2015 Pastors/Educators Retreat

"Thinking with the Desert Fathers and Mothers: What Early Monasticism Has to Say to a Changing World"  Modern churches face a fast changing world. How are we to act as faithful witnesses in response to the challenges of our day? As has long been noted, the desert fathers and mothers continue to act as a font of wisdom as regards spirituality. But they have also bequeathed us multiple, thoughtful reflections on how to engage and imagine the Church anew, as early Christians similarly confronted an age shifting on a global and local scale. While some ascetics struggle to serve the emerging Church in urban contexts, other fled society, in the process discovering new spiritual and community-based resources in the desert. This retreat will explore how returning to the struggles of our early Christian mothers and fathers might help us reframe, reimagine, and re-engage issues of spirituality in community, race and ethnicity, gender, and economic justice. 

Keynote Speaker ~ Christine Luckritz Marquis, assistant professor of church history at Union Presbyterian Seminary, joined the faculty in Fall of 2013. An M.A.R. graduate of Yale Divinity School, Luckritz Marquis received her B.A. in Religion from Illinois Wesleyan University. She earned her Ph.D in Early Christian Studies from Duke Univeristy 2012. 

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