Calvin Symposium on Human Rights

March 11, 2008 == MEDIA ADVISORY

Summary: Calvin College will host a March 31 symposium on human rights.

Full story see http://www.calvin.edu/news/releases/2007-08/religion-rights.htm

Calvin College will host two acclaimed scholars on March 31 for a symposium on human rights. The event is sponsored by the Calvin Center for Christian Scholarship (CCCS), the college's Service-Learning Center, and the sociology and social work department.

"The Religious Heritage of Rights Talk" will be held in the Commons Lecture Hall at 7 pm and feature John Witte, Jr., the Robitscher Professor of Law and Director of the Center for the Study of Law and Religion at Emory University, and Nicholas Wolterstorff, the Noah Porter Professor of Philosophical Theology Emeritus at Yale.

Together the two will discuss such provocative topics as whether religion is opposed to rights and if justice requires curbing religious influence.

Witte will discuss the roots and origins of a modern account of human rights in early modern Calvinism, while Wolterstorff will dig back even further, arguing that modern intuitions about rights and justice are indebted to the Hebrew and Christian scriptures -- and cannot be sustained by a wholly secular ethos.

Contact Dale Williams of the Calvin Center for Christian Scholarship at drw22@calvin.edu or 616-526-7592

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Received on Tue Mar 11 12:02:48 2008