Syndicate Hosts Symposium on Senior Fellow Norman Wirzba’s “This Sacred Life”

Syndicate, a digital forum for intellectual discourse in the humanities, recently hosted an online symposium on Kenan Senior Fellow Norman Wirzba’s “This Sacred Life: Humanity’s Place in a Wounded World” (Cambridge, 2021). Over a series of weeks, Syndicate published short essays responding to “This Sacred Life” from scholars of Christian theological studies and other disciplines: Natalie Carnes, Amy Plantinga Pauw, Jonathan Tran, Saskia Carnes, and Dirk Philipsen, who is also a Kenan Senior Fellow. These were followed by responses from Wirzba. Kenan Assistant Director for Faculty Initiatives Michael Grigoni edited the symposium and wrote its introduction.

A theological exploration of the relationship of human beings to the natural world, “This Sacred Life” asks how seeing the world as “divinely created” might shape our response to living in the Anthropocene – a term describing the current geological age, marked by human activity’s unmistakable impact on the environment and climate. Wirzba argues that it is necessary to recover a vision of the world as God’s creation in order to address the climate crisis, biodiversity loss, and sense of hopelessness that pervades the present moment. Throughout “This Sacred Life,” Wirzba draws from Christian, Jewish, and indigenous sources as well as the natural sciences, social sciences, and humanities –a truly interdisciplinary effort that brings together an array of intellectual and spiritual resources to confront this pressing issue.

The full online symposium on “This Sacred Life” is now available on Syndicate.