From the Director
Who are we? Cast a glance at our logo to get a few clues! You’ll notice that it combines a leaf and a page to form an open book. The inspiration for our logo comes from the last book of the Christian Bible, which, in its vision of the new world, mentions a tree “whose leaves are for the healing of nations.”
That’s how Christian faith that grows out of the Holy Book should function even today — as effective medicine for individuals and nations. Look around, however, and you’ll see that faith is frequently plagued by two basic malfunctions.
One is that faith often doesn’t seem to have any effect upon people’s daily life. They subscribe to faith, but it remains idle, as if they were taking a placebo and not the real thing. These people pride themselves on being Christian; they teach Sunday school, they sit on the church boards or might even be its chief leaders, and yet they live a life that is completely at odds with faith’s demands. Faith serves to give them energy to keep going, to comfort them in distress, or to still consciences that are plagued by guilt. But it doesn’t significantly shape the rest of their lives.
The more serious problem is when faith’s medicine turns into a deadly poison. In this case, a person’s faith is no longer idle or lukewarm but is used for ill and leeches society. This malfunctioning of faith gives inspiration and seeming legitimacy to people’s unconscionable deeds — from acts of violence and terror to complacency and inaction before situations of abuse and injustice.
Our mission at the Yale Center for Faith and Culture is to explore ways to counter these two distressingly widespread malfunctions of faith by helping people practice their faith responsibly in all spheres of life. We engage in that mission in two principal ways. The first is research. We want to understand how faith functions in contemporary societies, and we want to make informed decisions about how it should be brought to bear on important issues of the day. We are interested in generating new ideas, but we are not satisfied merely to place them on library shelves or in electronic databases as intellectual resources. We want to help give ideas “legs,” so as to help shape people and the institutions they work in and lead. Hence, leadership development is the second way in which we pursue our mission.
We invite you to explore our web site to get acquainted with our various programs and projects.
“Ethics and Spirituality in the Workplace Program takes up the economic sphere of life, often perceived as far removed from claims of faith, and explores what it means to integrate the claims of faith and the demands of workplace.
The “Reconciliation Program,” directed by Joseph Cumming, is concerned with the contemporary crisis in relations with the Muslim world and explores ways in which the three Abrahamic faiths, most notably the teachings and person of Jesus, might promote healing and reconciliation.
We hope that you will write to us with your questions and suggestions as to how we can pursue our mission even more effectively. And above all, please join us as we strive together to overcome the twin malfunctions of idleness and coerciveness within faith and to seek new ways to practice faith as a healing and compelling way of life.
Miroslav Volf
Director of Yale Center for Faith and Culture
Henry B. Wright Professor of Theology
From the Director
Who are we? Cast a glance at our logo to get a few clues! You’ll notice that it combines a leaf and a page to form an open book. The inspiration for our logo comes from the last book of the Christian Bible, which, in its vision of the new world, mentions a tree “whose leaves are for the healing of nations.”
That’s how Christian faith that grows out of the Holy Book should function even today — as effective medicine for individuals and nations. Look around, however, and you’ll see that faith is frequently plagued by two basic malfunctions.
One is that faith often doesn’t seem to have any effect upon people’s daily life. They subscribe to faith, but it remains idle, as if they were taking a placebo and not the real thing. These people pride themselves on being Christian; they teach Sunday school, they sit on the church boards or might even be its chief leaders, and yet they live a life that is completely at odds with faith’s demands. Faith serves to give them energy to keep going, to comfort them in distress, or to still consciences that are plagued by guilt. But it doesn’t significantly shape the rest of their lives.
The more serious problem is when faith’s medicine turns into a deadly poison. In this case, a person’s faith is no longer idle or lukewarm but is used for ill and leeches society. This malfunctioning of faith gives inspiration and seeming legitimacy to people’s unconscionable deeds — from acts of violence and terror to complacency and inaction before situations of abuse and injustice.
Our mission at the Yale Center for Faith and Culture is to explore ways to counter these two distressingly widespread malfunctions of faith by helping people practice their faith responsibly in all spheres of life. We engage in that mission in two principal ways. The first is research. We want to understand how faith functions in contemporary societies, and we want to make informed decisions about how it should be brought to bear on important issues of the day. We are interested in generating new ideas, but we are not satisfied merely to place them on library shelves or in electronic databases as intellectual resources. We want to help give ideas “legs,” so as to help shape people and the institutions they work in and lead. Hence, leadership development is the second way in which we pursue our mission.
We invite you to explore our web site to get acquainted with our various programs and projects.
“Ethics and Spirituality in the Workplace Program” takes up the economic sphere of life, often perceived as far removed from claims of faith, and explores what it means to integrate the claims of faith and the demands of workplace.
The “Reconciliation Program,” directed by Joseph Cumming, is concerned with the contemporary crisis in relations with the Muslim world and explores ways in which the three Abrahamic faiths, most notably the teachings and person of Jesus, might promote healing and reconciliation.
We hope that you will write to us with your questions and suggestions as to how we can pursue our mission even more effectively. And above all, please join us as we strive together to overcome the twin malfunctions of idleness and coerciveness within faith and to seek new ways to practice faith as a healing and compelling way of life.
Miroslav Volf
Director of Yale Center for Faith and Culture
Henry B. Wright Professor of Theology