Founders' Day 2022

Keynote Lecture - "The Planet You Inherit: A Re-Founding Catalyst?"

Voltaire (1694-1778) said the "three things exercise a constant influence over the minds of [humankind]: climate, governance, and religion...That is the only way of explaining the enigma of this world." This Founder's Day Lecture looks at each of these three - climate, governance, and religion - to ask whether today's planetary emergency requires re-founding our way of life.

Schedule

5:30 pm     In-Person Gathering at PLTS
6:00 pm     Lecture Begins In-Person and Online

Registration

If you plan to attend in person, click this link.

If you plan to attend online, click this link.

Keynote Speaker

Larry L. Rasmussen is Reinhold Niebuhr Professor Emeritus of Social Ethics, Union Theological Seminary, New York City. His book, Earth-Honoring Faith: Religious Ethics in a New Key (Oxford University Press, 2013), received the Nautilus Gold Prize for Ecology/Environment and the Nautilus Grand Prize for best 2014 book overall (27 categories). An earlier volume, Earth Community, Earth Ethics (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 1996), won the prestigious Grawemeyer Award in Religion of 1997. A volume written with Bruce C. Birch, Cynthia Moe-Lobeda, and Jacquiline E. Lapsley, Bible and Ethics: A New Conversation appeared in May, 2018 (Fortress Press). He served as a member of the Science, Ethics, and Religion Advisory Committee of the AAAS (American Association for the Advancement of Science) and was a recipient of a Henry Luce Fellowship in Theology, 1998-99, the Burnice Fjellman Award for Distinguished Christian Ministries in Higher Education, and the UNITAS (Distinguished Alumnus) Award from Union Theological Seminary, New York. From 1990-2000 he served a co-moderator of the World Council of Churches unit, Justice, Peace, Creation. He was the organizer of the decade project on Earth-Honoring Faith at Ghost Ranch, 2008-2017. In the Spring Semester 2018 he was guest professor at Union Theological Seminary and Yale University Divinity School. In the summer session of 2019 he taught in Cambridge University, England. In 2021 he was granted the Lifetime Achievement Award of the Society of Christian Ethics.

He and Nyla live in Santa Fe, New Mexico.