January Series 2017 Opens with Talk on the Reformation

Topics to be addressed in Calvin College’s January Series 2017, which begins today in the college’s Covenant Fine Arts Center, touch on a range of hot-button issues — such as health care reform — coming right out of current news headlines.

Besides health care, speakers for this free, lunch-hour lecture series will address the wild and woolly nature of the recent U.S. presidential election, poverty in American cities, human rights, challenges facing the European Union, racism and the fight for black rights, and the gender gap in the field of technology.

Also on the schedule for the award-winning series is a presentation that looks at the importance of churches working at, and not simply thinking about, changing the world. In addition, there will be a talk from the founder of a group that is providing surgeons to help children in Iraq and is responding to the needs of people living in the shadow of ISIS.

Running every weekday from 12:30 - 1:30 p.m. through Tues., Jan. 24, the series will be available at more than 50 remote locations in North America and  at one site in Lithuania. Remote sites include churches, community centers, schools, and libraries.

Audio live streaming will also be available for most of the presentations, and the talks will be archived.

Kicking off the series today was Karen Maag, whose topic was “500 Years Later: Why the Reformation Still Matters.”

In her talk, Maag, director of the H. Henry Meeter Center for Calvin Studies at Calvin College, offered some lessons on how people living during the Reformation were able to get along despite being members of different, and often warring, religious factions.

While there were various groups of Protestants fighting one another and Protestants fighting Catholics, some people found ways to get along and even visit one another's place of worship, especially when they were members of the same family or close friends.

"The rhetoric of fear and hatred today seems to be alive and well ... and the Reformation provides models of different approaches in which people, who are divided by confessional beliefs, overcame fear and hatred and found ways to live together in peace," said Maag, a Calvin history professor whose most recent book is Lifting Hearts to the Lord: Worship with John Calvin in Sixteenth-Century Geneva.

Coming up Thurs., Jan. 5, will be Matthew Desmond, a social sciences professor at Harvard University and author of the current bestseller Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City, which is also the title of his January Series presentation.

Mark Charles, a speaker, writer, and consultant on issues of race, culture, and faith, will discuss “Race, Trauma, and the Doctrine of Discovery” on Fri., Jan. 6. Synod 2016 discussed the Doctrine of Discovery (formulated largely by the Roman Catholic Church in the 15th century) and repudiated it for its centuries-long teaching that European whites had the right to take the lands of Indigenous peoples in North America and other continents.

Other speakers include Abraham Nussbaum, a Colorado physician and author of the memoir The Finest Traditions of My Calling: One Physician’s Search for the Renewal of Medicine. His talk on Tues., Jan. 10, will be “Tinkering in Today’s Healthcare Factories: Pursuing the Renewal of Medicine.”

On Tues., Jan. 17, historian and Pulitzer Prize-winning author Doris Kearns Goodwin will address “How Did We Get Here? A Historical Perspective on Our Wild 2016 Election.”

In her talk Goodwin will spotlight some of the changes in the U.S. political system over the past 150 years, leading up to last year’s acrimonious presidential campaign and election, which was punctuated by nonstop television and relentless social media coverage.

On Wed., Jan. 18, Eugene Cho, an author and the founder and lead pastor of Quest Church in Seattle, Wash., will discuss his book Overrated: Are We More in Love with the Idea of Changing the World Than Actually Changing the World?

On Mon., Jan. 23, the series will feature a talk by Jeremy Courtney, founder of the Preemptive Love Coalition and author of Preemptive Love: Pursuing Peace One Heart at a Time, a firsthand account of his organization’s work to mend hearts and save lives in the war-ravaged country of Iraq.

The January Series 2017 will wrap up on Tues., Jan. 24, with with a presentation by New Testament scholar and author N.T. Wright, who will discuss “The Royal Revolution: Fresh Perspectives on the Cross.”