2018: Defining Beauty
WHERE/WHEN
The 2018 Gathering took place at the Techny Towers Conference and Retreat Center in Techny, IL from July 12-14.
THEME
Our Gathering title is intentionally ambiguous: “beauty” is a word that needs to be defined and beauty ought to be defining of our lives as persons created in the image of God.
Scripture takes up the idea of beauty from beginning to end but not always in obvious ways:
“And God saw that it was beautiful.” (Genesis 1, Septuagint)
“She has done a beautiful thing for me” (Mt 26:10; Mk 14:6)
“Live such beautiful lives among the pagans that, though they accuse you of doing wrong, they may see your beautiful deeds and glorify God on the day he visits us.” (1 Peter 2:12)
Some of our guiding assumptions/questions:
“Beauty” and the “beautiful” are not simply aesthetic categories but fully moral ones, too.
How is beauty related to goodness and truth?
How is beauty connected to privilege and power, and how do we access beauty as a form of resistance?
How can we name the beauty at the center of the Christian story?
How is beauty implicated in everyday discipleship?
How do different traditions find and make beauty in their worship?
Why is so much explicitly Christian art so bad?
How do culturally dominant images of beauty distort our imagination?
RESOURCES
Photos from the Gathering are on the Facebook page.
All available audio files are uploaded. You can find them here: PodBean.