*Event cancelled due to coronavirus*
The Department of Theology and Religious Studies is excited to welcome Dr Celia Deane-Drummond to deliver our biennial Firth Memorial Lectures on 28-29 April 2020, where she will talk about Humans and Animals: Boundary Questions and Why They are Significant for Theology and Ethics. The programme will consist of two lectures, both given at 4pm on their respective days, as well as a special postgraduate seminar for students within the faculty at 11.30am on the Wednesday (29th) – all events will be held in Humanities Room A03, University Park Campus.
These two lectures will explore different aspects of our humanity that are important for theology in the light of current scientific discussion on evolutionary anthropology and ethology. While the first lecture probes the insights that evolution and animal studies can bring to an understanding of what makes humanity distinct; the second lecture explores recent debates on personhood in animals. Theology tries to make sense of these currents in the light of its traditions, while all facets have ethical implications for our understanding of human dignity and animal ethics.
The programme is as follows:
Lecture 1: 4:00-5:30pm, Tuesday, 28 April 2020
Theology and the Evolution of Violence: Are We Wired for War or Peace?
This public lecture considers the empirical and theological aspects of the long- standing debate between Thomas Hobbes and Jean Jacques Rousseau on the basic state of nature at the dawn of human origins: was it towards collective violence or peace? Work with primates highlights both violence and reconciliation tendencies among chimpanzees and bonobos. More organised violence in the form of warfare is only characteristic of human societies capable of symbolic representation. I will argue that any linear progression from hunting game to warfare is unlikely, and the role of religious belief is also equally complex. Theologians influenced by Augustine’s theory of just war and evolutionary anthropologists agree that perception of injustice triggers inter-group and intra-group violence. Anthropologists are normally hesitant about coming to any negative judgment about oppressors, but theologians have different tools that can be at the service of understanding the complex factors that lead to peace.
Lecture 2: 4:00-5:30pm, Wednesday, 29 April 2020
Humans are Animals but Are Animals Persons? Implications for Theological Ethics.
In this lecture I tackle the difficult philosophical question of the place of animals in the moral sphere. Although often forgotten, reminding ourselves that we are animals is relatively uncontroversial compared with the idea of extending personhood to other animals. I argue that if personhood is extended it should not be confused with divine image bearing. While some theologians have become nervous about using any language about divine image bearing on the basis it could lead to an unhelpful sense of human superiority, I consider that such nervousness undercuts the distinctive contribution that Christian theology can make to the discussion. Divine image bearing is, like wisdom, a complex term that has its own chequered history of interpretation. But image bearing is also a reminder that human persons bear a special moral responsibility in a multi-species community in a way that personhood alone does not. Enlarging a notion of personhood may broaden the moral sphere, but it does not tell us how to act.
Graduate Research Seminar, 11:30am-1:00pm, Wednesday, 29 April 2020
Justice, Anger and Wrath: Tracing the Im/Moral Dimensions of Payback.
Available online in Religions 2019, 10, 555.
Martha Nussbaum’s Anger and Forgiveness makes explicit claims about the moral valence and irrationality of the desire for payback. This article explores the roots of that desire through an analysis of research on inequity aversion in primates, and the sociocultural developmental context for expressions of anger. It explores the content of different expressions of anger and their relationship to rationality by engaging in the work of Thomas Aquinas. I argue that the desire for payback has biosocial roots in cooperation, and that these habits are prerequisites for the development of human moral sensibilities. However, the explicit desire for payback, like anger in general, is morally ambiguous. Anger may be laudable insofar as it is tied to constructive efforts, but the desire to see another person suffer is in itself morally repugnant. Christian religious interpretations of payback further complicate the narrative, since unappealing instances of this desire are thought by some Christians to be nonetheless justified under the banner of God’s wrath.
Biography
Dr Deane-Drummond is currently Senior Research Fellow and Director of Laudato Si' Research Institute at Campion Hall, University of Oxford.
Celia Deane-Drummond was awarded a BA (Hons.)/MA in Natural Sciences from Cambridge University, part II Botany. She gained a doctorate in plant physiology from Reading University, specialising in agricultural botany. She then took up a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of British Columbia (UBC), Vancouver, Canada. While in Canada her interest in theology developed and she gained a postgraduate diploma in Christian Studies from Regent College. After leaving Canada she took up another postdoctoral fellowship in the biophysics group of the Botany department at Cambridge University, prior to a lectureship in the Botany department at Durham University. She then left her academic career in science and gained a BA (Hons) in Theology through CNAA at Trinity College, Bristol, followed by a doctorate in systematic theology at Manchester University, specialising in relating ecology to theology. This was followed by a PGCE in Religious Studies at Manchester Metropolitan University. Her first academic position in theology was at Chester University in 1994 where she subsequently founded and was director of the Centre for Religion and the Biosciences.
From 2011-2018 she was Chair of the European Forum for the Study of Religion and the Environment (EFSRE) which she helped found in 2006. In 2011 she joined the Faculty of Theology at the University of Notre Dame as full Professor in Theology and in 2015 became inaugural director of the Center for Theology, Science and Human Flourishing. She became Visiting Professor in Theology and Science at Durham University in 2012.
Her research specialism includes work at the interface of theology and ethics with the biological and social sciences, including more recently projects with evolutionary anthropologists. She is currently Affiliate Faculty member of the Faculty of Theology and Religious Studies at Oxford University.
About the Firth Lectures
The Firth Memorial Lectureship was founded by the Reverend John d’ewe Evelyn Firth in memory of his father, John Benjamin Firth, Historian of Nottingham and his mother Helena Gertrude Firth. The lecturer is appointed biennially by the Council of the University on the recommendation of the Senate of the University, and under the terms of the Trust the lecturer delivers a public lecture or lectures on some aspect of the Christian Faith in relation to contemporary problems.
The first person to hold the Lectureship was the renowned theologian Paul Tillich and there has been a series of eminent theologians and philosophers who have included among others Baroness Warnock and Professor Jϋrgen Moltmann.