CFI Events
2026-2027
"EMBODIMENT: Encountering Ourselves in Flesh and Blood"
What difference do our bodies make? At Gordon, we are invited to cultivate our minds through reading, writing, and discovery. Yet our acts of faith, learning and living are embodied. Our bodies shape how we learn, relate to God and to others, rest, and engage the world. It’s possible to view our bodies as mere tools for the pursuit of our real goals, or only as limitations that we seek to overcome. But to be created in the image of God also involves our bodies. And “the resurrection of the body” is no minor doctrine of Christianity.
CFI seeks to explore the reality of human embodiment over the 2026-2027 year. How does the reality that we are bodies affect how we think, feel, live, and worship? How do the ways that our bodies are different from each other affect how we might relate to each other? How does paying attention to our bodies make us better students, faculty, Christ-followers?
Over the 2026-2027 year, join faculty, students and campus guests as we explore these vital questions together.
- How do our various academic disciplines (arts, sciences, humanities, ministry, business, education) talk about and interact with our bodies?
- How do we honor/dishonor our embodied selves in popular culture, online, or as we produce & consume?
- What happens to our bodies in digital spaces?
- How do we respond to the limits of our bodies—as we get tired, as we deal with pain, or as we age?
- What can our disabilities (whether visible or not) teach us about what it means to be human? What can other embodied differences (gender, race, culture) teach us about God and the image of God?
- Our physical nature is sometimes seen to be the source of sin or at least a significant obstacle to holiness. How is this true or untrue?
- What does it mean to worship with our bodies?
- How might recalling our embodiment allow us to better pursue justice towards others and creation?
- What are some habits we may want to pursue to better honor our bodies?
CFI 2026-27 Events
SEPTEMBER 24, 2026
Gordon Faculty Panel
Chairs' Room (Ken Olsen Science Center)
4:30-6:15 P.M.
Join Gordon faculty members Dr. Jonathan Senning (Mathematics & Computer Science), Professor Mara Sidmore (Theatre), Dr. Sean Clark (Kinesiology), and Dr. Amy Brown Hughes (Theology & Christian Ministries) as they lead a conversation on embodiment inspired by their respective fields.
OCTOBER 29, 2026
Speaker Announced Fall 2026
Chairs' Room (Ken Olsen Science Center)
4:30-6:15 P.M.
Abstract Coming Soon
NOVEMBER 12, 2026
Speaker Announced Fall 2026
Chairs' Room (Ken Olsen Science Center)
4:30-6:15 P.M.
Abstract Coming Soon
JANUARY 21, 2027
Speaker Announced Spring 2027
Chairs' Room (Ken Olsen Science Center)
4:30-6:15 P.M.
Abstract Coming Soon
FEBRUARY 25, 2027
Speaker Announced Spring 2027
Chairs' Room (Ken Olsen Science Center)
4:30-6:15 P.M.
Abstract Coming Soon
MARCH 18, 2027
Speaker Announced Spring 2027
Chairs' Room (Ken Olsen Science Center)
4:30-6:15 P.M.
Abstract Coming Soon
ALL-DAY STUDENT EVENTS, NO CLASSES
Symposium Day 2027
What is CFI Symposium Day?
Every spring, Gordon College devotes one Thursday, all day long (with no classes) to hear what YOU, the student body, has to say. Put on an event with your 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 Day?
This year's Symposium Day will be Thursday, April 15th.
How do I get involved?
CFI welcomes proposals from any and all majors! Apply by March 18 with your proposal for a 50-minute session 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 CFI theme.
April 15, 2027: CFI SYMPOSIUM DAY
Faculty, Staff, and Student Panel
KOSC Loggia & Chairs' Room
Additional details announced Spring 2027
Lecture Archives | "On Beauty & Justice" (2025-26)
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?
Makoto Fujimura & Haejin Shim Fujimura "BEAUTY X JUSTICE: Creating a Genesis Moment"
What if the pursuit of justice began not only with urgency—but with beauty, imagination, and care?
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, the speakers introduce Culture Care as a foundational framework—one that nurtures ecosystems of hope rather than cultures of scarcity and fear. Reimagine justice as a creative, communal act: one that heals, dignifies, and gives rise to futures filled with beauty.
Dr. Wesley Vander Lugt "JUST BEAUTY"
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.
Abigail Carroll "HABITATION OF WONDER: Tenanting Beauty, Imagining Justice"
To be alive in this world is to be awake to wonder.
What are we, asks Abigail Carroll, but “a constellation of salts” bearing the divine signature in our “affinity for zinnias, for swallows and plums, and questions about the lives of ferns”? From a place of holy wonder, we are well positioned to imagine justice. In this reading, Carroll will share poems both published and new, inviting us to engage the prophetic necessity of beauty and boldly envision a just world.
Dr. James Taylor "SHALOM: A Gift and a Task"
Shalom is a radical re-envisioning of our relations with God, others, and the world around us.
The world loves peace but trusts in violence. Only through the judicious use of violent force, we are told, can we bring order and meaning to the chaos that threatens us on all sides. Shalom rejects this violent approach to peacemaking and insists that peace comes from life, not death. The task of shalom is to receive this life, tend to it, and allow it to grow us into a thriving community of beings who share this life.
Dr. Natalie Carnes "ART, POVERTY & WASTE: The Christian Vocation in a World of Need"
Amidst poverty, crisis, and loss, why enjoy the arts?
How can Christians justify making and supporting art in a world of where people die of unmet need? Why this “waste?” In her CFI lecture, Dr. Natalie Carnes describes how Christian understandings of creation, hope, and community show us a way of holding together the dynamic tensions of poverty and art, fasting and feasting, and excess and waste.
Dr. Liz Hall "LAMENT: Psychological Perspectives on an Ancient Form of Prayer"
Lament offers a profound framework for processing suffering and injustice.
Three empirical studies reveal that lament's distinctive structure—moving from complaint and petition through trust to praise—creates a psychologically powerful pathway for navigating adversity. Hear psychologist Dr. Liz Hall examine a correlational study on lament practices and psychological wellbeing measures, a feasibility study evaluating an online app-based lament program, and a randomized control trial testing the efficacy of structured lament interventions.