The mission of the Center for Spiritual Life is to challenge the mind, nurture the spirit and develop the talents of all those who utilize the services of the Center.
Read Our CovenantRoth Peace and Justice Lecture Series
Quest for Justice: The Tallahassee Bus Boycott
Gregory B. Padgett, Ph.D., Associate Professor of History, Eckerd College
Wednesday, April 22 at 7:30 in Fox Hall
Burchenal Lecture Series
Bonhoeffer, Night Voices and the Door of No Return: Thinking with Bonhoeffer in the
Hold of a White Racist Regime
Wednesday, January 29, 2020, 7:30 pm, Fox Hall
This presentation will interact with Bonhoeffer’s poem “Night Voices,” written while he was in Tegel Military Prison, when he was thinking through the meaning of Christianity in light of the German moment of catastrophe. We will explore the connections between Bonhoeffer’s plight in Hitler’s Christian Germany and our own context.
Women of Faith and the First Women’s Rights Movement: Lessons for Today
Kristin Kobes Du Mez, Ph.D. Professor of History, Calvin University, Grand Rapids, MI
Wednesday, February 19, 2020, 7:30 pm, Fox Hall
Christian women were critical to the nineteenth-century women’s rights movement, and their support for women’s suffrage ultimately proved key to securing the passage of the 19 th Amendment. At a time when Christianity and feminism often seem at odds, the history of
Christian feminism provides us with surprising and often inspiring stories. But it is also filled with cautionary tales, complexities, and signs of paths not taken. In all of these ways, this history offers valuable lessons for our own time.
Kristin Kobes Du Mez, Ph.D. is professor of history at Calvin University in Grand Rapids, Michigan. She holds a Ph.D. in American History from the University of Notre Dame, and her research focuses on the intersections of gender, Christianity, and politics in American history. She is author of A New Gospel for Women: Katharine Bushnell and the Challenge of Christian Feminism (Oxford University Press, 2015) and the forthcoming Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation (W.W. Norton’s Liveright Publishing, 2020). She has written for The Washington Post, Religion News Service, Christianity Today, The Christian Century, and Religion & Politics, and she blogs on religion and American history at Patheos’ Anxious Bench.
Previous Burchenal Lectures
- The Whole Language: The Power of Extravagant Tenderness
Gregory Boyle, M.Div. Founder, Homeboy Industries, Los Angeles, California
Wednesday, October 30, 2019, 7:30 p.m., Fox Hall - The Needs of Community and the Problems of Modern Government
John Russon, Ph.D. Professor of Philosophy, University of Guelph, Toronto, Canada
Thursday, October 3, 2019, 7:30 p.m., Triton Room - Ecowomanism: African American Women and Earth Honoring Faiths
Melanie L. Harris, Ph.D., Professor of Religion and Ethics, Texas Christian University; Visiting Professor of Ethical Leadership and Global Environmental Studies, University of Denver
Thursday, March 28, 2019, 7:30 p.m., Fox Hall - Is This a Bonhoeffer Moment? Exploring Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Ethic of Responsible Action
Lori Brandt Hale, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Religion, Augsburg University
Tuesday, February 26, 2019, 7:30 p.m., Triton Room - A New and Unsettling Force: The Poor People’s Campaign and the Fight to End Poverty
The Rev. Liz Theoharis, Ph.D, Presbyterian Minister, Social Activist and Writer
Tuesday, October 23, 2018 – 7:30 p.m., Fox Hall - The World Is Wrong: Microaggressions, Poetics and the Problem of Evil in Citizen
Daniel Spoth, Ph.D. Associate Professor of Literature, Eckerd College
Thursday, September 20, 2018 – 7:30 p.m., Fox Hall - Shaved Heads and Celibate Bodies: Gender and Freedom in Female Buddhist Monasticism
Amy Paris Langenberg, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Religious Studies, Eckerd College
Tuesday, March 27, 2018, 7.30 p.m., Fox Hall
