John Martens (right) with Margaret MacDonald of St. Mary’s University and Gerry Turcotte, President of Corpus Christi College and Principal of St. Mark’s College.
The Centre for Christian Engagement at St. Mark’s College at UBC has hosted two major international conferences.
The first, in May, 2023, was focused on Pope Francis after a decade of his pontificate. This conference, though it welcomed speakers from other Christian traditions, was clearly Catholic in focus.
Our second international conference, The Promise of Christian Education: Past, Present and Future (May 1 – 3), took on a more general ecumenical theme.
Our theological neighbours Regent College, St. Andrew’s Hall, and Vancouver School of Theology (VST) all sponsored the conference through ads in the conference program. A number of presenters came from Protestant schools and organizations such as Trinity Western University, VST and A Rocha.
Regardless of denomination, the question of how Christians ought to educate people, formally and informally, is of interest to all followers of Jesus.
Presentations ranged from the practical (what is the best way to educate in a Christian school filled with students who are not Christians) to the ancient (how did Christians in the past train people in the faith) to the theoretical (what is the best way to share the Christian faith, and are there methods that are counterproductive).
Presenters also looked to the future and the impact of AI on learning and what it means for a Christian view of the purpose of education and human embodiment.
Cynthia Emeka (right) with Christine Schintgen, William Orbih and SimonMary Asese Aihiokhai.
Presenters, more than 45 in total, travelled from near and far. Sister Cynthia Emeka faced cancelled and delayed flights to travel to us from Nairobi, Kenya so that she could share her experiences as a Catholic educator in Africa.
Four of our St. Mark’s theology graduate students, all teachers in local Catholic school systems, presented original research on what it means to be Catholic educators in Vancouver today, including how to make non-Christian students feel welcome and accepted as they learn about the Christian tradition in class and throughout the school system.
Another presenter from Vancouver Island, Angelique Rasmussen – a graduate of St. Mark’s and schoolteacher – shared her research on how children can be involved in helping to shape the church in a synodal process through seeking out their thoughts on the Christian faith.
Our three keynote speakers represented the three prongs of the conference – past, present and future.
Dr. Margaret MacDonald of St. Mary’s University Halifax began the conference with her lecture Educating the Children of God, Infants to Elders: Rediscovering an Inclusive Communal Vision from Ancient Times. She looked at the role of the extended family in early Christian education, arguing that everyone from young children to grandparents were involved in the process of Christian education and that it was not just taking place in a formal school setting. Her key texts were from the Pastoral Epistles, Colossians and Ephesians.
Dr. Samuel Rocha, a professor of education at UBC, shared his lecture Dilexit Mundum: A Christian Education and The Love of the World. He argued for a Christian education in light of the love of the world that Jesus teaches in the Gospel of John as well as delving into Plato and educational theory.
Our final speaker, Rev. Dr. Stan Chu Ilo, is a priest from Nigeria and a professor at DePaul University in Chicago. He offered The Promise and Praxis of Catholic Education: Hope for a Wounded and Divided World? He made a case for hope not simply as a promise but rather as something that emerges through a series of conversion processes that a critical and integral Christian education brings.
All three of these plenary lectures are available on the CCE website and I encourage people to get the full experience by watching them all.
It is not possible, sadly, to go over all of the presentations in depth – there were over 40 presenters after all – but you can find all of them listed at the CCE website.
I do want to give a taste, however, of what you might find on the website. You will find papers dealing with truth and reconciliation in a Christian context, as well as educating on Christian care for creation and how to teach children the Bible.
Here are a couple of more in depth looks at a couple of other topics.
Gordon Reisdorf of Trinity Western University gave a paper on ‘Ethics and AI: Addressing Bias and Intelligence in Christian Education’ and how “Christian educators bear the responsibility to address its ethical and moral implications.
This presentation examines the ethical challenges and inherent biases in AI systems through a biblical perspective, demonstrating how these biases can perpetuate societal inequalities that contradict Christian values of justice and equality.
Judge Peter Lauwers, a Justice on the Court of Appeal for Ontario, spoke on ‘The Challenge for Catholic Education: To Evangelize or to Succumb to the Secular Culture.’
We also had a panel in which five presidents of Catholic universities shared their concerns and hopes for the future of Catholic higher education in Canada. While these other presentations are not available for viewing, we are currently negotiating with a publisher to move forward with the publication of many of the conference papers.
The conference allowed us to gather together with people from many different Christian denominations to share our thoughts, our dreams, our research and our hard work of how to best pass on the faith and to form disciples in Christ.
The purpose of these conferences is to engage with people on questions of meaning, purpose and hope. We want to bring the Christian intellectual tradition to bear on the most important questions and challenges of our age. How to best teach the faith today can draw on the past as we look to the future, keeping in mind the one true teacher, Jesus Christ (Matthew 23:8,10).
John W. Martens is a professor of theology and director of the Centre for Christian Engagement at St. Mark’s College at the University of British Columbia.