A two-part conversation on identity, idolatry, theology, & discipleship with Dr. Paul Lim of Vanderbilt. Wednesdays April 3  & 10 at 6:15 PM in Drowota Hall.

As trite and tragic as it is to say it, we are living in an unprecedentedly polarized – and further polarizing – society in America. The Left blames the ignorance and prejudice of the Right. The Right returns the favor by assigning most, if not all, of the blame to the loosening of morals from the 1960s and beyond to the Left. The score is 0:0 and yet both sides are losing!

Christians from both parties, especially from the extreme ends of the respective ideological, cultural spectrum, are often surprised to learn that there are genuine Christ-followers on both sides of the “aisle.” How do we meaningfully carve out, create, and sustain spaces where both sides are committed to the ideal-and-reality of mutual learning, forbearance and transformation? Put differently, how do we speak meaningfully about politics of religion in contemporary America, with particular emphases on identity, idolatry, and discipleship through the language of theology?

For these two sessions, we will – try our best to – suspend judgment about the “Other,” whoever they may be, wherever they may be located, and engage in a conversation about imagining life, religion, politics, geography from the eyes of the other. Undergirding this two-part conversation is Professor Lim’s conviction that Jesus was neither liberal nor conservative, while being truly inclusive in the way his embodied Good News defined it. And in taking seriously what he had to say, we will walk away more encouraged and transformed Christ-followers.

Part 1 • Wednesday, April 3: “Blessed are the Cheesemakers? Engaging the Sermon on the Mount again in the Era of Obama-Trump presidencies”

Part 2 • Wednesday, April 10: “Following Christ Outside the City Gate: Reimagining the first-century Christian Political, Theological ‘Geography’”

Professor Paul C.H. Lim teaches at Vanderbilt University as an Associate Professor of the History of Christianity, Associate Professor of History, Religious Studies and Asian Studies. He is an award-winning historian with degrees from Yale (BA), Princeton Seminary (ThM) and Cambridge (PhD). His latest last book is Mystery Unveiled: The Crisis of the Trinity in Early Modern England.