Dr. Bruce Hindmarsh, Professor of Spiritual Theology, Regent College (Vancouver, Canada)
“After Christendom: Evangelical Conversion Narrative and Its Alternatives”
Time: 12:00 pm, Tuesday, October 13, 2009
Place: Swift 201
Paper: Access online through the University of Chicago library (with UC id and password). Click here.
*Hard copies available in Professor Brekus’s outbox in Swift 204.
This workshop is based on chapter 10 of The Evangelical Conversion Narrative (Oxford, 2005). The chapter reviews the multiform genre of conversion narrative over the course of the eighteenth century in England. The chapter examines first the context of evangelical mission enterprise beyond the borders of Christendom, and, second, the ways in which the genre contrasted with the new forms of modern autobiography in England that appeared ‘after Christendom’. It includes non-Western case studies: David Brainerd’s mission to the Delaware Indians in New Jersey, David George and others associated with the Sierra Leone Colony, and South Sea Islanders at the turn of the century. Finally, the unconversion and re-conversion of the English entrepreneur James Lackington illustrates both the conditions of narratable evangelical conversion in general and the ways in which the evangelical experience moderated and revised modern ideals of individuality associated with the Enlightenment.
Please also join us for the afternoon lecture and/or dinner. RSVP to dje@uchicago.edu. Space is limited.
This workshop is presented with the support of the Nicholson Center for British Studies.
For more information, contact Debra Erickson, dje@uchicago.edu