It was recently brought to my attention that I missed a question in the comments section of one of my shameless appeals. David Bayly asked this about our ministerial conference in October:
“Further information on this would be helpful for those of us who have to plan significantly ahead to attend such conferences. For instance, will the conference be ad hoc in its focus on politics and the church, or will it take a large view? Thank you.”
The easy answer is that it will take the large view. In hopes of providing even more information than that, the intent of the conference is to follow the main theme of Peter Leithart’s book of the same name, and argue that when the Church functions as the Church, her presence in any society has necessary political implications, ramifications and dislocations. So the conference is not on “activist organizing,” and neither is it on “escapist” theology. We are aiming for something, in the finest traditions of Monty Python Presbyterianism, “completely different.”
