Trinity Institute’s 42nd National Theological Conference, Radical Christian Life: Equipping Ourselves for Social Change, will be held November 9-11, 2012.
Joan Chittister, OSB will return to Trinity Institute for a local and webcast conference that will offer tools for making the vital connection between contemplation and social action. She will be supported by workshop leaders including theologians, spiritual directors, and activists. Fr. Richard Rohr, OFM, author, teacher, and founder of the Center for Action and Contemplation, will preach at the conference Eucharist.
Through plenary addresses, creative work sessions, and worship, this three-day conference we will explore questions such as:
- How can our Christian traditions of social justice and contemplation energize our communities as forces for positive change in the world around us?
- What practices help us to discern where we are called to engage?
- Where may we find sources of creativity and resilience within our tradition?
- How can we work in partnership with those of other faiths and no faith as we follow God’s call?
In the 21st century, people seek to cope and to create in a world that is shifting on its very foundations. Economic inequity threatens to tear us apart at the seams. The forces of globalization demand that we rethink what it means to be a community and where our mutual responsibilities lie. It is a time of classic crisis, forged of equal parts threat and opportunity.
“Our task is now to be radical Christian communities in the here and now, not fossils of a bygone reality, not leftovers from an earlier golden age. Now we need new wisdom and a new kind of struggle to determine what we must be and do in the midst of these changing times. The question is then: What does it mean to be a radical Christian community in times such as these?”
— Joan Chittister, The Radical Christian Life
“To have an attitude of faith is to hear the Lord speaking everywhere and all the time, in the concrete and ordinary circumstances of our lives. Then religion and life have become one, and we are never far from God.”
— Richard Rohr, Radical Grace
The conference will be presented at Trinity Church, Broadway and Wall Street, New York, NY, with workshops next door at 74 Trinity Place. It will simultaneously be offered via webcast exclusively at Partner Sites.