You're invited to join us on Wednesday, February 4, for a lunchtime presentation by Dr. Emily Lange, an expert in international development and current Professional-in-Residence at Regent College.

About the Event

How would we tell the story of the last 500 years of international politics in the Western world? Most of us would struggle to tell the story of the last five years, let alone the last five hundred. But history matters to the shaping of identities and to our self-understanding, and holds important keys to understanding what we are seeing unravel today.

Emily Lange's book, The Deeper Revolution: How Worldviews Shape Western International Politics, resists modern preferences for soundbites and executive summaries and invites the reader to take a long journey through the political history of the Western world. Our tour guide is historian and international theorist Martin Wight, who, when looking at the last 500 years of the Western states-system, identified three waves of international revolution which profoundly shaped our politics and society: the Protestant Reformation, the French Revolution, and the Russian Revolution—three historic moments he named “doctrinal conflagrations,” where revolutionary ideas, ideologies, philosophies, programs, and belief systems came into violent clash, led to tremendous brutality and destruction, and ultimately reshaped political systems and societies.

Looking anew at these waves of revolution, this book claims that behind the visible forces of political might and change lie deep forces within belief systems and ideologies, which shape worldviews and make up a deeper revolution. While religion and faith have often been downplayed in secularized narratives of the international history of the West, this book argues for the inclusion of intangibles and belief systems to fully grasp these historic turning points and better approach our own times.

A journey through Western political history can help each reader take a step back from our current complexity, recognize familiar ideological overtones in past movements, learn from other societies who faced prodigious challenges, and reflect on how the way we see the world shapes our political and individual aspirations, our societal designs, our faith, and our actions.

Location: Room 100 at Regent College (5800 University Boulevard, Vancouver, BC)

Parking: Regent College no longer has its own parking lot. Paid parking options are available nearby with metered parking on Western Parkway, among other locations, and covered pay parking at the Thunderbird Parkade. See parking.ubc.ca for more info.

Speaker

Emily Lange

Professional-in-Residence; Project Manager (PIRON Global Development)

Dr. Emily Lange is human geography and international relations scholar currently working for the greater good of societies at PIRON Global Development, a faith-based consultancy specializing in international development cooperation.