TH6.1: Empire Scholar to Speak at Union

Following on last fall’s well-received national conference “New Testament and Roman Empire: Shifting Paradigms for Interpretation,” Union’s New Testament Faculty will host social philosopher Michael Hardt for a public colloquium, “Resisting Empire: Early Christians, the Poor, and the Multitude.” This free event will be held October 26, in James Chapel, beginning at 6:00pm. Hardt, a professor at Duke University, is the co-author (with imprisoned scholar-activist Antonio Negri) of the recent Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire, as well as the seminal Empire. Responding to Hardt will be New Testament Professors Hal Taussig and Brigitte Kahl, Poverty Initiative Scholar-in-Residence Willie Baptist, and – in his first public address since assuming the Niebuhr Chair of Social Ethics – Professor Gary Dorrien. Davina C. Lopez, doctoral candidate in New Testament, will moderate the evening, which will include opportunity to engage Hardt and the panel following the presentations. Capturing the importance of the colloquium’s topic, Lopez remarked, “The New Testament is remarkable because it is a story of international solidarity from below, a snapshot of resistance to Roman imperial rule from the perspective of the multitudes who suffer most deeply and systemically. What would it mean to take this perspective seriously in this time of heightened imperial pretenses?” Those interested in this question who were unable to attend last year’s conference can look forward to both the colloquium as well as an upcoming double-issue of the Union Seminary Quarterly Review, which will be released around that date and will contain papers and presentations from at the 2004 conference.

–The Editors