Conference Overview
The Global Luther: Reconsidering the Contributions of Martin Luther
An International Conference
Northwestern University, Evanston, IL
Feb. 21-23, 2008
The Global Luther conference that took place at Northwestern University from February 21-23, 2008 investigated the enduring importance of the sixteenth-century German Reformer, Martin Luther, to urgent questions both in scholarship and global experience in today's world.
Luther is best known for the Protestant Reformation he inspired over five hundred years ago. But his ideas about religion and philosophy, music and theology, psychology and ethics, transcended this immediate context and went on to shape the history of the modern West in significant ways.
The conference brought Luther's ideas into international conversations underway today about how people around the planet live, think, and suffer in the context of geopolitical and religious instability and crisis.
Conference participants engaged the psychological, emotional, spiritual, and rational dimensions of the human person in order to work through questions at the heart of Luther's difficult understandings of political and religious life. Participants also explored Luther's vision as it has contributed to the making of Western music and literature. Luther understood humans to be in relation to a god who is hidden, a religious and existential insight that holds the power still to rattle complacency and to challenge what is taken for granted across the fields of contemporary scholarly inquiry. Luther's thought is timely in its uncompromising intellectual clarity and its unyielding existential urgency.
The Department of Religion at Northwestern University is pleased to offer The Global Luther for viewing over the World Wide Web. The five sections of the conference each include individual talks followed by panel discussions. The viewing format is NU (Northwestern University) YouTube. Conference Videos
Please look in spring 2009 for the publication of The Global Luther: Theologian for Modern Times by Fortress Press.
The Global Luther Conference was made possible thanks to the generous support of:
Office of the President, Northwestern University
Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences, Northwestern University
Alice Kaplan Institute for the Humanities, Northwestern University
Department of Religion, Northwestern University
Department of German, Northwestern University
Department of Philosophy, Northwestern University
Department of Art History, Northwestern University
Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary
University Lutheran Church at Northwestern
Immanuel Lutheran Church in Evanston, IL
Trinity Lutheran Church in Evanston, IL
Thrivent Financial for Lutherans
Fortress Press
Consulate General of the Federal Republic of Germany, Chicago
German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD)
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