Christ College — The Honors College at Valparaiso University will hold a lecture titled “Rethinking Religion, Secularism and Violence” on Monday, Sept. 15 at 6:30 p.m. at the Mueller Hall Refectory. The lecture, by Thomas Howard, Ph.D., professor of humanities and history and Phyllis and Richard Duesenberg Chair in Christian Ethics, will center on his book “Broken Altars: Secularist Violence in Modern History.”
This event is free and open to the public.
“The public will hear an accessible lecture on the complex, often fraught relationship among religion, secularism, and violence,” Professor Howard said. “As the tagline on my book says: ‘A sweeping history of violence perpetrated by governments committed to extreme forms of secularism in the twentieth century.’”
In his book, Professor Howard argues against the idea that violence is inherently related to religion, and that secularism is liberation from violence. He divides secularism in three camps: passive secularism, combative secularism, and eliminationist secularism, and argues — through case studies around the world — that the second and third group have, historically, been especially prone to violence of their own.
“Broken Altars: Secularist Violence in Modern History” has been published through the Yale University Press, and is available through Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and other distributors. For more information, visit the Yale University Press page here.
This lecture exemplifies Valparaiso University’s dedication to its identity as a Lutheran university, and its commitment to exploring the topic of faith from a critical perspective.
“We need to be constantly thinking of the place of religion in (post)modern society from the standpoint of topnotch scholarship,” Professor Howard said. “This lecture will help us do precisely that.”
Some of Professor Howard’s other works include “The Faiths of Others: Modern History and the Rise of Interreligious Dialogue’ (Yale University Press, 2020), The Idea of Tradition in the Late Modern World: An Ecumenical and Interreligious Conversation(Cascade, 2020), and Remembering the Reformation: An Inquiry into the Meanings of Protestantism (Oxford University Press, August 2016). For more information on Professor Howard and his bibliography click here.
