Calvin Hosts Conference on Rekindling Christian Imagination

Summary: On Saturday, November 7, Calvin College will play host to a one-day interactive worldview conference titled "The Garden of Delight and Learning from the Stranger: Lectures to Rekindle the Christian Imagination."

On Saturday, November 7, Calvin College will host a one-day interactive worldview conference titled "The Garden of Delight and Learning from the Stranger: Lectures to Rekindle the Christian Imagination."

The conference, held from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. in the Bytwerk Video Theater of the DeVos Communication Center, will offer students, educators and people of all faiths compelling and challenging perspectives on teaching, learning and living in our culturally interconnected world.

David Smith, the director of the Kuyers Insitute for Christian Teaching and Learning at Calvin College, is the conference's keynote speaker. Smith, a sought-after speaker among Christian educators, notes that at this conference he is looking at worldview less as a handy list of beliefs about the world and more in terms of what we see when we look at the world. He used this example:

"When Marco Polo wrote home from his travels he reported that he had seen a unicorn, but had to confess that it was not white, tall and graceful, but gray and squat and ugly. What was before his eyes was a rhino, but he fitted it into his mental world as a unicorn. The way we imagine the world to be colors what we think we see and hear and affects what we do," said Smith.

The conference is co-sponsored by the Calvin College Graduate Teacher Education Programs, the Kuyers Institute for Christian Teaching and Learning and the Institute for Christian Studies.

Tony Campbell, Joyce Wandawa, Debra Paxton-Buursma and Kent Dobson will also speak at the event.

For more information on all of the speakers and for more details on the event, see
www.icscanada.edu/events/2009 or contact the Kuyers Institute at 616-526-7500.

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Received on Fri Oct 16 15:14:48 2009