Registration is now open for these events!
Friday, March 3 Panel Discussion (2pm): “Reading the Bible with the Majority World”
Click HERE to register for the Friday, March 3 panel.
Click HERE to view the event’s live stream.
When we read the Bible, we bring more to the task than simply our ability to read. We bring our assumptions, our dispositions, our emotions, our wants, needs, and desires. Plus, we bring our western culture. As a result, sometimes we misread the Bible because we are viewing it through the wrong lenses. As the center of Christian culture moves south to the majority world—South America, Africa, and Asia—we are realizing that our brothers and sisters from other parts of the world read the Bible differently and experience the Spirit uniquely. In this panel, we will gather scholars, pastors, and missionaries who have read the Bible with Christians from Asia, Africa, Indonesia, and Latin America. What you learn will surprise you.
Saturday, March 4 Lecture (7pm): “Reading Ruth from South Asia” Co-Sponsored by:
Click HERE to register for the Saturday lecture.
Click HERE to view the event’s live stream.
For the South Asian reader, especially for the female South Asian reader, the book of Ruth roils emotions. It stirs up strong feelings on practices and perspectives that are intricately enmeshed within the fabric of Indian society. No other biblical book deals so extensively, and in painful detail, on widowhood. Not many other books present as persistently as Ruth the theme of childlessness. No other book is so enthusiastically prescribed to young Christian women for emulation—prescriptions that seem to be less exegetically faithful and more culturally convenient. We will explore these three themes to see if we can read this familiar book in unfamiliar, and perhaps even, subversive ways, so as to better appreciate the Christian faith and challenge ourselves in its practice.
Havilah Dharamraj is Head of the Department of Biblical Studies at South Asia Institute of Advanced Christian Studies in Bangalore, India.