Introduction

Today conservatives, progressives, and everyone in between feel the cultural ground shifting under us. We fear impending civilizational collapse due to technology, attempts to obliterate our cultural inheritance, and the imminent death—or intractable persistence—of liberalism. This sense of doom may affect the milieu in which we live, but it does not absolve us from the persistent question of how to live well. Indeed, it leaves us asking a new question: how do we live well at the end of a world?

In a way, living well at the end of a world is no different than living well in times of social stability and flourishing. But today we need to learn how to flourish in a time of deep cultural change, and we need to learn from moral exemplars who have done this in a particularly effective way. We need help struggling over what can and cannot change, and how we should faithfully adapt to what once was inconceivable.

Schedule

Friday, April 4

(The Riverside Church, Floor 9)

9:00: Gathering with coffee and light fare

9:30–11:00: “Demography, Religion, and the Eight-Billion Body Problem”

Speaker: Stephen Bullivant, Professor of Theology and the Sociology of Religion at St. Mary’s University, and Director of the Benedict XVI Centre for Religion and Society

11:00–11:30: Break

11:30–1:00: “These United States of Books: What Democracy Will Endure Its Digitalization?”

Speaker: Antón Barba-Kay, Distinguished Fellow at the Center on Privacy & Technology at Georgetown University

1:00–2:00: Lunch break

2:00–3:30: “Remembering America: The High Stakes of Memory and Moral Imagination in Civic Life”

Speaker: Angel Adams Parham, Associate Professor of Sociology and Senior Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture at the University of Virginia

3:30–4:00: Break

4:00–5:00: Round table discussion

Panelists: Stephen Bullivant, Anton Barba-Kay, and Angel Adams Parham

Saturday, April 5

(The Riverside Church, Floor 10)

9:00: Gathering with coffee and light fare

9:30–11:00: “Monastic Culture as Creative Subversion”

Speaker: Most Rev. Erik Varden, O.C.S.O., Bishop of Trondheim

11:00–11:30: Break

11:30–1:00: “Restoring Classical Civilization in the Renaissance: Three Approaches”

Speaker: James Hankins, Professor of History at Harvard University, founding editor of the I Tatti Renaissance Library

1:00–2:00: Lunch break

2:00–3:30: “Soldiers of God in a Secular World: The French Jesuits Between the Anticlerical Campaign and the Rise of Fascism”

Speaker: Sarah Shortall, Associate Professor of History at the University of Notre Dame

3:30–4:00: Break

4:00–5:00: Round table discussion

Panelists: Bishop Erik Varden, James Hankins, and Sarah Shortall

Schedule (pdf)

Please register with the form below. Reach out to us at info@morningsideinstitute.org with any questions.