The Laing Lectures
2025 Laing Lectures
God & Creation: An Urgent Teaching for Today
The Christian teaching about God as Creator has been neglected to disastrous effect in modern times. Many who don’t believe in a Creator God speak loosely of creation, but what is the Christian teaching on God, the Creator? What does the doctrine of creation have to say about our intense entanglement with the whole created order? And what does it mean to confess Christ as Creator and Redeemer?
Learn more and watch the lectures.
Dr. Janet Martin Soskice
Janet Martin Soskice was born in Vancouver and brought up in the West Kootenays. After a BA at Cornell University, she studied at Regent in 1973–74, before doing an MA in Biblical Studies at the University of Sheffield followed by a doctorate in philosophy of religion at Oxford University. After teaching at an Anglican Theological College at Oxford for four years, she was appointed to a lectureship at Cambridge University where she taught for over 30 years and was Professor of Philosophical Theology. On retiring from Cambridge, she became the William K. Warren Distinguished Research Professor of Catholic Theology at Duke University Divinity School, where she now teaches.
Her works include Metaphor and Religious Language (Oxford, 1985), The Kindness of God (Oxford, 2008), and Naming God: Addressing the Divine in Philosophy, Theology and Scripture (Cambridge, 2023). She has also written Sisters of Sinai (Knopf, NY, 2009), the true story of Agnes and Margaret Smith, valiant Presbyterian twin sisters who made many trips to the Sinai desert in the 19th century in quest of ancient manuscripts of the Bible.
Janet is really interested in God.
About the Laing Lectures
The Laing Lectures began at Regent College in 1999 in cooperation with Roger and Carol Laing and in honour of their father, William John Laing. The purpose of the lectures is to encourage persons recognized for scholarship, wisdom, and creativity to undertake serious thought and original writing on an issue of significance for the Christian church and to promote the sharing of such thoughts through a series of public lectures.
The material presented by Laing Lecturers is intended to move beyond an analysis of historic and current concerns to provide proposals for alternative action for the Christian church. In doing so, lecturers are invited to explore in an interdisciplinary way the relationship between Christianity and culture, and to suggest ways in which that relationship might lead to greater flourishing of the church, the larger human household, and the whole community of creation.
The following speakers have delivered Laing Lectures: Neil Postman (2000), Charles Taylor (2001), Peter Berger (2002), Margaret Visser (2004), Miroslav Volf (2006), Nicholas Wolterstorff (2007), Walter Brueggemann (2008), Susan Wise Bauer (2010), Albert Borgmann (2011), Rex Murphy (2012), Ellen T. Charry (Spring 2014), Ross Douthat (Fall 2014), Iain McGilchrist (2016), Marilynne Robinson (2017), Stanley Hauerwas (2018), Malcolm Guite (2019), John Milbank (2022), Curt Thompson (2023), George Yancey (2024), and Janet Martin Soskice (2025).
Pastor William J. Laing
William John Laing (1916–1992) was the much-loved pastor of Bethel Baptist Church in Calgary. A graduate of William Aberhart’s Prophetic Bible Institute, “Bill” Laing assumed the pastorate of the Bible Institute Baptist Church in 1939 when he was only twenty-three. He served that church for more than four decades. Through his dynamic personality and strength of character, he brought stability to the congregation. Under his leadership, the church was restructured and changed its name to Bethel Baptist Church in 1949. He retired in 1981 and remained as Minister Emeritus for the following ten years.
Evangelism and missions were prominent aspects of Laing’s ministry. Over the years fifty percent of his church’s budget was devoted to supporting missionaries, many of whom he had taught at Berean Bible College. Those missionaries went to Canada’s north, Europe, Africa, India, Southeast Asia, and Central and South America. He was an active supporter of the Youth for Christ movement and Billy Graham’s ministry from their inception. As one whose life had been greatly influenced by radio evangelism, he became a frequent speaker on Canada’s national Back to the Bible Hour broadcast. During the last decade of his life, he was Pastor-at-Large for Global Outreach Mission, which took his ministry to North America, Europe, and India, where he spoke to conferences of pastors and missionaries.
Recent Laing Lectures
2024 • Christian Racial Reconciliation
George Yancey
Dr. George Yancey is a Professor of Sociology at Baylor University and the Baylor Institute for Studies of Religion. He has published several research articles on the topics of institutional racial diversity, racial identity, atheists, cultural progressives, academic bias, and anti-Christian hostility. In this three-lecture series, Dr. Yancey discusses institutional racism past and present, why the solutions being offered are not enough, and the theology and sociology of conversation.
2023 • Practicing for Heaven: Neuroscience and the Beauty, Trauma & Renewal of All Things
Curt Thompson MD
Curt Thompson connects our intrinsic desire to be known with the need to tell truer stories about ourselves—showing us how to form deep relationships, discover meaning, and live integrated and creative lives. With a keen instinct for making complex topics relatable, Dr. Thompson integrates the science of interpersonal neurobiology with Christian anthropology to help us re-establish and deepen our relationships—leading to healthier, more meaningful lives.
2022 • Most Entanglings: The Trinity as the Root of All Being
John Milbank
John Milbank is an Anglican theologian, philosopher, and poet. He is a co-founder of the Radical Orthodoxy movement, which traces its origins to his seminal work, Theology and Social Theory: Beyond Secular Reason, published in 1991. Radical Orthodoxy calls for a hopeful and constructive response to the pervasive secularism of the modern era. Rather than despair at the modern downfall of truth, Radical Orthodoxy sees within this downfall a supreme opportunity to reclaim the world by situating it again within a theological frame.
