Dr. Mary McCampbell: “We are Changed Souls”: Prophetic Critique & Post-Secular Hope in the Fiction of Douglas Coupland

The postreligious space of Vancouverite Douglas Coupland’s fiction provides a backdrop for a disenchanted consumer collective nursed on advertising slogans rather than Sunday school parables.  After ironically exposing the false promises of postmodern paradise, Coupland often resacralizes the secular concepts of epiphany and apocalypse in order to invest the lives of his suburbanite protagonists with a sense of wonder and desire for transcendence. Coupland’s poignant and prophetic critiques of the commodification of both secular and evangelical North American culture are telling and instructive—but is the church listening?

Join us for this lunchtime public lecture, in which Dr. Mary McCampbell will explore the ways in which engaging with Coupland’s critiques of both the church and the world can aid with our own spiritual formation. All are welcome to bring their lunch and engage in a brief Q & A period afterward.