Update: The States

So March, April and May are pretty busy times in my department as all the research students madly rush to complete pieces to hand in at the end of April for the Panel Reviews that are held at the end of May. The Easter holidays usually pass in a panicked blur of reading and writing and editing. At least they usually do for me. It's the time of year when I realise I haven't done as much work as I should have done, and desperately try to rectify that situation. That was a long winded way of apologising for the scarcity of recent posts!

I recently got back from Boston. I stocked up on American goodness (Reese's peanut butter cups and Hershey's peanut butter kisses); I ate eggs over easy, a bagel with lite cream cheese, and a Boston kreme donut from Dunkin Donuts; I bought a large coke from Wendy's which lasted me two days; I found out what a Tootsie Roll is; and I got maple syrup candies for a UK-bound US mate. I went on a Duck Tour of Boston (my World War Two amphibious landing vehicle was either Beacon Hilda or Back Bay Bertha - can't remember exactly), taking in the Christian Science Headquarters, Boston Public Library, Copely Square, Trinity Church, Boston Public Gardens, the Make Way for Ducklings statue, Boston Common, Cheers, Beacon Hill, the State House, the Charles River, Bunker Hill, the USS Constitution, Old North Church, and the Holocaust Memorial. I went up to the SkyWalk observatory at the Prudential centre for a 360 of the city; shopped at Faneuil Hall, Quincy Market, Macy's and Filene's Basement; and watched the Boston Bruins kick Montreal Canadien butt 2-1 in overtime Sunday night (only on tv, but it was still very exciting!).

I also did some work. I went to Boston for a conference at Gordon College in Wenham, MA, a Christian liberal arts college that was hosting the "Postmodernism, Truth, and Religious Pluralism" conference of the Society for Continental Philosophy and Theology. I meant to post the programme before I went but things got a little on top of me! I'm going to blog about the conference in general on Jason Clark's site some time in the near future, but here's the programme to whet your appetite. I'll blog more in relation to my paper ("A New Kind of Christian is a New Kind of Atheist: Truth, A/theistic Orthodoxy, and the Emerging Church Milieu") soon too.

Friday, April 11

Roger Haight, Union Theological Seminary: "The Impact of Pluralism on Ecclesiology."

Ed Mooney, Syracuse University: "Tactile Truth: A View from the Trenches."

Katharine Sarah Moody, Lancaster University: "A New Kind of Christian is a New Kind of Atheist."

Saturday, April 12

Thomas Clarke, Stonehill College: "Truth and Castration."

Marion Larson and Sarah Shady, Bethel University: "Interfaith Dialogue in a Pluralistic World: Insights from Martin Buber and Miroslav Volf."

Wilson Dickinson, Syracuse University: "The Other of the Heading: The Deconstruction of Religion and Doing the Truth."

Lovisa Bergdahl, Stockholm University: "'Lost in Translation': On the Untranslatable and its Ethical Implications for Religious Pluralism."

Neal DeRoo, Boston College: "Toward a Testimonial Understanding of Reason and Religion in the Public Sphere."

Richard Kearney, Boston College: "Anatheism: Welcoming Strange Gods."