CFI Events
2025-2026
This Year's Theme: On Beauty & Justice
At Gordon College, we believe that the justice of God is not only unfolding, comprehensive and absolute, but that it is also something beautiful. If God is beautiful as well as just, then our response to beauty and our response to justice are likely to relate to each other, just as our efforts to create beauty and to create justice will relate to each other.
CFI seeks to help our community explore these questions:
- In our efforts to create beauty, how can we invite in those who are suffering?
- In our efforts to promote justice, where do we encounter the beauty of God?
- How might encounters with beauty lead us to a concern for justice?
Over the 2025-2026 year, join faculty, staff, students and honored guest speakers as we explore these vital questions together.
CFI 2025-26 Events
SEPTEMBER 4, 2025
Makoto Fujimura & Haejin Shim Fujimura
"BEAUTY X JUSTICE: CREATING A GENESIS MOMENT"
KOSC Loggia & MacDonald Auditorium
4:00 P.M. Reception | 4:30 P.M. Lecture
What if the pursuit of justice began not only with urgency—but with beauty, imagination, and care? Haejin and Mako Fujimura explore how acts of restoration and advocacy can become “Genesis Moments”: generative openings for renewal, not merely responses to brokenness. Drawing from their work in global anti-trafficking and the arts, they introduce Culture Care as a foundational framework—one that nurtures ecosystems of hope rather than cultures of scarcity and fear. This lecture invites us to reimagine justice as a creative, communal act: one that heals, dignifies, and gives rise to futures filled with beauty.
OCTOBER 30, 2025
Dr. Wesley Vander Lugt
"JUST BEAUTY"
KOSC Loggia & Chair's Room
4:00 P.M. Reception | 4:30 P.M. Lecture
Can beauty make a difference in a world of need and injustice?
Some demur, seeing beauty as a luxury for the privileged and a distraction from pressing ethical matters. By contrast, many Christian thinkers, mystics, and artists have made the case that beauty is an essential feature of God’s life and our own. If that’s true, then beauty and justice are necessarily intertwined, and fullness of life emerges when we learn to receive and offer beauty as a gift, a balm, and a prod.
NOVEMBER 13
Abigail Carroll
Beauty & Justice: Title Announced in OCTOBER
KOSC Loggia & Chair's Room 4:00 P.M. Reception | 4:30 P.M. Lecture
Abstract Announced in OCTOBER
JANUARY 29, 2026: Franz Lecture
James Taylor
Franz Lecture: Title Announced in DECEMBER
KOSC Loggia & Chair's Room 4:00 P.M. Reception | 4:30 P.M. Lecture
Abstract Announced in DECEMBER
FEBRUARY 26, 2026
February Speaker
Beauty & Justice: Title Announced in JANUARY
KOSC Loggia & Chair's Room 4:00 P.M. Reception | 4:30 P.M. Lecture
Abstract Announced in JANUARY
March 19, 2026
March Speaker
Beauty & Justice: Title Announced in FEBRUARY
KOSC Loggia & Chair's Room 4:00 P.M. Reception | 4:30 P.M. Lecture
Abstract Announced in FEBRUARY
On Beauty & Justice
Symposium 2026
What is Symposium?
Every spring, Gordon College devotes one Thursday, all day long (with no classes) to hear what YOU, the student body, has to say. This is your opportunity to put on an event with your student club, lead a discussion with your friends, create a work of art with your classmates, present your senior thesis, and more!
When is CFI Symposium?
This year the CFI Symposium will be held on Thursday, April 16th!
How do I get involved?
CFI welcomes proposals from any and all majors! Apply by March 26 with your proposal for a 40-50 minute event that will be advertised on campus and open to all. We especially welcome out-of-the-box thinking to connect your ideas with the overarching theme: On Beauty & Justice.
Symposium Applications will be posted in the spring.
April 16, 2026: SYMPOSIUM
Symposium Speaker
Beauty & Justice: Title Announced in MARCH
KOSC Loggia & Chair's Room 4:00 P.M. Reception | 4:30 P.M. Lecture
Abstract Announced in MARCH