Religion and Common Good research seminar March 20

The department of religion will present the next research seminar in the Religion and the Common Good seminar series March 20 at 7 p.m. in Room 248 of the Miller Learning Center:

The seminar, “Augustine on Love, Conflict and the Goods We Hold in Common,” by Richard B. Miller of the University of Chicago Divinity School is open free to the public.

Miller is the Laura Spelman Rockefeller Professor of Religious Ethics at the University of Chicago. His research interests include religion and public life, political and social ethics, theory and method in religious thought and ethics, and practical ethics.

His 2016 book, Friends and Other Strangers: ­Studies in Religion, Ethics and Culture,seeks to chart and expand the field of religious ethics by exploring the implications of taking a cultural turn in the humanities and social sciences.

With his faculty colleagues in religious ­ethics, Miller has launched an initiative at the ­Divinity School—a two-year cycle of readings, “Minor ­Classics in Ethics,” focusing on recent essays that have revitalized forgotten themes or have posed new questions for moral philosophers and religious ethicists to take up.

This seminar series is an interdisciplinary initiative designed to delve into important questions in the context of religion’s contribution to the common good:

• The ways religious communities reach beyond the bounds of their own community to benefit people of other faiths or of no particular faith.
• What constitutes the common good from a religious faith perspective.
• Differences between religions in approaching various common goods.
• How religions prevent or promote common goods within society or segments of society.
• Religious teachings and practices that motivate members to seek the good of others, and inter- religious service for the common good. 

Welcome to Dr. Miller, for what is an great opportunity for learning and community engagement from the department of religion. This event is free and open to the public.

Image: The Conversion Of Saint Augustine Painting by Fra Angelico, tempera on panel, between circa 1430 and circa 1435