Lectures
Edward A. Puff Sr. and Edith Kottmyer Puff Memorial Lecture in the Study of Christianity
The Edward A. Puff Sr. and Edith Kottmyer Puff Memorial Lecture in the Study of Christianity was endowed in 1986 by Rev. Edward A. Puff Jr., of Dayton, and his brother, Harold F. Puff, emeritus professor of management at 兔子先生 University. The memorial lecture is named for Edward and Harold's parents, in gratitude for the sacrifices they made that enabled the brothers to attend 兔子先生 during the Depression years.
This annual lecture is free and open to the public.
2022-2023 speaker
Willis Jenkins
University of Virginia
"Undoing Dominion: Contemplative Arguments for Creaturely Rights"
Or watch the lecture via livestream. ( to get the link.)
Does protecting human dignity require human dominion over the rest of Earth? Amid the climate and extinction crises of the "Anthropocene" era, this lecture examines three religious arguments, each rooted in a form of contemplative practice, in which realizing human dignity requires recognizing rights of nonhuman creatures.
Dr. Jenkins is a professor of ethics and chair of the department of religious studies at the University of Virginia. His most recent books include The Future of Ethics: Sustainability, Social Justice, and Religious Creativity and the Routledge Handbook of Religion and Ecology (of which he was a co-editor).
Co-sponsored with the John W. Altman Institute for Entrepreneurship.
2021-2022
John Swinton
University of Aberdeen
"Hearing Voices: Theology, Psychiatry, and the Lived Experience of Hearing Voices"
Randall Poole
College of St. Scholastica
"Is Religion Good for Human Rights?"
2020-2021
Laura Stivers
Dominican University of California
"Hospitality as Justice: Christian Approaches to Homelessness"
2019-2020
Jeremy K. Everett
Baylor University
"Solving America's Hunger Crisis"
2018-2019
Matthew Avery Sutton
Washington State University
"Evangelicals, the End Times, and the Religious Right in Modern America"
2017-2018
Charles Mathewes
University of Virginia
"American Christianity After the Religious Right"
2016-2017
Sylvester Johnson
Northwestern University
"American Religion and National Security: Race, Religion, and the Security State"
2015-2016
Paula M. Kane
University of Pittsburgh
"Medieval Manhattan: An Antidote to the Jazz Age"
2014-2015
Katharine Wilkinson
Director of Strategy and Activation, BrightHouse LLC
"Between God & Green: How Evangelicals are Cultivating a Middle Ground on Climate Change"
2013-2014
Timothy Matovina
University of Notre Dame
"Latinos and the Transformation of American Catholicism"
2012-2013
Jehu J. Hancile
Emory University
"The Promise of God: New African Immigrants and Transformations in the American Religious Landscape"
2011-2012
Daniel Buxhoeveden
University of South Carolina
"Christianity and Science in Dialogue"
2009-2010
Amy DeRogatis
Michigan State University
"Saving Sex: Sexuality and Salvation in American Evangelicalism"
2008-2009
Rev. Dr. John Chryssavgis
Theological advisor to the Ecumenical Patriarch
"Beauty Will Save the World: Spiritual Insights into an Ecological Worldview"
2007-2008
David L. Holmes
College of William and Mary
"The Religion of the Founding Fathers"
2006-2007
Gabriel Moran
New York University
"Religious Diversity: Christians and Muslims in a Common World"
2005-2006
Peter J. Thuesen
Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis
"The Idea of Predestination in American Religious History"
2004-2005
R. Marie Griffith
Princeton University
"Born Again Bodies: Flesh and Spirit in American Christianity"
2003-2004
David Morgan
Valparaiso University
"The Visual Culture of American Piety: Absent Fathers and Women with Beards"
2002-2003
Charles H. Lippy
University of Tennessee at Chattanooga
"Challenges to Christianity in the Twenty-First Century"
2001-2002
Daniel Sack
Associated Colleges of the Midwest
"Eating at the Table of the Gods"
2000-2001
Catherine Brekus
University of Chicago
"Sarah Osborn’s World: Popular Christianity in 18th-Century America"
1998-1999
Anne C. Rose
Penn State University
1996-1997
Felicitas D. Goodman
Denison University
1995-1996
Stephen A. Marini
Wellesley College
"Sacred Song in Contemporary America"
1994-1995
Robert Orsi
Indiana University
"Hopeless Cases: The Women Who Prayed to St. Jude, 1929-1965"
1993-1994
Randall Balmer
Barnard College
"Thy Kingdom Come: Apocalypticism in American Culture"
1992-1993
John W. Cook
Henry Luce Foundation
"Varieties of Christian Sacred Space"
1991-1992
Sandra Zimdars-Swartz
University of Kansas
"Encounters with the Virgin Mary: Issues of Personal Religious Experience"
1990-1991
Mary Jo Weaver
Indiana University
"Being Right: Roman Catholic Fundamentalism"
1988-1989
Albert J. Raboteau
Princeton University
"A Hidden Wholeness: Thomas Merton and Martin Luther King, Jr."
1987-1988
Samuel S. Hill, Jr.
University of Florida
"Is Black Religion Evangelical?"
1986-1987
Charles Curran
Catholic University of America/Southern Methodist University
"The Social Mission of the Church in Contemporary America"
The Wickenden Lectures:
In 1927, Arthur C. Wickenden became the founding chair of what was then called the Department of Religion at 兔子先生 University--one of the two oldest departments devoted to the study of religion at an American state-supported university. (The other was at the University of Iowa.) The Arthur C. Wickenden Lectures were founded in 1970 by 兔子先生 graduate Rev. Walter Simmons and members of the Wickenden family, in commemoration of Professor Wickenden’s life and in celebration of the human spirit.
This annual lecture series is free and open to the public.
2022-2023 speaker
Kristin Kobes Du Mez
Calvin University
"Jesus and John Wayne and the Evangelical Reckoning"
How can we understand our current politics in light of a longer history of white evangelical Christianity? Taking popular culture seriously, historian Kristin Kobes Du Mez traces the intersection of evangelical masculinity and Christian nationalism over the past half century and explores what this means for the future of American democracy.
Dr. Du Mez is a professor of history at Calvin University, where she teaches on US women's history and US cultural history. Her most recent book is Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation, a New York Times bestseller.
2021-2022
Winnifred Fallers Sullivan
Indiana University Bloomington
"Joan of Arc: Queer King of France?"
Elizabeth Bucar
Northeastern University
"Stealing My Religion: The Ethics of Religious Appropriation"
2020-2021
Canceled due to the Covid pandemic
2019-2020
Canceled due to the Covid pandemic
2018-2019
Rukmini Callimachi
New York Times
"Speaking to the Enemy: The Making of the 'Caliphate' Podcast"
2017-2018
Rhys H. Williams
Loyola University Chicago
"Religion in Urban America: Race, Immigration, and New Forms of Faith in U.S. Cities"
2016-2017
John H. Evans
University of California, San Diego
"The Eclipse of the Sacred Human: Are Human Rights under Threat from Medical Science?"
2015-2016
John Corrigan
Florida State University
"Why Christians in America Today Feel Empty and Why They Like It That Way"
2014-2015
Dale Jamieson
New York University
"Why the Struggle to Stop Climate Change Failed and What It Means for Our Future"
2013-2014
Winnifred Fallers Sullivan
Indiana University-Bloomington
"The World That Smith Made: Advocating for Religion in the U.S. Today"
"EEOC v. Hosanna-Tabor: Constitutionalizing 'The Church'"
2012-2013
Barbara Herrnstein Smith
Duke University
"Science and Religion, De-simplified"
"Angles on Relativism: Historical, Anthropological, Political, and Affective"
2011-2012
David Carrasco
Harvard Divinity School
"Latinos Remaking America: Baseball, Immigration, and Imagination"
"Sacred Violence and the Conquest of Mexico: Aztec Sacrifice and Spanish Massacres--All in the Names of Gods"
2009-2010
Amanda Porterfield
Florida State University
"Doubt: The Engine of American Political and Religious Formation, 1798-1812"
2008-2009
Peter Gottschalk
Wesleyan University
"The Science of Religion: The Quest to Know India through Scientism"
"Islamophobia: What Cartoons Say about How We View Islam"
2007-2008
Michael Sells
University of Chicago
"Translating the Qur’an"
"Pilgrimage and War"
2006-2007
Randall Balmer
Columbia University
"Wading into Troubled Waters: The Betrayal of the Religious Right"
2005-2006
Paul B. Courtright
Emory University
"Where is the Religion in the Classroom? Scholars and Practitioners in a Multicultural Context"
2004-2005
William LaFleur
University of Pennsylvania
"Informed Dissent: Why Japanese and Germans Want Brakes Put on the Biotech Juggernaut"
"Therapy vs. Purity: Medicine, Religion and Japan’s Dilemma"
2003-2004
Ariel Glucklick
Georgetown University
"The Science of Religious Consciousness: The Case of Pain"
"The Case of Illumination: Seeing the Sacred Light"
2002-2003
John Dominic Crossan
DePaul University
2001-2002
Alan Wolfe
Boston College
"Religious Traditions in a Non-Traditional World"
"The Disappearance of Doctrine from American Religion"
2000-2001
Lawrence E. Sullivan
Harvard Divinity School
"Stewards of the Sacred: Museums Communities and Religions in Democratic Society"
"Doing Globalization Justice: Religion in the Global Economy"
1999-2000
John Collins
University of Chicago
"Apocalypse and Politics in the Ancient World"
Paul Boyer
University of Wisconsin
"Apocalypse and Politics in the Modern World"
1998-1999
Daniel Walker Howe
Rhodes Professor of American History, University of Oxford
"Church, State, and Education in Antebellum America"
1997-1998
Wendy Doniger
University of Chicago Divinity School
"The Many Voices of Political Myths"
"The Man Who Committed Adultery with His Own Wife: Sexual Masquerades in World Theology"
1996-1997
Robert B. Alter
University of California at Berkeley
"The Living Language of Genesis"
"The Double Canonicity of the Hebrew Bible"
1995-1996
Jeremy Adams
Southern Methodist University
"Is Religion in the West Exceptional? Two Case Studies"
1994-1995
Stephen J. Stein
Indiana University
"Shaker Religion and Life in 19th-Century America"
1993-1994
Theme: "The Holocaust: The Reality and Banality of Evil"
Abraham Peck
Hebrew Union College
Charles Winquist
Syracuse University
1992-1993
James M. Robinson
Claremont Graduate School
"The Jesus of Q as a Liberation Theologian"
"The Archaic Primitive Christianity of Q"
1991-1992
Frank Moore Cross
Harvard University
"The Redemption of Nature"
"Kinship and Covenant in Ancient Israel"
1989-1990
Forum: "What is the Meaning of Religion?"
Charles Long
Syracuse University
Robert Segal
Louisiana State University
1988-1989
Diana L. Eck
Harvard University
"World Religions at the Crossroads: Fundamentalism or Pluralism"
"Living Myth: The Landscape of Hindu Pilgrimage"
1987-1988
Mahmoud Ayoub
University of Toronto
"Martyrdom and Suffering in Shiite Ethos"
"The Role of the Qur’an in Muslim Society"
1986-1987
Wayne A. Meeks
Yale University
"The Origin of Christianity: A New Look at an Old Puzzle"
"Jesus and the Other Messiahs"
"Christianity and the Other Cults"
1985-1986
Frank E. Reynolds
University of Chicago
"The Humanities and the Study of Religion: The Challenge of Pluralism"
"Reconstructing Liberal Education: Is It Worth the Effort?"
"Reconstructing Religious Studies: Problems and Possibilities"
1984-1985
Raymond E. Brown
Union Theological Seminary (New York)
"The Theology of the Gospel of John: The Most Adventuresome in the New Testament"
"Differences Among Early Christian Preachers of the Gospel"
"The Beginnings of the Church of Rome"
1983-1984
John F. Wilson
Princeton University
"New Religions in American Culture"
"The Religious Dynamics of American Society"
"Religion and Innovation in American Society"
1982-1983
Marvin Pope
Yale University
"Solomon’s Sublime Song and the Great Goddess"
"Eros/Thanatos: The Dead as Bride and Groom"
1981-1982
Annemarie Schimmel
Harvard University and the University of Bonn
"The Contribution of Sufism to Islamic Culture"
"The Suffering of Al-Hallaj, Martyr of Mystic Love"
1980-1981
Thorkild Jacobsen
Harvard University
"The Wedding and Death of Tammuz"
"Lament for Lost Cities"
1979-1980
James F. Childress
University of Virginia
"Who Should Decide? Medical Paternalism and Patient Autonomy"
"Ethical Issues in Biomedical Technology"
1978-1979
Shemaryahu Talmon
Hebrew University of Jerusalem
"The State of Higher Education in Israel Today"
"Martin Buber’s Utopianism in Relation to Kibbutzim"
1977-1978
Martin E. Marty
University of Chicago
"Impulses in the American Religious Experience"
"The Hunger for Wholeness"
"The Apostle for Freedom"
1974-1975
Helmet Koester
Harvard University
"Views of Jesus in Early Christianity"
"Early Christian Sites in Macedonia and Greece"
1973-1974
Huston Smith
Syracuse University
"The Human Import of Science"
"America as a Mission Field"
1972-1973
Manfred H. Vogel
Northwestern University
"Who is a Jew?"
"A Theology of the State of Israel"
1971-1972
Theme: "The Contemporaneity of the Past in American Religious Thought"
Sydney E. Ahlstrom
Yale University
"Romanticism as a Religious Revolution: From Rousseau to Martin Luther King"
William A. Clebsch
Stanford University
"Authority and Assurance: From Puritanism to the New Protest"
1970-1971
Joseph Fletcher
University of Virginia
"The New Morality: An Ethical Breakthrough"
"Biocrats: Technocrats in Biology and Medicine Have Taken Over"