Luther Lecture 2025
Turning Ourselves Inside Out For Each Other: Why Intercultural Ministry Matters
There are two schools of thought about life in the 21st century: One that perceives us as going through a series of unprecedented shifts in society that continue to expel whole communities to the margins. The other sees our challenges as significantly improved from every previous global upheaval and challenge. Perhaps both things can be true… we cannot reach back into past centuries to measure our conflicts against theirs, we only know the world that we know. But we also follow in a tradition that has documented our human failure to live into the liberative story of Christian discipleship, and our forebears have reflected theologically on war, environmental degradation, racism, and other oppression since the beginning of our tradition. What would a church turned inside out look like for political theology in the 21st century – and what remains instructive from political theology in the mid-20th century. And what does interculturalism have to do with it?
About Our Speaker, The Right Rev. Dr. Carmen Lansdowne
The Rev. Dr. Carmen Lansdowne is Moderator of The United Church of Canada through August 2025. Following her 3-year elected term, she will serve as Assistant Professor of United Church of Canada Studies at Emmanuel College, Victoria University in the University of Toronto. She holds a PhD in Interdisciplinary Studies from the Graduate Theological Union (2016), and is an ordained minister in The United Church of Canada (UCC).
In addition to her ministry, former Moderator Carmen has served several nonprofit and social profit organizations, including as Director of Operations at Action for the Climate Emergency and Ecojustice Canada, and as Executive Director at First United Church Community Ministry Society. She also serves as a social impact advisor at JumpScale – a boutique consulting firm in the US providing advisory and coaching services to help impact leaders navigate organizational change and sustainable growth.
Carmen continues to speak, facilitate and write both inside and outside of the church. She leads with compassion, thoughtfulness, and creativity while maintaining academic interests, church ministry, and Indigenous ways of being, parenting, and partnering. Carmen is a member of the Heiltsuk First Nation. She is passionate about creating a life with great stories and amazing adventures with her family from their home base in Coquitlam, BC.
Event Details & Zoom Registration
When: Monday, September 29th at 7:30 p.m.
Where: Luther Auditorium, also available via Zoom*
Rush seating, refreshments to follow.
*Registration for Zoom is required
Please fill out the form below if you would like to attend the Luther Lecture via Zoom.
The Luther Lecture is presented with financial assistance from the James Kurtz Memorial Trust Fund.
History of Luther Lecture
The Luther Lecture was established with the purpose of making a distinctive and stimulating contribution to the life of the University and the general community. Annually a distinguished scholar or leader of note is invited to present an address on a subject of significance. Although the speakers have included such outstanding minds as Northrop Frye, Helen Caldicott, John Ralston Saul, and Margaret Somerville, the lectures are aimed at a general audience, and feature topics of interest to communities in Saskatchewan and beyond. In this way, Luther College, University Campus, aims to express more fully its objective to encourage wise thinking and constructive action in the service of humanity.
Past Luther Lecturers
2023 – Dr. Regan Shercliffe, United Nations World Food Programme – “Humanitarian Aid Work: (Another) Impossible Profession”
2021 – Dr. Azza Karam, Secretary General of Religions for Peace – “Religions and the Pandemic: Sobering or Hopeful?”
2018 – Rev. Dr. Mitri Raheb – “Faith in the Face of Empire: A Palestinian Christian Perspective.”
2017 – Dr. Nicholas Terpstra – “Reframing the Reformation: Religious Refugees in the Early Modern World”
2015 – Dr. Pamela Dickey Young – “Sex, Religion and Canadian Youth: Identities Under Construction”
2014 – Dr. Cynthia Moe-Lobeda – “Climate Justice: Love as Ecological-Economic Vocation”
2013 — Dr. Martin E. Marty – “The Artful Liberation of the University: Practical Education for the Common Good”
2012 — Bishop Michael Ingham – “Finding the Postmodern Balance: evangelical, catholic, liberal”
2011 — Senator Lillian Dyck – “Following the footprints of my Cree mother: Dreaming of gender and racial equality”
2010 — Dr. Roland Miller – “Daring to be Global Citizens: De-radicalising Christian-Muslim Relations”
2009 — Larry Rasmussen – “Earth Healing for Justice-Minded Christians”
2008 — Don Franklin – “Bach to the Future: What we can learn from the past when performing Bach’s music today”
2007 — Margaret Somerville – “Challenging ‘The God Delusion’: The Search for a Shared Ethics”
2006 — George Elliott Clarke – “The Problem of Pluralism: Anti-Social Attitudes in African-Canadian Literature”
2005 — Stanley Hauerwas
2004 — Margaret Miles
2003 — Margaret Wertheim
2002 — Rudy Wiebe
2001 — Carol Meyers
1999 — Mary Stewart Van Leeuwen – “Faith, Feminism And Family In An Age Of Globalization”
1995 — Rosemary Radford Ruether
1993 — James Cone
1992 — Ursula Franklin
1991 — Reginald Bibby
1990 — Lois Wilson
1989 — John Polanyi
1989 — Edna and Howard Hong
1988 — Dr. Henry Taube
1987 — Wilfred Cantwell Smith
1986 — Hans Küng
1985 — Paul Wee
1984 — Helen Caldicott
1983 — George Forell
1982 — Northrop Frye
1981 — William Foege
1980 — Roland Bainton
1979 — Krister Stendahl
1978 — Dr. Martin E. Marty
1977 — Jaroslav Pelikan