- This event has passed.
Dr. Jennifer Ayres to lead Howie Center Events
March 25, 2022 @ 12:30 pm - 2:00 pm
We are pleased to welcome Dr. Jennifer Ayres, of Emory University’s Candler School of Theology, as our Spring 2022 Howie Center Events leader to be held March 22 – 24, 2022.
About the Events: The Howie Center Events are FREE and open to the public, yet registration is requested. These events are designed to bring community members together through the intersection of science, art, and theology.
About the Event Leader: The Rev. Dr. Jennifer R. Ayres is Associate Professor of Religious Education and Director of the Doctor of Ministry Program at Emory University’s Candler School of Theology. Her research interests include religious environmental education, social activism and religious identity, faith formation in the context of popular culture, and feminist practical theology. She is the author of three books: Waiting for a Glacier to Move: Practicing Social Witness (Wipf and Stock, 2011), Good Food: Grounded Practical Theology (Baylor Univ. Press, 2013), and Inhabitance: Ecological Religious Education (Baylor Univ. Press, 2019). Her current research, for which she received a grant from Emory’s University Research Committee, investigates the educational task of cultivating Christian faith that is deeply rooted in our ecological context, with attention to the kinds of religious leaders needed for this work.
SCHEDULE OF EVENTS (These Events are FREE yet registration is requested):
Tuesday, March 22, 3:30-5:00 p.m., Early Center
Workshop: Tell Me About that Place: Sharing Personal Landscapes
This interactive workshop will focus on place, story, and self to guide participants in establishing a sense of “ecological identity.” Participants will be invited to reflect on how places have shaped their understandings of themselves in their own stories. The workshop will include opportunities for quiet reflection as well as time and space to share stories in small groups. Just as individuals have landscapes that shape their identities, so do different places and communities as well. Come learn how the diversity of stories helps individuals and communities understand a particular place, its wounds, and its healing. Participants are invited (though not required) to bring two or three photos , print or digital, of places significant to them.
Wednesday, March 23, 7:30 p.m., Lake Chapel in the Early Center / Live-streaming available as well
Lecture: Becoming Inhabitants: Recasting Christian Life
An inhabitant desires and cultivates the wisdom necessary to live in God’s world well. Faith communities that nurture inhabitance as a way of life for Christians tap into the creating, redeeming, and reviving power of God. They understand what it means to be members of the Body of Christ on an embodied and relational level. What is more, they understand themselves as members of creation, participants in the divine drama of life and death, joy and suffering, fear and wonder, love and grief. What if Christians re-imagined the life of faith as a life of inhabitance in God’s world?
A book signing will follow the lecture, and copies of Inhabitance: Ecological Religious Education and Good Food: Grounded Practical Theology will be available for purchase at discounted rates.
SCHEDULE CHANGE: Th pilgrimage event was moved to Friday, March 25.
Friday, March 25, 12:30-2:00 p.m., Yaupon Place, 1313 Westwood Avenue, Richmond, Virginia –
Workshop: A Pilgrimage Through Yaupon Place
Yaupon Place is envisioned as a public eco-park, providing the seminary a landscape for building healing connections across divides within our Northside community–divisions that include our social, ecological, and spiritual lives. How does this beautiful, natural space become a place where inhabitance is nurtured as a shared way of life? How will Yaupon Place help write a new, healing narrative for the Northside and for Richmond?
This workshop, facilitated by Dr. Ayres, will provide a pilgrimage through Yaupon Place to explore these questions, to connect with the land, and to learn what is already happening at Northside’s eco-park.
The Howie Center Events are FREE and open to the public, yet registration is requested. These events are designed to bring community members together through the intersection of science, art, and theology.
TO REGISTER FOR THESE FREE EVENTS, CLICK HERE.
Click here to view the flyer for the 2022 Howie Center Events.
The Carl Howie Center for Science, Art, and Theology sponsors presentations through which church leaders (including seminarians) recognize and engage the insights and implications of the interplay of science, art, and theology for theological expression and the practice of ministry. The Center generously provides funding for lectures, seminars, and displays at Union Presbyterian Seminary once or twice a year, featuring artists, scientists, and/or theologians in conversation about a particular topic.
