Date/Time
Date(s) - October 12, 2016
7:30 pm - 9:30 pm
Location
Grandview Calvary Baptist Church
Categories No Categories
Speaker: Luke Glanville.
In North America, the Christian church has the reputation for being a powerful supporter of conservative ideology. This reputation is a far cry from the early church’s social role.
This lecture explores how early Christians radically transformed prevailing Roman understandings of social ethics. Whereas Roman philosophers endorsed a hierarchical and elitist ethic of patronage and reciprocity, the early Christians turned this upside-down, insisting that people should seek to help those most in need and those least able to reciprocate, including not only friends and family but also strangers and foreigners.
The lecture traces the impact of this new ethic on the development of ideas about both social justice and international relations.
Luke is a senior lecturer in International Relations at the Australian National University.