Previous Laing Lectures
2019 • Imagining the Kingdom: Parable, Poetry & Gospel
Malcolm Guite
From the moment he proclaims the Kingdom of God, Jesus appeals to our imaginations. He makes this appeal through parable, through paradox, and through the enigmatic and beautiful signs he gave in his miracles. In the gift of faith, and in Christ himself, we glimpse more than we can yet understand: Our imagination apprehends more than our reason comprehends. This is not to say that the gospel is in any way “imaginary” in the dismissive sense of “unreal” or “untrue.” On the contrary, what Christ speaks is so real and true that we need every faculty, including imagination, to apprehend it. In an age of linear, one-level readings, we need to recover confidence in the baptised imagination as a truth-bearing faculty.
Watch the Lectures (Playlist)
2018 • Theological Existence Today
Stanley Hauerwas
Dr. Stanley Hauerwas, Gilbert T. Rowe Professor Emeritus of Divinity & Law at Duke Divinity School, is one of America’s most influential and respected public intellectuals. He has a reputation for speaking honestly and incisively into some of our time’s most pressing issues. His numerous publications have advocated for nonviolence within warring societies and the pressing need for virtuous Christian communities.
Watch Our Interview with Dr. Hauerwas (Playlist)
2017 • Considering the Theological Virtues: Faith, Hope & Love
Marilynne Robinson
Marilynne Robinson was born and raised in Idaho, where her family has lived for several generations. She received a BA from Brown University in 1966 and a PhD in English literature from the University of Washington in 1977. Housekeeping, her first novel, was published in 1981 and won the PEN/Hemingway Award for First Fiction and the American Academy and Institute's Richard and Hinda Rosenthal Award. Mother Country, an examination of Great Britain's role in radioactive environmental pollution, was published in 1989. Dr. Robinson published the Pulitzer-Prize-winning Gilead in 2004, Home in 2008, and Lila in 2014. She lives in Iowa City, Iowa, with her family.
Marilynne Robinson on Rethinking Reality (Video)
2016 • God, the Brain & Paradox
Iain McGilchrist
Iain McGilchrist came to medicine from a background in the humanities, writing about issues in literature and philosophy. He trained in medicine because of an interest in the mind-body problem and practised in psychiatry and researched in neuropsychology, including neuroimaging. He seeks to understand the mind and the brain by seeing them in the broadest possible context—that of the whole of our physical and spiritual existence, and of the wider human culture in which they arise.
Hear from Iain McGilchrist:
- The Path of Wisdom
- Depression and the Depths of Hell
- Regent Redux | Beyond Black and White: Truth, Paradox & the Substance of Faith
2014 (Fall) • Settling in to a Decadent Decline
Ross Douthat
Five years ago, our civilization experienced a massive economic crisis, but our current political, intellectual, and social climate has changed much less than one might expect. New York Times columnist Ross Douthat states, “This is not the stability of a flourishing, resilient society. It’s the peace of a decadent one.”
2014 (Spring) • Christian Theology as a Guide for the Emotions
Ellen T. Charry
For Dr. Ellen T. Charry, Margaret W. Harmon Professor of Systematic Theology at Princeton Theological Seminary, theology is not a theoretical enterprise. It is an eminently practical and religious undertaking. "Theology is about knowing and growing in the love of God and our neighbor so that we flourish in the destiny that God has in mind for us," she once wrote. A quick examination of her writing confirms her passion for human flourishing. Whether in the classroom at Princeton or the pages of her publications, she pursues answers to the question of how Christian beliefs and practices can nurture people intellectually, morally, and psychologically in the course of everyday life and work.
2012 • From Doctrine to Doctrines: The Hollowing Out of the Christian Consensus
Rex Murphy
Has modern secular thought assumed the authority and deference of “doctrine,” supplanting traditional faith? Rex Murphy thinks so. Over the course of three lectures, Mr. Murphy offered an account of how the Christian understanding of life was pushed back, was attacked by, and in some cases surrendered itself to purely secular imperatives. He remarked on the great voids left by this retreat, and how in some cases secular understandings, such as the prevailing socio-political thought of many Western nations, have occupied the empty terrain and even taken on the character once owned only by religious belief—but without its philosophical foundations.
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).
