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SUMMARY:The Bampton Lectures - Professor Alec Ryrie (University of Durham)
DTSTART;VALUE=DATE-TIME:20220517T100000
DTEND;VALUE=DATE-TIME:20220517T110000
UID:https://talks.ox.ac.uk/talks/id/d0834a28-9326-487d-8497-cd4549c73287/
DESCRIPTION:Heroes and Villains\n\nTuesday 17 May at 10.00am in the Univer
 sity Church\n\nFor those of us who have grown up formed by its certainties
 \, the fracturing of the postwar moral consensus is unnerving. This lectur
 e will offer some cold comfort\, by examining the weaknesses and inadequac
 ies of the Second World War and of the mythology of anti-Nazism as a basis
  for our value systems. It will argue that for those weaknesses and inadeq
 uacies to be addressed\, we will need to draw on deeper resources\, which 
 in the western world must mean principally theChristian moral frameworks t
 hat are still buried deep in our culture’s foundations. It remains to be
  seen whether this will be done well or badly.\n\nThe inadequacy of the Se
 cond World War as a basis for our ethics is not a matter merely of the mor
 al messiness of the struggle itself (the Bengal famine\, Dresden\, Hiroshi
 ma)\; nor of the problematic lessons the war has taught us (the phobia of 
 ‘appeasement’ almost annihilated the planet during the Cuban missile c
 risis). More fundamentally\, the very fact of replacing a positive moral e
 xemplar with a negative one has left us with a social consensus that knows
  what is evil but has no agreement on what is good\, and indeed with a sev
 erely impoverished notion of the good. One result is a worsening shortage 
 of those pragmatic moral lubricants\, repentance and forgiveness. Another 
 is an almost comical tendency\, especially in Britain\, to read complex pr
 oblems\, from the COVID pandemic to the climate emergency\, through the le
 ns of the Second World War – as if all true evils have villains at their
  heart. A third is a persistent inability to find a cultural place for rel
 igion\, especially for religions that do not feel the need to emulate post
 war European Christianity’s tamed social role. The lecture will argue th
 at these inadequacies are amongst the reasons why our postwar value system
  is failing\, and why we ought to be glad of the fact. It will also argue 
 that\, while Christianity cannot be the only set of moral resources drawn 
 on to address these problems\, it can and should play a distinctive and de
 cisive part in doing so. And it will draw on examples from around the worl
 d that suggest this is already beginning to happen.\nSpeakers:\nProfessor 
 Alec Ryrie (University of Durham)
LOCATION:The University Church of St Mary the Virgin\, High Street OX1 4AH
TZID:Europe/London
URL:https://talks.ox.ac.uk/talks/id/d0834a28-9326-487d-8497-cd4549c73287/
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DESCRIPTION:Talk:The Bampton Lectures - Professor Alec Ryrie (University o
 f Durham)
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