The Honors College at Belmont Abbey has been awarded a grant by the Lilly Fellows Program to host a regional conference in spring of 2021. The conference, entitled “The Drama of Atheist Humanism,” will be the first in a series of undergraduate student-focused conferences tied to the Honors College’s senior year curriculum focused on the “Crises of the West.” Inspired by the work of 20th century theologian Henri de Lubac, the 2021 conference will host keynote speakers, faculty, and students from around the region and nation for lectures and Socratic seminars on the topic of atheism and belief in the modern world.
The goal of focusing on this topic is to prepare students, both believers and non-believers, to learn from the challenges presented by the other and to speak about the proposition of religious belief with charity and precision. In doing so, the conference takes its lead from the following reflection offered by Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI in his Introduction to Christianity:
Just as the believer is choked by the salt water of doubt constantly washed into his
mouth by the ocean of uncertainty, so the nonbeliever is troubled by doubts about his
unbelief, about the real totality of the world he has made up his mind to explain as a self-contained whole…Just as the believer knows himself to be constantly threatened by unbelief…so for the
unbeliever faith remains a temptation and a threat to his apparently closed world.
With an increasing number of young people identifying as religiously unaffiliated, it is more important than ever that students at church-related colleges and universities like Belmont Abbey College be able to speak confidently and clearly about these matters with their peers.
The Lilly Fellows Program in Humanities and the Arts seeks to strengthen the quality and shape the character of church-related institutions of higher learning in the twenty-first century. The $12,500 grant, proposed by Drs. O’Gorman, Wysocki, and Williams, will be used to support keynote speakers as well as food and lodging for undergraduates and faculty from other colleges.