Below you’ll find a listing of all conference posts, including both session reports and extras. I hope that this proves helpful to you, and would encourage you to listen to the audio–it’s all available. Thanks for reading! 1. The Conference Begins 2. Who Is Robby George? 3. Paul Kerry’s Opening Remarks on Robby George and “Making Men Moral” 4. Russ Moore on Catholics, Evangelicals, and Mardi Gras 5. James Stoner on John Rawls and the “Aristotelian Principle” 6. Seen and... Read more
Well, the dust cloud is settling. The Making Men Moral conference is over. It has been an incredible privilege to do this event. I am hugely impressed with Union University, David Dockery, Micah Watson, Robby George and the other theorists who contributed to this exceptional conference. My brain is so full of content right now that it’s hard to summarize it. In short, let me just quickly say that I am leaving this conference with a renewed understanding of the... Read more
I mentioned previously that I had a challenge locating a Union University bio for Dr. Dockery. That may well have been my own fault in web-searching. I have been given a full biography which I want to share with you. I will register once more my deep respect and appreciation for Dr. Dockery and will urge you to read his books, pray for his ministry, and emulate him as a leader of charity, conviction, grace, theological insight, and acuity. The following is... Read more
The biography of Hadley Arkes, the conference’s final speaker: “Hadley Arkes has been a member of the Amherst College faculty since 1966. He was the William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Jurisprudence, and was appointed, in 1987, as the Edward Ney Professor of American Institutions. He has written five books with Princeton University press: Bureaucracy, the Marshall Plan, and the National Interest (1972), The Philosopher in the City (1981), First Things (1986), Beyond the Constitution (1990), and The Return of George... Read more
As the conference concludes, I want to give you a brief sense of the book upon which this event is based. Robby George’s Making Men Moral: Civil Liberties and Public Morality was published fifteen years ago by Oxford University Press. It made quite a splash in its day, and it is a book worth considering and thinking hard about. Here is some more information about the text from the official Oxford website: “Contemporary liberal thinkers commonly suppose that there is something... Read more
The biography of the conference’s keynote speaker, Robby George, who spoke in Union’s chapel service: Professor George is a member of the President’s Council on Bioethics and formerly served as a presidential appointee to the United States Commission on Civil Rights. He was Judicial Fellow at the Supreme Court of the United States, where he received the Justice Tom C. Clark Award. He is the author of In Defense of Natural Law, Making Men Moral: Civil Liberties and Public Morality,... Read more
The biography of the conference’s last session speaker, Greg Thornbury: “Gregory Alan Thornbury, PhD is the founding Dean of the School of Christian Studies at Union University, where he teaches philosophy and theology. Since 2002, He has served as Senior Fellow for The Kairos Journal (New York), an online research tool designed to help pastors and church leaders engage public square issues. The editor of two volumes and the author of numerous essays, his work has appeared in The American... Read more
In the evening panel session, a number of the conference’s speaker held a conversation about the topics covered in the conference. The conversation began with stories about Richard John Neuhaus. who was to have spoken at the conference and only very recently passed away. Father Neuhaus helmed the influential magazine First Things and led the ecumenical conservative movement. He was a giant, and his passing cast a shadow in our country, and even to a small extent over this conference. ... Read more
The biography of Christopher Tollefsen, the conference’s sixth speaker: “Chris Tollefsen is an associate professor in the department of philosophy at the University of South Carolina, the director of the graduate program in philosophy. He received his doctorate from Emory University in 1995 and has taught at Princeton University, the Spiritan Institute of Philosophy in Ghana, and since 1997 the University of South Carolina. He is the author of several articles and reviews as well as two books, Biomedical... Read more
The biography of Jean Belke Elshtain, the conference’s fifth speaker: “Jean Elshtain is a political philosopher whose task has been to show the connections between our political and ethical convictions. She is the author of several books and scores of articles as well as a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and chair of the Council on Civil Society. She has served on the Board of Trustees of the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton University and... Read more
Thought Life
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