Faith & Science 2022: A BioLogos Conference

We are excited to finally announce next year’s conference!

March 25-26 (with workshops on the 24th), 2022 in sunny San Diego! We’ve got an amazing speaker lineup, with the same great worship and fellowship you’ve come to expect at a BioLogos conference.

Sign up now to take advantage of early bird pricing!

Who’s coming?! :slight_smile:

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sounds great…I understand that there will be zoom options for those who are unable to travel there? Let us all know!

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Virtual options will be made available after early registration is closed!

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Hillary, if I can attend, it will be by virtual access. Immunosuppressed. Thanks.

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Totally understand! We will keep ya posted on virtual options soon!

Hello all!

Virtual options are now open! (You will have access to all talks for three months, so even if you have to work on Friday or want to do it it smaller doses, it is still worth going ahead and registering!)

Register here: Whova Registration Page

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Bumped in to @KateKnut and @jpm virtually at the conference from my kitchen. I still have most of the sessions to catch up on, because of a project I finally am able to send out this evening. I would love to hear peoples’ thoughts and highlights from what they heard.

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I believe I just joined this morning. At least I went through all the steps. But there was no confirmation screen of any kind.

Mission accomplished. I got my wonky MacBook to quit filling in random characters long enough to complete the process. Did you watch any talks you’d recommend once they become available on video?

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Oh, I have been watching the videos.
If you can get to this page,

Click on “Agenda”, and there is a tab for Friday and one for Saturday. Then look at the list of sessions for the day. There is a link in each one “view session”. Click that.
I really enjoyed Ann Snyder and David Brooks and their interview with Francis Collins. I am already very interested in the work and thought of Mako Fujimura, although you’ll have to decide for yourself, what you think. I need to finish Catherine Hayhoe’s session. But at the time I was listening, I was rather undone by it and didn’t finish.
Yesterday I finally finished a pressing project and I worked at work today. I will have time to catch up more tomorrow. Really looking forward to all the sessions.
My girls will be intereste in the session on disability, so I will try to watch it with them.

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Sandra Richter’s and Katharine Hayhoe’s session was very engaging.

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I’ll try to finish tomorrow. There are times when grief over the environment and my complicity in the destruction can be pretty overwhelming.

During that session, it dawned on me how sustainability, agriculture, and taking care of immigrants and refugees are connected. Things I deeply care about and felt there was some strong relatedness that I couldn’t really get at, and that I’d like to be involved with but not quite sure how they all fit. Seeing how sustainable agriculture can bless the marginalized and give dignity to farmers and their communities was very encouraging.

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Me too. I’ve started listening and like what I’m hearing. The part I’m looking forward to hearing is how the increase in human population is making sustainable agriculture and caring for people and animals at the margins more and more difficult to achieve. As important as it is to parent well it is also important to change expectations that everyone will raise a family.

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Yes, and I can see family size being a very difficult topic for the church. There seem to be good long-term answers like education for women and family planning, but the short term impacts need attention and mitigation, such as social security, elder care, and a possible drop in psychological care for families. (Any family structure deserves psychological support, but raising humans necessitates support where not having children requires support of a different kind, IMO.)

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What worries me is that all my Christian relatives seem to regard raising a family as almost a duty as well as a kind of right of passage. The message from Jesus “I have chosen you, and ordained you, that ye should go and bring forth fruit, and that your fruit should remain" doesn’t seem to show the same sensitivity toward cultivating resources which the first speaker spoke of in relation to farming.

My fear is that, certainly among my relatives, worries about preserving resources and working within what nature provides are out weighed by their expectation that the curtain will go down any moment when Jesus returns and all will be made new again. I realize of course that their theological understanding is not necessary to Christianity but it certainly seems to be prominent.

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I agree with you there. From within evangelism and discipleship ministries, the focus shifts the fruit from sons and daughters to anyone, since most of the “targets” (to put it bluntly) are not married with kids. The sessions about environment, disability, and diversity follows that example that the movement of God’s Kingdom is inclusive and interdependent. I appreciate the balance, because that’s where I see God’s glory demonstrated in the world and in God’s image bearers. Although I do appreciate strong children’s and families ministries, because without them it would be difficult for us to make it to church and get plugged in, even though we are motivated to do so and make it a priority.

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Another busy day with little time to read and write. And I still haven’t finished Catherine Hayhoe’s talk. It reminds me of a Language of God podcast (maybe this one: Podcast S1E4 - Faith & Soil ), where one of the guests mentioned that to be an environmentalist, one is perpetually grieving what other people don’t notice.
I grew up swimming in Lake Huron (Michigan side) starting in the early '70s, paddling around under water with my eyes open, not able to see my sister a foot away through the rich, jade green water. In my early teens we started hearing a lot about zebra muscles. Now people marvel at the beautiful, clear water. I weep.
It’s spring time here, and I’m enjoying an abnormally normal spring. Gloom, unpredictable changes, snow. then sun, then cold, slashing rain. We have far too many pretty springs here now. “Look at the pretty flowers all over the yard.” But that’s not how it is supposed to be.

Maybe I need to skip to the hopeful part of Hayhoe’s talk. Awareness of the problem is already stifling.

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Oldest Kid was home from college this weekend, and I’d been saving the “Disability, Dignity and The Image of God” session to watch with her and Youngest Kid, since they both have interest. Here are a few (edited for clarity) quotes that I found powerful:

We realize that if you’re not part of the disability community now, if you live long enough, at some point you will become a part of that community.

Talking with my mom, who will soon be 89, I see that she never considered this reality. I suspect, because, at my age, she really had never seen anything like the numbers of people who live to be older now. At that time, someone her (current) age was really exceptional. My generation is faced constantly with the reality of this statement, however.

The Social Model of disability does not view disability simply as an impairment to be managed by medical intervention but rather a more complex understanding of the ways in which society’s narratives about disability are more disabling than the actual biological impairment…

We no longer hide away most people with disabilities in “special” schools and institutions. But we don’t have good skills to make sure “everyone is included.” Our short-sightedness can actually make things worse.

The Social Model helps us to understand that there is a social component in addition to perhaps some of the medical and physical components. The challenge of being disabled is a challenge that requires whole scale societal and environmental changes. The management of disability is a social responsibility and therefore should be seen as an issue of human dignity and human rights. … So for churches and faith communities and faith-based organizations this means including disability in our discussions about diversity, dignity and justice.

I have much to say on this, that I will spare you from. In short, though, I will say, “Right on!”

Churches that I consult with [ask about ways] to create long lasting and systemic change. [The best way] is to find ways to place persons with disabilities and their families in positions of real leadership in the church. [Y]ou can often tell an organization’s commitment to diversity by whom it allows to lead. [O]ne of the things that we often see in the church is we want to do ministry for persons with disabilities and we have lacked the creative imagination to do ministry with persons with disabilities. [S]ome of the barriers that continue to exist in the church are because … ideas of what church should look like and feel like and sound like were constructed…by all the same type of minds. … You have persons with [disabilities] at the table and those persons will help you reshape and reimagine what church and what ministry should look like.

This part is key, and it doesn’t only apply to the matter of persons with disabilities. Any true open society’s leadership must fully reflect the diversity of that society. Otherwise we are simply maintaining power structures and “managing” the other.

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