Joseph R. Wiebe, assistant professor of religion at the University of Alberta, will deliver the Beck Lecture at Southwestern College on Thursday, Sept. 29, at 4 p.m., in Wroten Hall. The public is invited to attend and there is no admission charge.  

The title of his lecture is “Christianity, Climate Change, and Life in the Anthropocene.”

Wiebe earned his M.T.S. from Duke University and his Ph.D. from McMaster University in Canada. He teaches religion and ecology with interests in communitarianism, imagination, and ethics. His first book, “Wendell Berry's Imagination in Place,” will be published by Baylor University Press in January 2017.

“In a presidential election year, I think the best way we can use the funds generously given to us by the Beck family is to find a topic within religion and science that also gets debated by the presidential candidates,” says Jacob Goodson, assistant professor of philosophy at Southwestern College.  “Climate change seems to be such a topic in this presidential election cycle: The problem of climate change is agreed upon by the scientific community, religious conservatives question the science of climate change, and Democrats and Republicans line up either behind the scientists or the religious conservatives. Dr. Joseph Wiebe will help us navigate these complex and difficult questions that involve Christian theology, environmental ethics, policy formation, religious reasoning, and scientific inquiry.” 

The Beck lectureship, funded by Paul V. Beck to explore topics relating to science and religion, is an annual event on campus and brings in theologians, scientists, and philosophers from across the nation.  

For more information about the Beck Lecture, call (620) 229-6059.