The John Wesley Honors College at Indiana Wesleyan University will host its fourth annual Luther Lee Lecture Series at 7 p.m. on Wednesday, March 14 on the residential campus in Marion, Indiana. This year’s lecture, titled “A Holy Challenge: Gender Difference and Unity for the People of God,” will discuss the significance of being male and female from a Christian perspective.
The lecture will feature Dr. Beth Felker Jones, a professor of Theology at Wheaton College. Jones is the author of books including “Marks of His Wounds: Gender Politics and Bodily Resurrection” and “Faithful: A Theology of Sex.” She and her husband, Brian, a United Methodist pastor, have four children and live in Wheaton, Illinois.
The event, which will be held in the Phillippe Performing Arts Center, is free and open to the public.
“In our climate of culture wars and political polarization, it is so tempting for Christians to merely conform to the patterns of this age that feel most comfortable and then try to justify our thinking on the thinnest of biblical rationales,” said David Riggs, dean of John Wesley Honors College. “I am looking forward this week to hearing a world-class theologian challenge us in the Luther Lee Lecture to conceive of gender in ways that are more consistent with the counter-cultural logic of the gospel.”
The Luther Lee Lecture is named in honor of the nineteenth century abolitionist, feminist and co-founder of the Wesleyan denomination. Highlighting research occurring at the intersection of race, class, and/or gender and the Christian faith, the annual public lecture supports theologically informed visions of cultural responsiveness and provides resources to assist Christians in becoming ambassadors of reconciliation to a divided and broken world.
For more information on the John Wesley Honors College, visit www.indwes.edu/academics/jwhc/.