I will be speaking tomorrow at the Front Porch Republic conference at Hope College. Here are a few specifics:
Registration is now open for our Second Annual Conference to be held on September 15. This time we will be in Holland, MI on the beautiful campus of Hope College. We’ve got a stellar line-up of speakers including Bill Kauffman, Mary Berry Smith, Patrick Deneen, Jason Peters, Richard Gamble, William Schambra, Kate Dalton, D.G. Hart, Jeff Polet, Matt Bonzo, Authur Verslius, and a keynote address by Eric Jacobsen, author of the New Urbanist book, Sidewalks in the Kingdom.
Cost is $30 for the day, $15 for students. Lunch is included. Porchers in the mid-west, this is your chance. There will be plenty of time for discussion during the day, and we are making arrangements for a post-conference gathering at a local establishment where the conversation can continue. We are looking forward to a great event, and we hope to see you there.
For location and other matters, go here:
And here is the conference schedule:
Panel 1: Politics and Economics 9:15-10:30
Jeff Polet, Hope College
Patrick Deneen, University of Notre Dame
Richard Gamble, Hillsdale College
Panel 2: Local Culture 10:45-12:00
Bill Kauffman, author of Ain’t My America
William Schambra, Hudson Institute
Mark T. Mitchell, Patrick Henry College
Lunch: 12:15-1:00
Keynote Address: Eric Jacobsen, author of The Space Between, 1:00-1:45
Panel 3: Environment and Place 2:00-3:15
Jason Peters, Augustana College
Arthur Verslius, author of Island Farm
D. G. Hart, Hillsdale College
Panel 4: Food and Farming 3:30-4:45
Mary Berry Smith, The Berry Center
Katherine Dalton, Contributing editor to Chronicles magazine
Matt Bonzo, Cornerstone University
Closing Remarks: 4:45-5:00
The title of my talk will be “Confessions of an East Coast Snob.”
Old Life 
Looks good. Will it be online afterwards? Say “hello” to Dr. Bultman for me. He was President at Northwestern when I was there.
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Wish I could drive over tomorrow, but alas, the honeydo list won’t do itself. This looks fantastic.
Since we’re dropping names, say hi to Arthur from Rich Keener. He won’t remember me. We interacted somewhat at some conferences at Michigan State. Just say “Malcolm’s conferences.” He’ll know.
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Seeing as Polet is a Stellman… or vice versa… what new will come from this?
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gas, you never drink Jameson?
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Only on St Paddy’s day.
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DGH,
For what it’s worth, I burned three audio CDs featuring you and Caleb Stegall talking about communal and ecclesiastical matters (evangelicalism’s forms and Bambi vs. the Lion King, respectively) to accompany me on my relocation down I-95/85 from the Delaware Valley to Georgia. Five years later, they’re still in the same slots in my CD changer, my parachute down from NPR when their politics turn cloying.
Would love to have made it to the FPR conference but getting on a plane to attend seems as wrong as a Wendell Berry podcast. Hope it’s as good as it looks.
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D.G. Hart – Human Scale Conference (whatever that was…)
Started the Hart/Muether 300 year history of Presbyterianism in America last night. “If this book has a lesson, this may be the most important: namely, that Presbyterianism understood apart from history is an abstraction bordering on fantasy.”
Can we apply this notion to the work of Called to Communion? The New Calvinists? The Federal Vision? It seems to me that all of these movements want to somehow reinvent the traditions out of which their theology arises. They think they can somehow “start fresh”, history be damned.
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Come to think of it this is pretty much the attitude of all of megachurch evangelicalism as well.
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Erik: “Can we apply this notion to the work of Called to Communion? The New Calvinists? The Federal Vision? It seems to me that all of these movements want to somehow reinvent the traditions out of which their theology arises. They think they can somehow “start fresh”, history be damned.”
I am a regular reader of Old Life, but not a regular contributor to its comment board. I found your proposal interesting, though, and wanted wanted to add to the discussion.
It seems that the problem with the contemporary movements you mentioned above is not a lack of historical reasoning, but faulty historical reasoning. In fact, their attempt at understanding reformation theology in its historical context is where they went wrong. I believe in most of the examples you cited above, the advocates of those movements would say that they disregard the authority or absoluteness of the reformed confessions because those documents are too limited and influenced by their historical context. Thus their problem is in some ways an over emphasis on the historical context and not a lack of historical understanding. I believe the intent of the statement you quoted from Hart’s book was intended to be directed toward those within the same tradition as the authors who tend to idealize the tradition they are apart of because of a lack of historical understanding — the opposite problemproblem of the groups mentioned above.
The reason I appreciate Old Life is because Hart understands that the error of the groups mentioned above is primarily their reading of history, and attempts (successfully in my opinion) to write a more reasoned, and sophisticated history.
But, in some respect your observation is correct because a bad reading of history can (along with lack of historical understanding) lead to an idealized view of one’s own “fresh” reading of scripture.
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Nate – Good thoughts. CTC is kind of it’s own case. They cherry pick history and kind of gloss over the messier parts that lead to difficult questions about Rome. This is why most conversations with Bryan Cross aren’t conversations.
New Calvinists & FV look at history and the actual conservative Reformed & Presbyterian churches that came out of it and think they can do better. Granted New Calvinists are mostly Reformed Baptists and they do have a history of their own. I once heard Doug Wilson say they were working on “a book of confessions”, as if nothing anyone has done in the past can contain their glorious movement. Those old guys just didn’t consider how Reformed people can embrace both infant and believer’s baptism at the same time in the same church…
Megachurch Evangelicals pretty much ignore history. They might like some things about the Reformation and they think the second great awakening was pretty cool, but beyond that they pretty much ignore it. It’s all about what’s happening now, man…
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I am reading Hart & Muether’s “Seeking a Better Country – 300 Years of American Presbyterianism”. They have a nice section on the Scottish Covenanters (Reformed Presbyterian Church of North America) http://reformedpresbyterian.org/ and Seceders (Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church) http://www.arpsynod.org/. This is interesting ground that not many church historians have covered.
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Richard Gamble’s stuff is pretty great.
http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/american-exceptionalisms/
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