Otago University - Burns Lectures - 19th May 2025 to 29th May 2025

An advance notice: The Theology Programme at the University of Otago warmly invites you to the Burns Lectures for 2025, to be held from May 19–29. These will be given by Professor Brad Gregory and are entitled: "Christians, Consumption, and Climate Change: Christianity between the Last Ice Age and the Anthropocene." A poster is also attached.

Professor Brad Gregory is the Henkels Family College Professor of History at the University of Notre Dame, Indiana, USA. He is the author of several books including Rebel in the Ranks: Martin Luther, the Reformation, and the Conflicts That Continue to Shape Our World; The Unintended Reformation: How a Religious Revolution Secularized Society; and Salvation at Stake: Christian Martyrdom in Early Modern Europe. He is currently working on a major project about the relationship between Western Christianity and the long-term formation of our current global environmental realities, the working title of which is The Way of the World: Power, Wealth, and Civilization from the Last Ice Age to the Anthropocene.

Locations (online and onsite): 

Archway 4 at the University of Otago 
Livestreamed at https://tinyurl.com/otagoburns

Time: 5.15pm–6.30pm

Dates:

1. Monday 19 May: “Reinterpreting the Past in an Unprecedented Present: History and the Anthropocene”
2. Tuesday 20 May: “Fortunes for the Few, Misfortunes for the Many: Constructing the Ancient Inhumanities” 
3. Wednesday 21 May: “Enduring the Way of the World: Covenant, Community, and Justice in Ancient Israel”
4. Tuesday 27 May: “Subverting the Way of the World: The Oblique Radicalism of Jesus of Nazareth”
5. Wednesday 28 May “Accommodating the Way of the World: Making Room for Mammon, Making Peace with Rome”
6. Thursday 29 May “Extending the Way of the World: Western Christianity from Constantine to the Anthropocene”

Additional Wellington Lecture: 
Professor Gregory will also give a free public lecture in Wellington

DATE: Thursday 22 May
TIME: 6:30pm
TOPIC: “How the Reformation Era (Indirectly) Led Us into Our Global Environmental Predicament”
LOCATION: St John’s Presbyterian Church, Corner of Dixon & Willis Streets.