Conference Keynotes Will Challenge, Reform, Inspire
Fourth Presbyterian Church, Chicago October 31 to November 2
In a series of compelling keynote addresses, three of the leading voices of the Presbyterian Church (USA) will bring words of enlightenment and challenge to this year’s Covenant Conference. Registration is open now! Visit here for information and links to registration and hotel sites.
Macky Alston will kick off the conference by asking what “movement moment” we are experiencing today—and who exactly comprises the “we”? Vice President of Strategy, Engagement and Media at Auburn Theological Seminary, Alston leads one of the nation’s leading programs to equip religious leaders with media expertise and effective ways of communicating their message. Using those skills—and the extraordinary storytelling gifts he displayed in directing the award-winning documentary Love Free or Die—he’ll invite conferees to see the current campaigns for marriage equality through the lens of the history of work for social justice, and challenge us to consider how we can move from message to action in our particular Presbyterian communities in non-polarizing ways.
Amy Plantinga Pauw doesn’t specialize in the theology of marriage, but it is precisely her broad grounding in Reformed doctrine and history that will make her address, “It’s Time,” so relevant and crucial. The Henry P. Mobley Jr. Professor of Doctrinal Theology at Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary, Pauw teaches courses on the full spectrum of Reformed thinkers, and that background leads her to penetrating observations about our tradition’s understanding of marriage from Calvin to the present day—an understanding sometimes lost in our contemporary practices and societal influences. Her address will provide a basis for reforming our understanding that we might come to see marriage as what Bonhoeffer called it, “a ‘yes’ to God’s earth.” 
William Stacy Johnson returns to the Covenant Conference having published the second edition of his book, A Time to Embrace: Same-Gender Relationships in Religion, Law and Politics. A trained attorney, a teaching elder, and the Arthur M. Adams Professor of Systematic Theology at Princeton Theological Seminary, Johnson will bring his diverse experiences to bear, considering how the debate over same-sex marriage in courtrooms and the court of public opinion is transforming what Christianity in America will be—and for the better. Johnson will challenge the conference not just to see that marriage matters, but to see how much it matters: for what the church, what democracy, what the world must be about.The speakers, together with invited guests and conference preachers, will join together in a panel discussion in the closing session of the conference, responding to one another and to the audience about the future of the conversation—and the future of marriage—in the church.Don’t miss the moments that will shape the conversation in the crucial months and years to come. Register today!
