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How can Christianity triumph in the 21st century as strongly as it did in the first century?
Ross Douthat of The New York Times; Mary Rice Hasson of the Ethics & Public Policy Center in Washington, D.C. and author Robert Louis Wilken of the University of Virginia have a few ideas.
They are the keynotes at the March 19-20 Benedictine College Symposium on Advancing the New Evangelization, (soon to be renamed the Transforming Culture Symposium) sponsored by the Gregorian Institute at Benedictine College in Atchison, Kansas. This year’s theme is “Destroyer of the gods: Christian Culture vs. the Idols of Secularism.”
The title is taken from Dr. Larry Hurtado’s book about how Christianity was the first religion to successfully unseat the pagan gods that ruled the minds and hearts of people for millennia. COVID cancelled the weekend last year; not this time.
As an incredible line-up of speakers pointed out at our last Symposium, one of today’s idols is technology which monopolizes our time and steals away our children. It comes between mother and daughter, husband and wife — and even invades our churches.
But there are many more secular idols that hold our world in thrall.
The question of how to destroy these false gods is not just an academic one. Benedictine College spent three years convening groups of experts to plan ways the school’s Catholic mission can Transform Culture in America. See more information in the Gregorian Speech Digest (sign up to your right).
For more information on the symposium and to register, click here.
Keep track of both the symposium and the college’s plans at TheGregorian.org online.
Tom Hoopes, author of The Rosary of Saint John Paul II and The Fatima Family Handbook, is writer in residence at Benedictine College in Kansas and hosts The Extraordinary Story podcast about the life of Christ. A former reporter in the Washington, D.C., area, he served as press secretary of the U.S. House Ways & Means Committee Chairman and spent 10 years as executive editor of the National Catholic Register newspaper and Faith & Family magazine. His work frequently appears in Catholic publications such as Aleteia.org and the Register. He and his wife, April, have nine children and live in Atchison, Kansas.
