Annual Franz Lecture

Andrew Yuengert: Practical Wisdom and Rational Choice: Economics' Proper Place in the Social Sciences
February 28, 2013
Co-hosted by the Gordon College Economics and Business Department

Reception: 4:15 p.m., Jenks Alumni Reading Room
Lecture: 4:45 p.m., Jenks 406

Andrew Yuengert is a professor of Economics at Seaver College, Pepperdine University. He has made research contributions in several fields: economic philosophy, Catholic Social Teaching, the empirical study of religion, labor economics, and finance. He was recently editor of the journal Faith & Economics. He is the author of two previous books: The Boundaries of Technique: Ordering Positive and Normative Concerns in Economic Research (2004), and Inhabiting the Land: A Case for the Right to Migrate (2004). His most recent essay is "Roman Catholic Economics," in The Oxford Handbook of Christianity and Economics (2012).

Kurt Werthmuller: The Arab Uprising: Spring, Winter, or Something Else Entirely?
April 2, 2012
Co-hosted by the Gordon College History Department

Kurt Werthmuller is a Research Fellow with Hudson Institute's Center for Religious Freedom. Werthmuller is researching trends in the status of religious minorities in the Middle East, especially in the Arab world. Currently, he is examining the real and potential impact of regional uprisings on these communities.

Werthmuller served as Associate Professor of History at Azusa Pacific University from 2007-2011, and as Assistant Professor of History at Geneva College from 2005-2007. During this time, he published Coptic Identity and Ayyubid Politics in Egypt, 1218–1250 (2010), wrote articles for the World History Encyclopedia (2011) and the Dictionary of African Biography (2011), presented on non-Muslims in medieval Egypt at the Middle East Studies Association and American Historical Association, and gave public lectures on the Coptic community and on the recent Egyptian revolution.

Mary Stewart Van Leeuwen: Opposite Sexes or Neighboring Sexes? C. S. Lewis, Dorothy L. Sayers and Psychology of Gender
March 8, 2011
Co-hosted by the Gordon College Political Science Department

Dr. Mary Stewart Van Leeuwen is professor of psychology and philosophy at Eastern University and former senior editor of Christianity Today. She taught previously at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Dr. Van Leeuwen is the author of numerous works on the relationship between faith and gender, including her book Gender and Grace (1991). She spoke about her most recent work, A Sword between the Sexes: C. S. Lewis and the Gender Debates (2010). This year's event was co-sponsored by the Women in Leadership Speaker Series.

Listen to the lecture.

Mike McCullough: Beyond Revenge: The Evolution of the Forgiveness Instinct
September 30, 2009
Co-hosted by the Gordon College Psychology Department

Dr. Michael McCullough, professor of psychology at the University of Miami, Florida, directs the Laboratory for Social and Clinical Psychology and holds a secondary appointment in UM's Department of Religious Studies. In his lecture he presented his research on the social-psychological factors that can modulate the desire for revenge and accelerate the forgiveness process. He is also interested in several aspects of religion, including how it evolved, how it develops over the life course, and its links to health, well-being, and social behavior.

David N. Hempton: Evangelical Enchantment and Disenchantment
April 17, 2008
Co-hosted by the Gordon College History Department

Professor of Evangelical Theological Studies at Harvard Divinity School, Dr. David Hempton previously taught at Boston University and the Queen's University of Belfast. His research and teaching interests are in religion and political culture, identity and ethnic conflict, the interdisciplinary study of lived religion, comparative secularization in Europe and North America, and the history and theology of Evangelical Protestantism. Dr. Hempton's lecture concerned his 2008 book Evangelical Disenchantment, which profiles the faith struggles of figures such as George Eliot, Vincent Van Gogh, and James Baldwin.