Center for Faith & Learning

We are SO excited to start promoting our annual symposium. And look at this panel!! Don't forget to reserve your seat at cflfaithandthemedia.eventbrite.com

Today is SMU’s Day of Giving! The Center for Faith and Learning has made a profound impact on the lives of students since its inception 5 years ago. The Center has functioned as a tool to integrate the life of the mind and the life of the spirit on SMU’s campus, challenging students to develop their intellects through faith based discussions. All of the Center’s efforts have been made possible through the generosity of its supporters and alumni. Please consider the Center for Faith and Learning as you choose how to give!

Use the link below to give! Make sure to donate before midnight!

https://givingday.smu.edu/campaigns/faith-and-learning-scholars-2 #/?appeal_id=606e00df99a8cd00331221b9

For this week’s clip of a past event, scholars from Christian, Jewish, and Islamic traditions answered an audience question about if Government provided social welfare programs have ruined the concept of charity in society. Watch their answers here: https://youtu.be/Cr2FqT7ekA8

The Hong Kong protests of 2019 eventually became violent. Did that undermine the goals of those protests? Professor Lap Yan Kung tried to answer that question at our co-sponsored event last year. See a clip of it here: https://youtu.be/lkVj05yd_sA

Faith is not the opposite of reason, but the foundation upon which reason rests. To abandon faith, is to make reason unreasonable. This is why dedicated people of faith, especially Christian faith, often seek out robust intellectual development as part of their faith commitments.

In this week’s YouTube clip from a past CFL event, Russ Roberts, a Jewish Economist, responded to 6 diverse Christian perspectives with his own perspective on Free Market Economics based on his understanding of “Tikkun Olam,” a concept from the Talmudic tradition of “repairing the world.” You can see his response here: https://youtu.be/m4xsJ6FgTbg

This quote from Abraham Lincoln’s “Proclamation Appointing A National Fast Day,” of March 30, 1863 continues:
“Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to the God that made us!
It behooves us then, to humble ourselves before the offended Power, to confess our national sins, and to pray for clemency and forgiveness.”
As the content of this document is saturated with religious language, it shows that we cannot rightly understand the events and discussions regarding history or political science in the United States of America, without also being students of the Christian religion. To separate religious understanding from such historical documents is to misunderstand the content and objectives of those documents.




#1863

In this week’s video clip just posted to our YouTube channel, our director, Dr. Matthew Wilson, comments on the responses of Christians in the United States to the Hong Kong protests of 2019, and how those reactions may impact the Christian community in China. You can watch his comments here: https://youtu.be/qglD-BRtVpY

Max Planck was a Nobel Prize winner for his work in the field of theoretical physics. He was also a member of the Lutheran church in Germany. Though his religious views were unorthodox, as the paraphrased version of this quote from him shows, he thought deeply about the relationship between the nature of science and religion.

In this week’s clip of a past Center for Faith and Learning event, Art Carden, Senior Fellow at the American Institute for Economic Research, associate professor of economics at Samford University, and Forbes contributor, argues in his opening remarks at our 2018 event: Faith and the Free Market, that free markets enable respect for human dignity. You can watch this clip on our YouTube channel at https://youtu.be/7QX8OVoYRTA

People of faith, especially Christian and Jewish faith, recognize transcendent meaning not as something made by human beings, but made by God and discovered by human beings through the disclosures of God in divine revelation, human observation of Creation, and the exercise of human reason. This gives people of faith, when they understand their faith commitments rightly, great curiosity that can lead to significant academic contributions.

In this clip from our Spring 2019 event covering artificial intelligence and theology, Dr. Anne Foerst gives her thoughts on how A.I. Robots might participate in church sacraments. You can watch the clip on our YouTube channel here: https://youtu.be/tk3Kf5kktEs