You can now order the book from Amazon.ca or Amazon.com (which also has the Kindle version). The introduction to the book is available on Suk's blog at http://faithisntwhatyouthink.blogspot.com/.

Join John in Toronto for an author party at the home of Nick Overduin and Nandy Heule (296 Soudan Avenue) on Saturday, November 5 from 4:30 to 7:30 pm. Wine and cheese will be served! John would love to see ICS faculty, students and friends at this event!

For those in Grand Rapids, John will be speaking as part of Eerdmans 100th anniversary authors' series, on Thursday November 17, at 7 pm. Eerdmans is located at 2140 Oak Industrial Drive NE, Grand Rapids.

Cal Seerveld at Redeemer University College

Senior Member Emeritus Cal Seerveld's translation of the Biblical books of Ecclesiastes and The Song of Songs is being presented at Redeemer College during the week of November 21-26. These Scriptures are conceived as unified choruses of diverse voices, and are performed along with song and musical interludes as interpretive commentary.

Cal will be presenting a lecture on November 23 and 24. For more information about this unique theatrical experience, visit http://www.redeemer.ca/mainstage.

Participate in the ICS Presidential Search Process

The ICS presidential search committee invites you to join the process of recruiting a new president for the ICS by entering into prayerful discernment about the kind of president the ICS needs. Members of the ICS community have been focusing on Romans 12 with a view to listening for God's guidance in relation to two questions: What kind of community is God calling us to be? and thus what kind of president will we need? The committee welcomes your written reflections on the passage; please email them to Aileen Van Ginkel, who chairs the search committee, at avanginkel@gmail.com. Thank you!

Social Justice and Human Rights Conference—April 27 and 28, 2012

Save the date! The CPRSE is planning a two-day interdisciplinary and cross-sectoral conference on Social Justice and Human Rights, co-sponsored with Emmanuel College, to take place on April 27 and 28, 2012 at Victoria University in the University of Toronto.

This major conference will stimulate reflection on the relationship between different conceptions of justice and rights claims, as well as on challenges in current practice and struggles for greater social justice. Keynote speaker Dr. Nicholas Wolterstorff will explore the religious and philosophical roots of the concept of justice, based on themes from his book Justice: Rights and Wrongs. The conference will also feature panel discussions and workshops. It will be of interest to the academic community, practitioners engaged in social justice and rights advocacy, and the broader public.

Watch for further details about this important conference through various ICS channels later this fall.

President’s Prayer Letter: November 2011

ICS inaugurated its Centre for Philosophy, Religion and Social Ethics on the evening of October 24. It was a gala event. Representatives of the communities of scholarship that ICS participates in were present and offered fitting words of congratulations and encouragement. I have said it before: ICS has been given the enormous grace to participate in the three communities presently extant within the North American academy today—the loose confederation of conservative Protestant and Catholic scholars and institutions including those of the Reformed world, the equally loose confederation of progressive Catholic and mainline Protestant scholars and institutions, and the still generally but no longer wholly secularizing world of our pluralist universities, both public and private. We belong to each of these three worlds but on the fringes, for there is only a narrow place in which they all come together and overlap.

“God is Dead” and I Don’t Feel So Good Myself—a Christian Response to the New Atheism

Waterloo area readers, please mark your calendars: On Thursday, November 3 at 7 pm, in the Dunker Family Lounge at Renison University College (240 Westmount Road North) at the University of Waterloo, Dr. Ron Kuipers, an ICS faculty member and Jon Stanley, one of our graduate students, will be presenting a talk and leading a discussion, about how we, as Christians, can respond to the claim that God is dead, a claim being made by many prominent authors in Europe and North America.

The new atheism challenges Christians. Join us for a presentation and discussion on how faith can lead to dialogue rather than hostility between religious and secular people in our time.