What Can Muslims and Catholics Teach One Another and the World?
Thursday, October 27, 2009 at 8:00 pm
Student Service Center Multi Purpose Room
UC San Diego campus
The speaker is Scott Appleby.
Contrary to predictions of religion's demise, we live in a post-secular age. Ours is a furiously religious world, from rising Christian Pentecostalism in the Global South to radial Islam, from Amsterdam to Indonesia. Some religious actors are implicated in violent conflict, while others are champions of sustainable peace in their societies. Dr. Appleby will provide a tour d'horizon of war and peace in a re-enchanted world.
In our troubled world, peace often seems illusive. The Burke Lecture returns to the theme of peace with a talk by one of the foremost experts on religion and peace, Scott Appleby. Scott Appleby is Professor of History at the University of Notre Dame, and the John M. Regan Jr. Director of the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies.
The Kroc Institute that Appleby directs is one of the world's principal centers for the study of the causes of violent conflict and strategies for sustainable peace. Faculty conduct research on war, genocide, terrorism, ethnic and religious conflict, and violation of human rights; teach students earning degrees in peace studies; and contribute to on-the-ground peacebuilding worldwide. The Institute also produces educational materials and resources for those trying to forge peace in troubled areas of the world.
From 1994 to 2002, Appleby directed Notre Dame's Cushwa Center for the Study of American Catholicism. From 1988 to 1993 he was co-director of the Fundamentalism Project, an international public policy study conducted by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. From 1982 to 1987 Professor Appleby chaired the religious studies department of St. Xavier College, Chicago.
A historian of religion who earned the Ph.D. from the University of Chicago (1985), Appleby is the author of The Ambivalence of the Sacred: Religion, Violence and Reconciliation and co-author, with Gabriel Almond and Emmanuel Sivan, of Strong Religion: The Rise of Fundamentalisms Around the World. He is editor of Spokesmen for the Despised: Fundamentalist Leaders of the Middle East and co-editor, with Martin E. Marty, of the five-book University of Chicago Press series on global fundamentalisms, which won the American Academy of Religion's Award for Excellence in the Study of Religion. A consultant for the PBS film and NPR radio series on the topic, Appleby co-authored the companion book, The Glory and the Power: The Fundamentalist Challenge to the Modern World. He is also the author of a number of books on American Catholicism. A fellow of the American Academy of Political and Social Sciences, he holds three honorary doctorates, from Fordham University, the University of Scranton and St. John's University, Collegeville, Minnesota.
