Professor Miroslav Volf visits Maynooth

In the timely context of an increasing sensitivity to the place of the immigrant in the Irish religious landscape Professor Miroslav Volf delivered the 2008 Michael Devlin Lecture entitled ‘“The Other,” Violence, and Memory.’ This year, the Michael Devlin Lecture was also be held as part of a One-day Symposium, ‘Otherness’ in our Midst, hosted by the Irish Centre for Faith and Culture here in Maynooth.   

Professor Volf is the Director of the Yale Centre for Faith & Culture and Henry B. Wright Professor of Theology at Yale Divinity School.  A native of Croatia, Professor Volf has forged a theology of forgiveness and non-violence in the face of the horrendous violence experienced in Croatia and Serbia in the 1990s. While he maintains an active interest in many aspects of faith’s relation to culture, his primary work has focused on theological understandings of work, the church, the Trinity, violence, reconciliation and memory.

Professor Volf’s most recent books are Free of Charge: Giving and Forgiving in a Culture Stripped of Grace (Zondervan, 2005), which was selected as the Archbishop of Canterbury’s Lenten Book for 2006, and The End of Memory: Remembering Rightly in a Violent World (Eerdmans, 2006). His other books include A Passion for God’s Reign: Theology, Christian Learning, and The Christian Self (Eerdmans, 1997) and After Our Likeness: The Church as the Image of the Trinity (Eerdmans, 1998). He is also editor, with Dorothy C. Bass, of Practicing Theology: Beliefs and Practices in Christian Life (Eerdmans, 2001). In addition, Prof. Volf has written more than 70 scholarly articles and hundreds of popular editorials and articles. 

Miroslav Volf has given many prestigious lectureships including the Dudleian Lecture, Harvard; the Chavasse Lectures, Oxford; the Waldenstroem Lectures, Stockholm; the Gray lectures, Duke University; and the Stob Lectures, Calvin College.  

The Irish Centre for Faith and Culture was delighted and honoured to have such a distinguished speaker as Professor Volf this year.   

For details of future conferences and events being hosted by the Irish Centre for Faith and Culture please contact the Centre at 18 Dunboyne House, St Patrick’s College,

Maynooth, Co. Kildare.  Ph: 01 7083349    Fax: 01 7083348     E-mail: icfc@may.ie