The Founders Institute of Public Policy will be hosting two lectures by Dr. Peter Leithart this week in Southern Illinois. Leithart is the president of the Theopolis Institute in Birmingham, Alabama. Both events are free to the public; see schedule below.
Thursday, October 8, 7 p.m.
Washington Hall at Morthland College
202 East Oak St., West Frankfort, Illinois
Immigration After Obergefell — Obergefell v. Hodges is the latest in a string of Supreme Court decisions that have made it clear that American law no longer rests on Christian foundations. The old Protestant establishment is dead, and that means that Christians must assess and respond to public questions in a new framework. Using immigration as his key illustration, Dr. Leithart argues that the church must become an “alternative public” and that Christians must retrain ourselves to think about and respond to public issues more as churchmen than as American citizens.
Friday, October 9, 11 a.m.
Whitefield Hall at Morthland College
401 W. Main St., West Frankfort, Illinois
Relativizing the Classics — Dr. Leithart argues that Christians can only handle pagan Greco-Roman literature, philosophy, and culture well if we relativize the classics. Classics may be historically relativized by examining the history of the discipline of classics and the modern “cult of the Greeks,” by highlighting ancient Greece’s debt to Ancient Near Eastern culture, and by giving due weight to non-classical contributions to Western Civilization. Classics may be theologically relativized by viewing ancient myths as pagan “typologies” of the gospel, and by placing the classical world in an evangelical account of history.
From its website, the Founders Institute is a “non-profit, non-partisan research and public advocacy organization whose mission is to apply the wisdom of the fathers of the Christian faith and the founders of our constitutional republic” in political and social life.
Leithart will also be preaching at Cornerstone Reformed Church in Carbondale on October 11, 9:30 a.m.
Morthland College, Peter Leithart, Southern Illinois, Theopolis Institute
