Tuesday March 23 2010, 5.30pm
Room 0012 Westbrook, Divinity School
Peter Steinfels
Religion Columnist for the New York Times and Co-Director of the Fordham University Center on Religion and Culture
What does it mean for American public life and specifically for our politics to live in a post-secular world where neither religious faith nor secularization shows any signs of disappearing? To bar religious argument and appeals from our political debates would be both impossible and impoverishing. But for a pluralist, for a religiously diverse society to avoid intractable conflicts it needs a new ethic of "post-secular citizenship" involving both literacy and enlarged sensibilities on the part of believers and non-believers.
A two-time Pulitzer Prize nominee and former senior religion correspondent for the New York Times, Dr. Steinfels created and continues to pen his biweekly column "Beliefs," dealing with religion and ethics. His books includes A People Adrift: The Crisis of the Roman Catholic Church in America and The Neoconservatives, and he co-edited Death Inside Out. Dr Steinfels and his wife, Margaret O'Brien Steinfels, became the founding co-directors of the Fordham Center on Religion and Culture in 2004. The Center explores questions that arise when religious faith intersects with contemporary culture and fosters dialogue on the challenges posed to the culture.
The lecture is being sponsored by the Department of Religion, the Dennis and Rita Meyer Endowment Fund, Evelyn and Valfrid Palmer Roman Catholic Studies Endowment Fund, and the John-Kelly C. Warren Roman Catholic Studies Endowment Fund.
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