Envision ‘08: The Gospel, Politics, and the Future

This post is reprinted from D.W. Congdon’s great theology blog, The Fire and the Rose.

On June 8-10, one of the largest evangelical conferences in American history will be held at Princeton University. Entitled Envision ‘08, the conference is an attempt at uniting Evangelicals and mainstream Christians together in a conversation about how the gospel and politics interrelate in the current American context. The conference will feature around 60 speakers, including the following:

• Randall Balmer
• Rich Cizik
• Shane Claiborne
• Brian McClaren
• Miroslav Volf
• Jim Wallis
• Vincent Bacote
• Bruce Benson
• David Gushee
• John Perkins
• Ron Sider
• Christian Collin Winn

One of the innovative features of this conference is that in addition to plenary addresses, there will be “learning tracks” in which people will break out into small groups to discuss certain topics in depth. These various tracks will hopefully turn into groups that continue discussing and implementing these ideas for two years until the EnVision conference in 2010. Here is a list of the learning tracks:

• Arts for Transformation - Explore how faith and arts can be a way to inspire and lead social transformation and learn how to create such art. Led Bruce Herman & Lara Scott.

• Beyond Consumerism - Discover how faith can help us live simply out of care for our neighbor and the earth. Led by Ron Sider.

• Caring for the Earth - See what we all can do to care for creation and address climate change and other environmental problems. Led by Alexei Lauschkin.

• Evangelicals and Empire - Learn how faith helps us to resist the principalities and powers of the world and calls us to work for the Kingdom of God. Led by Bruce Ellis Benson and Christian Collin Winn.

• Evangelism and the World - Explore how the good news and God’s love can address the needs and injustices of the world. Led by Vincent Bacote & John Tyson.

These are just the first five out of 20 tracks. There should many fascinating and fruitful conversations at this conference.

Michael’s word: I hope this gets excellent press coverage, too.