Revd Professor Frances Young OBE FBA will deliver the 22nd Annual Archbishop Blanch Memorial Lecture entitled Finding the Old Way Forward: Could engagement with the Christian past enable renewal?
Frances Young is Emeritus Professor of Theology, University of Birmingham, where she held the Edward Cadbury Chair from 1986 to 2005. She taught New Testament and early Christian studies in Birmingham from 1971. She was ordained as a Methodist minister in 1984, and regularly leads worship locally, as well as responding to preaching invitations from various denominations across the country. She has always endeavoured to bridge academia and the life of the churches. She received a Doctor of Divinity (honoris causa) from Liverpool Hope University in 2013.
About the lecture, Professor Young said: “Renewal through engagement with the past or how knowing a bit of history can assist Christian identity and mission in this post-Christian culture. I am interested in discovering how Christianity spread in its earliest centuries, despite being an underground minority facing opposition and persecution. What was its distinctive character in a Roman world of competing gods and idols?”
Professor Young will explain how by answering such questions, it is possible to find a renewed confidence in what we have to communicate and guidance on how to embody it.
The lecture will be held on Wednesday 17th October at 7pm in EDEN Lecture Theatre, Hope Park.
Refreshments will be served on arrival from 6.30pm. If you would like to attend, please reply to the Corporate Events Office at events@hope.ac.uk