Vanderbilt University Divinity School announces the 2012 Cole Lectures

to be delivered by

Anthea Butler, MA'00, Ph.D.'01                                                                                Associate Professor of Religious Studies and the Graduate Chair of Religion, University of Pennsylvania

 

Thursday, October 25, 2012
7:00 p.m., Benton Chapel

Friday, October 26, 2012
10:00 a.m., Benton Chapel

 

Thursday, October 25, 2012, 7:00 p.m.

Whitewashing the Past: The Religious Right and the Quest to Reframe American History

Since the election of Barack Obama as the forty-fourth President of the United States, religious conservatives have been engaged in a project to “Take America Back.” While a catchy political phrase, the obsession to link the founders and the Constitution with conservative evangelical Christianity has become not only a lucrative industry, but a full-blown effort to rewrite the history of the nation. What are the implications for this “revisionist history,” and what does it mean for the future of religious pluralism and our national history? Join Professor Anthea Butler as she discusses the implications of the reconstuctionist, revisionist history that permeates many conservative and fundamentalist Christian churches and political action organizations.

Friday, October 26, 2012, 10:00 a.m.

Race, Religion and the American Project

While white right-wing Christians have used the founders and their writings to revise the history of America, immigrants and people of color also have called upon these documents to advance call for civil and equal rights. How have the same documents used to exclude others been used as a tool to push forward equality, religious, and civil rights by communities not considered by the framers? Join Professor Butler for the second Cole Lecture when she will expand on the way different communities have used the founders and their documents to open up religious and civic opportunities for all.

Philanthropist Edmund W. Cole, president of Nashville & Chattanooga Railroad and treasurer of the Vanderbilt University Board of Trust, endowed the annual Cole Lecture Series in 1892 "for the defense and advocacy of the Christian religion." Cole's gift provided for the first sustained lectureship in the history of Vanderbilt University.

The lectures have been delivered by such distinguished scholars as Harry Emerson Fosdick, George Buttrick, Rudolph Bultmann, H. Richard Niebuhr, Paul Tillich, Walter Brueggemann, Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza, James Barr, Gustavo Gutierrez, James Cone, Edward Farley, Don Beisswenger, Gene TeSelle, David Buttrick, Jim Wallis, Lamin Sanneh, Mark Noll, Randall Balmer, James Lawson, John O'Malley, R. Scott Appleby and many others.

The Cole Lectures are free and open to the public.

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